If you’re like many of us, you’re still mourning the passing of SGU. The final episode aired earlier this week on Syfy.
If you’ve tuned in to our voice mail show lately, you know that a lot of fans out there are none too happy with Syfy over the cancellation of the show.
Now Syfy is telling their side of the story. Craig Engler, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Syfy Digital, has written an open letter for GateWorld that talks about the decision and factors the lead to the termination of SGU.
Engler attempts to refute certain points made by the on-line fan base.
The erratic scheduling killed SGU:
We started the show on Fridays where we’ve had the most success and where it initially did well, and we left it there until it started struggling. When it was clear the show had fallen to unsustainable levels and would not survive on Fridays, only then did we move it to the night where our highest rated show of all time had recently aired.The hiatus killed SGU:
As you can see from the ratings above, the biggest drop in viewers came before the hiatus, not after. In fact, SGU actually grew around 10% after the hiatus between season 1.0 and 1.5 in its first two episodes back.If you’d left it on Friday nights, it would have done well:
When left on Friday nights SGU lost 1/3 of its audience and dropped to consistently unsustainable ratings levels. The only hope of keeping it was to move it to another night where new viewers could find it.
You can read the full letter HERE.
The erratic scheduling killed SGU:
Yeah, I have to agree with them on this, but to be fair to SGU, the Friday Night slot where a happy-go-lucky Stargate show worked, the Deep Brooding SGU wouldn’t – 1 pt SGU
The hiatus killed SGU:
I’m pretty sure that the hiatus alone didn’t kill SGU. Again, have to agree with them and their numbers support that obvious downward trend. At the same time… didn’t they get moved to a night where they were unfamiliar with a different non-pro-wrestling audience?
If you’d left it on Friday nights, it would have done well:
The evidence is on Syfy’s side. But I have a question, how is it that a show which has consistent downward trend in ratings is syndicated to my local networks who were able to find times and audiences to watch it in the first season?
The problem with all this is that Stargate Universe was one of the best shows to come out of the last few years and it got killed before its time. And that sucks. It’s unfair. Why can’t we just make art for the sake of making art?
You’re kidding, right?
No.
Yes, and why can’t life just be all lollipops and unicorns (or Ferraris and supermodels as the case may be…)?
That’d be nice too.
My point is that it’s a fantastic show, and it sucks that it’s gone before its time, and I wish that shows like SGU could be allowed to continue and tell their stories just for the sake of having their stories sold. You don’t agree? You think SGU and Firefly and all those prematurely-cancelled shows are better off for being wrapped up in the economics and politics and business of television?
SGU was no “Firefly”, not by a long shot. And TV is a business (duh)!
The part about all of this that bugs me the most is that I’m one of those people who watched SGU who probably never got counted because I watch the show through Hulu, and it seems like every cable network is on a mission to botch how they handle the distribution of their shows on services like Hulu.
From a SGU fan’s point of view, I can summarize that open letter as: blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and blah. They may have every valid excuse in the world…but it doesn’t bring back what I want to see or make it any less painful. When a person gets downsized from their employer, a manager can give awesome reasons about how its for the good of the company – but that doesn’t take out the sting that you personally lost your job. Regardless of the excuse, I personally need a reason to still watch anything on SyFy because their programming falls into 1 of 2 categories for me. Either its something I don’t want to watch – like reality tv, wrestling, or light and comical science fiction-ish dramedy. Or else I enjoy it and it gets terminated when it starts getting good, as I feel with SGU and Caprica. Where is the incentive for me to watch? If I want serious science fiction that has a chance of sticking around, I need to go elsewhere – like BBC America, or even AMC.
In the end, every excuse in the world really doesn’t matter if they are not selling anything that I am looking to buy. Period.
The problem is that art for art’s sake doesn’t pay bills. As much as I liked the show, and as incredible as it was, if there’s not enough people watching the ads between the show, then there’s nothing funding the show. It’s a stupid model based on popularity, not quality.
I know it doesn’t, but I HATE that it doesn’t. Much like people’s reactions to this open letter: I know that business models are required to fund the production of the show and get it to the people who want to see it, I know there’s rational logic going on, but it doesn’t make me feel any better about the fact that brilliant shows like SGU get cancelled.
Well here’s an Open letter to Cyfy Channel
Take the 8 or so new series your working on for the next season and scrap them all. Now take that money and spend it all on 3 new shows that have the same production values of HBO/SHowtime/AMC/ETC.
Now Don’t even think about all those .1% of people not watching the Alligator turned Private eye series a Big Wigs Nephew mentioned. Get behind something that might actually survive the swamps of Self Hypnotic Retardation and see your viewer base grow.
Its really simple folks, if you want to win like you did with Battlestar Galactica, your gonna have to treat them with the same respect and risk.
Pull your head out of the WWF Armpit and get your head right.
J.P SImplestein
I think Syfy needs to get on board with what their name and channel claims they are. We love science fiction and live our lives enjoying what it inspires. With computers, mobile devices that put Star Trek communicators to shame, we are no longer living a life tied to a television schedule. We watch our shows when we want to. Some of my friends refuse to watch a show until they have four or five shows recorded. Then they do a marathon. This makes selling advertising difficult, I realize but, if they found new ways to create revenue this would not be an issue. They need to pioneer and revolutionize how we watch TV. Stream the shows with shorter commercials and when possible, put advertising in the show. Billboards people drive by in the show or the crew on a spacecraft finding a small case of some food product will get them further than a 3 minute commercial break that we fast forward when we TVO it.
My next point is on quality. Please stop airing shows that are not Science Fiction. I work for a library and see thousands of Science Fiction novels out there. Write a good series and produce it with quality! Why is Syfy losing ratings for good science fiction shows to Chuck, Walking Dead, Fringe, Game of Thrones, etc. I will admit that most of these shows are better than what Syfy produces but again, that is my point. They have been around for nearly 20 years and have yet to become the leader in Science fiction! They need to stop putting out 3rd class shows and produce a first class series again! As for SGU, I loved it. Don’t tell us the show was too dark or on a bad time slot, because Walking Dead is far darker and it got 6,000,000 viewers on its final episode. And as for time slot, we don’t care what time its on, we watch it when we want to. They need to evolve into a station that leads the way in all forms of Science Fiction!
I would suggest there’s a big difference between printing paperbacks and producing TV shows designed to attract the widest (and most profitable) demographic. And anyone who’s followed the literature side of science fiction over the years, knows how much even the print market for sci-fi has stratified into dozens of sub-genres (and fans).
If the ratings got even worse on the new night why didn’t they just move it back to Fridays. Who knows maybe it would have gained momentum. Wonder why they felt the need to put this out there…more backlash than they expected perhaps?
The show sucked, get over it. Between bad casting and a crapy story line, its no wonder it lost ratings and got scraped.
Yes, insult people who liked a show you didn’t. That’s a good way to act on a comments thread.
*eyeroll*
We are strong enought ot take these petty insults.
I liked the show from the beginning although it was a slow start. Then as time went on the show got better and better and then started to become great. Alas it did not get the time. There are several reasons and ratings is one of the main ones but not only one.
Personally, I think that all the negative feed back from the so called fans drove down viewership. If something is screamed loud enough and long enough people begin to listen and beleive it even if they disagree. They think this is something wrong with them if they like it. I know when this series first came out the rabid amount of hate from these fans was over the top in a lot of cases. I remember SYFY defending the show quite strongly. I have always defended the show as well on these types of discussions. I get burned when I suggest that SGA was the weakest of the 3. The villin of the Week does not work for me. I liked some ot the actors better in SGA but over all the show was nto that good in my opinion.
Now that these people got their wish where is all the celebrating? In fact it is just the opposite-The amount of out cry against the cancellation has been growing stronger as the series neared the end. If there had of been more support form the fan base instead of the hate maybe the audience would have grown?
There is also a commitment needed by staff at SYFY. A 2 year 40 episode deal is a VERY MAJOR BIG DEAL in TV Land beleive me I understand. The best example of metwork support I can think of at this moment is SEINFELD. This show too had a small but loyal audience and it took years for it to become a mega-hit!! In fact, only 1 or 2 people beleived enough in this show at NBC that it kept going. Then look how it became the anchor for the entire network. Now I realize that any type of SGU will not appeal to that large of a fan bas-but one never knows!!!!
I am really getting ticked off with shows that NEED to run much longer being shut down. Not just on Sci fi either. Shows that have an “it will all be clear in the end” grand plan cannot be shut down half way thru.
WRITE A G.D. book then PLEASE. Continue it on in book form as a series like star trek did for eternity or just one novel.
Oh, and in no way did SGU suck. It was a very strong concept that had limitless potential. Only the “dark” of the ship made for some less than wow factor visuals, however they could have done more off world stuff.