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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WizarDru" data-source="post: 1301266" data-attributes="member: 151">Oh, I saw Mercy Point, all right.  Not just bad, DOA bad.  Bad medical drama, bad sci-fi...but the actors were young and sexy, so that makes up for it, right?  Not to mention that we'd had hospital drama saturation, by that point.  Between E/R, Chicago Hope had both been running for 7+ years by that point.  All Souls wasn't nearly as bad as Mercy Point, but it still wasn't that strong, from what I've heard.  Placing it directly opposite Angel's time slot wasn't exactly a smart idea, either.  And considering it was brought to you by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0318795/" target="_blank">Stuart Gillard</a>, well....his name isn't exactly synonymous with quality (though he's stumbled into some reasonable work from time to time).  Rod Serling's ghost is holding for you on line one. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  I love B5, but the fact is that it succeeded in spite of Warner Brothers handling of the show, not because of it.  How often did you say advertisements for B5?  Almost never.  How often did it get moved from night to night, to differing time slots?  All the time.  B5 survived based on one important fact: JMS and crew knew how to make a show under-budget.  That allowed them to keep the series afloat, even amidst mixed ratings. That same fact played against the more successful Farscape.  Scifi discovered that they could run a rerun of SG1 or some other shows, and get nearly the same ratings...for far less outlay of money.  Remember, your attention is the product the TV station is selling to the advertisers.  If they have you watching, they don't care about quality, necessarily. One problem is that many SF shows...aren't SF.  They have the trappings of SF, but they're really just zap-gun shows.  I've only seen the pilot and a little of episode 2 of Jake 2.0, but it's basically just a superhero show.  Which is fine...but unfortunately most of SF on television doesn't aspire to anything more.  Jake's 'powers' could just as easily come from a magic thunderbolt, and his enemies might be trying to steal his magic necklace, and it functionally wouldn't be much different.  One of my favorites ST:TOS episodes was based on a script for a WWII series.  They merely changed the word "nazi" to "romulan" and "sub" to "spaceship", and left the script virtually untouched.  Luckily, it was a great script.  Most TV series equate special F/X with and flash with SF.  If it turned out that Joan in "Joan of Arcadia" wasn't talking to God, but to an advanced alien being, what then?  Was "John Doe" SF?  'Alias' or 'La Femme Nikita'?  "Brisco County, Jr.?"  Consider that the original Twilight Zone series still packs a punch, 40 years later.  I watched a few episodes during the recent marathon...and it still bowls you over, with virtually no special effects or flashy visuals.  Take a show like "Jeremiah": virtually no special effects, but it's a solid SF show. "Alien Nation" didn't cost much more than a normal cop drama, and many episodes had virtually no special effects at all.  When it first came out, I ignored it, thinking it was a cheap knock-off show.  When I finally gave it a chance, I was suprised at the depth of the writing, or how they spent an entire season just exploring cultural differences between the characters...and still managed a decent buddy cop show in the mix.  And, like most of the shows already mentioned, it failed.   Since SF shows are generally more expensive, they formulate a greater risk.  Since SF fans are often perceived as fickle, as well, it means fewer shows in general.  Remember, Star Trek: Next Gen was a syndicated program, as was DS9.  And during it's first year, ST:NG's success was, by no means, a given.   I could rant some more....but it's lunch time. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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