Farscape rumors poping up again

[John Crichton]

TV Guide has reported that a 4 hour mimiseries is a go and will begin filming in December, so I geuss it's going to happen!!

I really hope they are right. I would love to have some closure. My namesake's (read: handle) fate simply must be known.

 

[CCamfield]

Am I missing something here?

If a show is syndicated does that actually restrict the creation of additional episodes/miniseries? Or, LightPhoenix, did you think that Farscape was actually getting good viewing ratings? Obviously they weren't good enough for the SFC - which is why I'd have seen it as likely that they would license it for syndication if someone was offering them money for it. That seems to be about all they think about these days, after all.

 

[RC Hagy]

I really hope the mini happens... and not on Sci-Fi. Have not turned on that channel since they axed my show.

As to the ratings - If one believed the scuttlebutt that was flying at the time, the ratings went down due to a schedule change.

The conspiratorial reasons for said schedule changes are many... and not really the point of this thread!


Let us hope for some action packed stuff. Especially since we will only have re-runs and DVDs afterwards...

That and it will be another ten to twenty years before we get anything as nearly good as Farscape (so say I)!!!


Hagy

 

[jdavis]

I think a big part of Sci Fi's problem wasn't the ratings, it was the high cost per episode Farscape had (you can nearly make a whole season of Scare Tactics for one episode of Farscape), It went from being the highest rated show Sci Fi ever had to not having the ratings to stay on the air in less than half a season. Heck it still got better ratings than the stuff they replaced it with (Tremors is already cancelled). It was a ratings vs cost decision.

What does that mean for syndication? Well it cost a lot less to show a rerun than a new show, besides Sci Fi doesn't have to give up rights to the show, just exclusive rights (Stargate is syndicated on several channels). I bet if somebody cut a deal with Sci Fi they'd let it show other places, particularly if they could still show it too. Sci Fi's parent company (Vivindi/Universal) was just bought out/merged with NBC too and there are rumors of some shakeups and reorganizations, there could be changes on the way at Sci Fi too.

 

[takyris]

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but my impression was that Stargate, which had the big Showtime following, kind of raised the bar a bit, ratings-wise. Farscape had the same ratings it had always had, but Stargate was generating bigger ratings, and so the SciFi people brilliantly decided that the best thing to do was to axe Farscape.

This served to divide the geeks against each other, with many iterations of "Farscape Sucks, it deserved to die!" and "Stargate blows, RDA is a jerk!" flying back and forth. This irked me greatly, since I like both shows, and it wasn't as though Stargate came in with a chip on its shoulder to knock Farscape down a notch...

Anyway, that was my remembrance of it.

 

[Aaron L]

That's pretty much it. Skiffi had Farscape, and it was the highest rated show they ever had, and was getting bigger (RPG on the way, video game on the way, people were talking about a movie) and then they got Stargate from Showtime. Then they got the brilliant idea that since they had Stargate they could axe Farscape. And a lot of people started protesting, and still are.

Guess they're happy with the leavings of another channel. I personally can't watch Stargate, but I love the movie.


Heck, I was ticked of when the canceled Invisible Man. I-Man rocked.

 

[RC Hagy]

Heck, I was ticked of when the canceled Invisible Man. I-Man rocked.

Dirty bugger... I had blocked out that that show had ever existed!


You bring back the pain from when it was canceled.

If I knew you I would hate you... well, I would not be happy with you.





Hagy

 

[jdavis]

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but my impression was that Stargate, which had the big Showtime following, kind of raised the bar a bit, ratings-wise. Farscape had the same ratings it had always had, but Stargate was generating bigger ratings, and so the SciFi people brilliantly decided that the best thing to do was to axe Farscape.

This served to divide the geeks against each other, with many iterations of "Farscape Sucks, it deserved to die!" and "Stargate blows, RDA is a jerk!" flying back and forth. This irked me greatly, since I like both shows, and it wasn't as though Stargate came in with a chip on its shoulder to knock Farscape down a notch...

Anyway, that was my remembrance of it.

I think a lot of that was on the fan side not the corporate side, although I did read somewhere that Sci Fi only wanted to have one original space show at the time as they are not cheap to make, Stargate was cheaper and it got a little better ratings, Farscape did get a screw job from Sci Fi, they pretty much stopped advertising for it and moved it on the schedule and did a hack job on it not getting good ratings (it's ratings were always pretty good for a Sci Fi show), but as has now come out a year later Vivindi was in serious financial trouble too, episodes of Farscape were not cheap at all, Stargate had a back-library of shows that were only shown on Showtime, which a lot of people don't have. Stargate reruns do good ratings too because many people had never seen them. Sci FI might have some real morons in the programming department but their accountants are pretty slick, heck it looks like the accountants are the programming department.

 

[Umbran]

Sci FI might have some real morons in the programming department but their accountants are pretty slick, heck it looks like the accountants are the programming department.

Well, the channel exists to make a profit, after all. If you want altruistic and artistic programming, go to premium cable, or to PBS. You won't get it on commercial channels.

 

[Viking Bastard]

Heck, I was ticked of when the canceled Invisible Man. I-Man rocked.

I was under the impression that SciFi didn't cancel IM, but there was a fallin'
out between the show's creators or something like that, which resulted in the
stop in prodution.