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Message: <blockquote data-quote="LightPhoenix" data-source="post: 1243463" data-attributes="member: 115">And that stuff definitely has it's place, as much as many people would hate to deny it.  It's easy profit for a station. The whole reality TV thing didn't happen out of a need for profit though.  The writer's strike some odd years ago left a lot of stations without programming of any kind, so pretty much any amateur writer could come in and pitch a show.  The reality TV idea, borrowed from Britain, happened to stick and stick hard, which was an unexpected benefit for the stations.  That's why there was the proliferation of them several years back. The actual problem is the Neilsen Ratings System, which has destroyed modern television by stifling all sorts of creativity.  Which is why we see many of the good shows on HBO or Showtime - because they're less willing to put stock in the ratings. Beyond that moot argument though, take a look at some of the ratings from SFC during Farscape's run.  It was repeatedly one of their top ten shows, and often times in their top five.  It was obviously an advertising giant, especially on their Friday night lineup.  No, it wasn't as good as Stargate ratings wise, but it consistantly got over a 1.0 rating, which is exceptional for most shows on a station of SFC's size. What went wrong?  Well, I'll argue it wasn't the writing, nor the inclusion of the characters Jool and Sikozu.  Mostly this is because I believe the writers did a better job handling characters who I suspect were added at the behest of SFC... especially Jool. That leaves two things - the network and the costs.  The latter shouldn't have been a problem given the profits that John Edwards and Scare Tactics and all that were pulling in.  Picking up Stargate probably wasn't much of a strain on their budget, since it was doing so well in the ratings.  Even Farscape proved that they could write good stories with a lesser budget - just look at the episodes where they were on Earth.  So I don't buy the idea that the cost of the show was really a problem. So the network.  And I've said this before, and I'll say it again.  There was almost no advertising of the show going into the fourth season.  Instead, they chose to focus everything on Stargate.  Was that a bad move?  I don't know how spreading out their advertising would have affected things.  I suspect though that putting a little money into advertising Farscape and some of their other big shows (Babylon 5 comes to mind) would have helped out their ratings "problem" a good deal.  Well, that and not wasting shows by showing them at midnight and nine in the morning, respectively. I chalk it up to the fact that the advertising department isn't getting enough money, or is getting orders to blatantly ignore things.  I also think that the people in charge of programming just aren't trying at this point - there's no reason not to be showing Farscape and Babylon 5, among others, at a reasonable time in the afternoon (between 5-8 PM) where they might help bolster evening ratings by acting as lead-ins.  They wouldn't be losing any money that way at the very least. All of this is in my opinion, of course.  Except the origins of reality TV, you can trace that directly back to the writer's strike.</blockquote>

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