Sci-Fi Channel finally discusses Farscape’s cancellation

[Acmite]

Zap2it also ran a story--which contains mostly teh same information, but presented in a slightly different way:

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - While there are those legendary tales of shows that have been saved by grassroots campaigns waged by devoted fans to later become hits of their time ("Cagney and Lacey," "Designing Women"), the truth of the matter is more along the lines of "Roswell" and "Once and Again," where series are put on agonizing life support and shuttled from night to night, time slot to time slot, network to network, until no amount of hot sauce in the world can forestall the inevitable pulling of the plug.

Really, the only way to save a show is to get a few million of your closest friends to actually watch it. Bring more eyeballs to the screen for advertisers to bombard with their product spots and you've got a good chance of a pick-up. However, if the network is expending more money producing and marketing a show than they are able to collect in ad revenue, it's going to get cancelled.

No show creator is immune to this basic rule of economics. Not Joss Whedon ("Firefly"). Not David E. Kelley ("girls club"). Not Aaron Sorkin ("Sports Night").

Still, fans continue to fight the good fight.

One of the current objects of devotion is Sci Fi's "Farscape," which will air the last 11 episodes of its fourth and final season starting Friday, Jan. 10 at 8 p.m. ET.

Sci Fi President Bonnie Hammer says that the volume of angry emails from viewers that TV critics have been receiving is only a fraction of what she's seen over the past several months. And although the network always wanted to continue the series into 2003, due to its softening ratings they never felt it was appropriate to continue it into '04 and beyond.

"We love the series; we helped birth the series; it was ours from the get-go, and it wasn't given to us all fully packaged, so it was a very, very difficult decision for Sci Fi," Hammer says. "We loved it. We still do, and we think we have 11 great episodes that you'll be seeing shortly."

Although Sci Fi wanted to send "Farscape" off in style, Hammer says that, try as they might, they were never able to crunch the proper numbers to even fund a half season of 13.

"We wanted to do 13 new episodes of 'Farscape' to end the series the way we felt it should be ended properly, and have the proper finale we would have loved to give it," she asserts. "The bottom line was we couldn't come up with the financial deal that made sense."

"You have a choice: if we had a limitless budget, we could be doing everything we possibly could, but we don't and we had to make a decision."

Long story short, unless a wealthy benefactor and "Farscape" fan steps forward and writes a big check, viewers will have to savor the remaining few original stories and cross their fingers for future DVD sets.

 

[Umbran]

2) There are 360,000-400,000 Tivo users versus 5000-30,000 Neilsen families, which would be a MASSIVE boost to Nelisen statistics.

It'd also be a massively slanted boost to statistics. To base viewing statistics so heavily upon something that the viewer must go out and buy then fails to represent all those who don't have need, want, or spare cash to pay for the Tivo and it's accompanying service.

People gripe about how Neilsen ratings are not representative fo teh true watching patterns of America. Fine, I agree. The solution is not to replace or supplement it with a statistically skewed system.

 

[Mistwell]

It'd also be a massively slanted boost to statistics. To base viewing statistics so heavily upon something that the viewer must go out and buy then fails to represent all those who don't have need, want, or spare cash to pay for the Tivo and it's accompanying service.

People gripe about how Neilsen ratings are not representative fo teh true watching patterns of America. Fine, I agree. The solution is not to replace or supplement it with a statistically skewed system.

Ha. Funny.

Take a step back a moment, and think about what Neilsen measures, and why it measures. It's not about democratically representing all viewers in a fair and even manner. It isn't a vote.

Advertisers do not care what programs people without money watch. If a show got 100% of people without money watching it, and nobody else, it would have very few advertisers, and those advertisers would not be paying as much for the time slots.

The people who can afford to buy Tivos and pay a monthly fee are the exact people advertisers WANT to know about. It's the primary demographic. Those are the very statistics they are trying to purchase from Neilsen! They want to advertise on shows that people who have spare cash watch.

And I am not talking about replacing the Nelisen system, I'm just talking about supplementing it.

Of course, all of this is moot. Nelisen and Tivo are already doing it.

 

[JacktheRabbit]

I can undestand where Sci-Fi is coming from on this.

Basically they have come to the conclusion that the show cannot generate new fans because it is like a soap opera. The story is so long and complex that new people trying to watch will be horribly confused and lose interest.

 

[Mallus]

I can undestand where Sci-Fi is coming from on this.

Basically they have come to the conclusion that the show cannot generate new fans because it is like a soap opera. The story is so long and complex that new people trying to watch will be horribly confused and lose interest.

You mean like that terribly unsuccessful hospital show NBC tried to run a few years back, ER?
[/sarcasm]

Haven't television dramas become more seriel over the past 15 years? What about shows like 24?

 

[Storm Raven]

I can undestand where Sci-Fi is coming from on this.

Basically they have come to the conclusion that the show cannot generate new fans because it is like a soap opera. The story is so long and complex that new people trying to watch will be horribly confused and lose interest.

You mean, it is constucted in a substantially similar way to the show they decided to keep: Stargate: SG1? Now, I like Stargate: SG1, but for them to claim that Farscape has extended storylines and Stargate doesn't (like they do in the interview) is just asinine. Half of each Stargate episode most of the time relies upon some piece of information (or multiple pieces of information) from previous shows.

Basically, based upon their own statements, Sci-Fi's claims are crap, since they don't make sense. They just don't like "space" shows, and want to make the channel into the John Edwards paranormal crap network (something they have effectively stated in the past, before they realized that this would lose them most of their current viewers).

 

[Storm Raven]

You mean like that terribly unsuccessful hospital show NBC tried to run a few years back, ER?

And St. Elsewhere, and Hill Street Blues, and L.A. Law, and The Practice, and Chicago Hope and 24, and so on and so forth.

 

[Fast Learner]

I'm a big fan of science fiction. I've had the SciFi channel for years. I'm an intelligent person. Here's my take:

I did not watch Farscape from the beginning, and every time I tried to watch it I was hopelessly confused. I didn't understand character motivations nor most of the plot. I always wanted to like the show, but simply didn't want to invest in multiple serial episodes to figure things out.

I did not watch Stargate: SG1 from the beginning, but every time I tried to watch there was no more than 5 minutes of material that didn't make sense without context. Yes, I didn't understand who some of the races were and what their goals were, but enjoying each individual story episode rarely depended on that understanding.

I've watched ER on and off for years. I've never had any problem understanding what was happening for two very important reasons: the characters are all human with standard human motivations so figuring things out in context is quite easy, and the episodes are extremely well-written to greatly limit any need to know things about the characters.

Sorry, guys. Farscape seemed like a very cool show, but unless you already dug it, it was very hard to get into.

 

[Whodat]

Well, here’s my take on the whole “Farscape is too complex” issue.

I started watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer around the middle of the third season. For those of you who may not be Buffy or Angel fans – both series are very serialized. Both shows feature large casts. The stories are very character driven, and they shift from character-to-character. The stories feature high-drama in a fantasy-horror setting. Not all of the characters in these shows are human – many are demons, a few are vampires, and some are "human monsters”.

I started watching the show, and I knew it was for me. I didn’t always get the show, but I stuck with it. I talked to people who watched the show, and they explained a few of the character backgrounds.

The same thing happened with Farscape.

Bottom line: I like television that challenges me. That is what drew me to BtVS. That is what drew me to Farscape.

 

[Umbran]

They just don't like "space" shows...

Actually, as far as I can tell, this isn't quite true. Sci Fi likes space shows well enough. But the man who leads the company that owns Sci Fi does not.

Combine this with the fact that John Edwards type shows are outrageously cheap compared to the ratings they bring in, and what do you expect?

We do have to remember that these people are running a business, not an altruisitc forum for artists. They go with what makes money. The ratings on Farscape weren't great, meaning the amount of money they could charge for advertising time during the show wasn't great. So, the show ceased to be profitable.