TMC
2011-09-02 08:07:49 UTC
http://io9.com/5836461/10-actual-mistakes-that-syfy-has-made-over-the-years
1. Canceling Stargate Atlantis.
Stargate Atlantis ran concurrently with Stargate: SG-1 for its first
three years. So there was plenty of precedent for running two Stargate
shows concurrently. And Stargate Atlantis was still scoring pretty
solid ratings when Syfy decided to pull the plug on it and launch
Stargate Universe instead. Continuing Stargate Atlantis after the
launch of Stargate Universe might have kept fans of a lighter Stargate
happy, as well as signaling that the Stargate franchise was merely
growing, not changing direction. Thanks for this idea, Tom!
2. Making Flash Gordon non-space-bound.
This one still makes us scratch our heads. You get to do the rights of
one of space opera's most recognizable characters, who's famous for
flying around on rockets and battling against aliens in space — and
you never put him on a spaceship. Syfy's Flash Gordon reboot involved
Flash stepping through a portal to another world, Mongo, which managed
to be simultaneously ultra-campy and kind of dull. (We nicknamed the
show's villain Ming the Middle-Manager, for his aura of seeming fussy
and dyspeptic, rather than actually bad-ass.) They ditched the cool
part of Flash — the space adventure — in favor of all of the campy,
dated stuff.
3. Abandoning Friday nights as an action-adventure bloc.
Would Battlestar Galactica have maintained its rock-solid ratings if
Syfy had moved it to Tuesdays or Mondays — or would it have suffered
the same fate as Caprica and Stargate Universe? We'll never know. But
BSG had been steady on Friday nights since the beginning of its second
season. In fact, Friday night had become a reliable home for Syfy's
more action-oriented shows, and lately only Haven appears there,
alongside wrestling. (Which might do just as well on another night.)
4. Marcel's Quantum Kitchen
When word first leaked that Syfy was doing a cooking show, we mocked.
It seemed to be pushing Syfy's identity a little too far away from
science fiction — and outside their core competency. And indeed,
Marcel's Quantum Kitchen was a pretty dismal failure, winning just
330,000 viewers for its final episode. (Even if it is cheap to make.)
Syfy has carved out a niche in spooky reality TV like Ghost Hunters
and Destination Truth — shows that I personally will never watch — and
Marcel's Quantum Kitchen was just a few steps too far.
5. Making Caprica a Battlestar prequel instead of a standalone show
Producer Remi Aubuchon came to Universal with a pitch for a new show
about artificial intelligence, robots and the creation of life. And
the studio and/or Syfy encouraged Aubuchon to collaborate with Ronald
D. Moore and David Eick, to turn his idea into a Battlestar Galactica
prequel — instead of launching it as a new venture. In retrospect,
that was clearly a mistake. Everything that was great about Caprica
could have been great as a new show, but the show felt weighed down by
the need to connect up with what we already knew would happen later.
The show was caught in a chokehold of existing mythology from the
first episode — and it was clearly bursting with new ideas that we'd
have loved to see develop further.
6. Not picking up Firefly
Okay, so this one might have an element of wishful thinking. But
around the time that Firefly was getting axed by Fox, there was plenty
of clamor for the Sci-Fi Channel to make a bid to continue Joss
Whedon's masterpiece. There were certainly reports at the time that,
as a 2003 article from the Deseret News puts it, "Firefly was shopped
to other outlets (including the Sci-Fi Channel) but nobody bought it."
Maybe this was never a serious possibility. Maybe it was impossible,
for economic reasons. But the Sci-Fi Channel had picked up Stargate:
SG-1 from Showtime not long earlier.
7. Letting Doctor Who get away.
When Doctor Who came back to life in 2005, Syfy seemed to have mixed
feelings about it. Everybody expected Syfy to pick up the new show,
since after all the channel had launched with classic Doctor Who
repeats in heavy rotation — but Syfy dragged its feet for months, not
airing the Christopher Eccleston episodes until March 2006. The
channel frequently aired Doctor Who in first run with deep cuts to
episodes, and never seemed to have much urgency to air them soon after
their British airings. Finally, Syfy let the show go off to BBC
America, which has propelled it to new ratings heights by treating it
as a major event.
8. Not owning space opera
In the past decade, space opera on television has gone from half a
dozen shows to... none. The 2011 fall TV season in the U.S. won't
include any shows set in space or on a spaceship, on any channel. This
presents a huge opportunity to Syfy, to be the channel that gives you
what you can't get anywhere else. and here's where we mention Syfy's
mistake in cancelling Farscape, as well as the aforementioned mistakes
with Stargate Atlantis and keeping Flash Gordon grounded. Syfy can
reach out to a larger audience that doesn't want to see shows about
starships and pew-pew-pew — and still nurture the audience that seeks
those things out. Those are not contradictory goals.
9. The name change
Actually, this one is still up in the air, because Syfy's strategy
still hasn't played out. Part of the rationale behind creating a new
brand name was the ability to brand new associated Syfy ventures,
including Syfy Kids, Syfy Films and Syfy Games. So far, these ventures
appear to have generated very little heat — but it's early yet. Syfy
Films is supposed to have its first theatrical release in 2012 —
although shouldn't that already be in production at this point? In
other ways, though, we can judge the name change a failure. According
to Proud Creative (PDF), which worked on the brand campaign, the goal
was "retaining the positive associations from the genre of science
fiction, whilst appealing to a broader audience and embracing the
benefits of imagination." And the marketing campaign for Caprica, for
example, seemed to emphasize its appeal to that broader audience,
without much noticeable success. Also, as Wired's GeekDad blog pointed
out recently, Syfy's Mark Stern told io9 in 2009 that the name change
would allow Syfy to greenlight more hard science fiction, because
"hard scifi on the Sci-Fi Channel is almost like this double whammy.
Now that we have a brand that is a little broader ... it also gives us
a lot of freedom to do more hard scifi." (In the same interview, Stern
said the channel was looking at launching a new space opera in 2010 or
2011 — we're still waiting!) So if one goal of the name change was to
free up Syfy to do more hard science fiction, then it clearly hasn't
worked.
10. Canceling Eureka
And finally... this is what started us thinking about this topic.
Eureka wrapped production on its final ever episode yesterday. And
this still seems really arbitrary, for a show that was still going
strong after four seasons. It would be one thing if Eureka was pulling
in Stargate Universe numbers, but it's not. The most recent episode
drew 2.1 million viewers, compared with 2.3 million for Warehouse 13
and just 1.8 million for Alphas. As Geek Dad points out, this follows
a legacy of canceling Farscape and Dresden Files, both of which were
still enjoying decent ratings.
1. Canceling Stargate Atlantis.
Stargate Atlantis ran concurrently with Stargate: SG-1 for its first
three years. So there was plenty of precedent for running two Stargate
shows concurrently. And Stargate Atlantis was still scoring pretty
solid ratings when Syfy decided to pull the plug on it and launch
Stargate Universe instead. Continuing Stargate Atlantis after the
launch of Stargate Universe might have kept fans of a lighter Stargate
happy, as well as signaling that the Stargate franchise was merely
growing, not changing direction. Thanks for this idea, Tom!
2. Making Flash Gordon non-space-bound.
This one still makes us scratch our heads. You get to do the rights of
one of space opera's most recognizable characters, who's famous for
flying around on rockets and battling against aliens in space — and
you never put him on a spaceship. Syfy's Flash Gordon reboot involved
Flash stepping through a portal to another world, Mongo, which managed
to be simultaneously ultra-campy and kind of dull. (We nicknamed the
show's villain Ming the Middle-Manager, for his aura of seeming fussy
and dyspeptic, rather than actually bad-ass.) They ditched the cool
part of Flash — the space adventure — in favor of all of the campy,
dated stuff.
3. Abandoning Friday nights as an action-adventure bloc.
Would Battlestar Galactica have maintained its rock-solid ratings if
Syfy had moved it to Tuesdays or Mondays — or would it have suffered
the same fate as Caprica and Stargate Universe? We'll never know. But
BSG had been steady on Friday nights since the beginning of its second
season. In fact, Friday night had become a reliable home for Syfy's
more action-oriented shows, and lately only Haven appears there,
alongside wrestling. (Which might do just as well on another night.)
4. Marcel's Quantum Kitchen
When word first leaked that Syfy was doing a cooking show, we mocked.
It seemed to be pushing Syfy's identity a little too far away from
science fiction — and outside their core competency. And indeed,
Marcel's Quantum Kitchen was a pretty dismal failure, winning just
330,000 viewers for its final episode. (Even if it is cheap to make.)
Syfy has carved out a niche in spooky reality TV like Ghost Hunters
and Destination Truth — shows that I personally will never watch — and
Marcel's Quantum Kitchen was just a few steps too far.
5. Making Caprica a Battlestar prequel instead of a standalone show
Producer Remi Aubuchon came to Universal with a pitch for a new show
about artificial intelligence, robots and the creation of life. And
the studio and/or Syfy encouraged Aubuchon to collaborate with Ronald
D. Moore and David Eick, to turn his idea into a Battlestar Galactica
prequel — instead of launching it as a new venture. In retrospect,
that was clearly a mistake. Everything that was great about Caprica
could have been great as a new show, but the show felt weighed down by
the need to connect up with what we already knew would happen later.
The show was caught in a chokehold of existing mythology from the
first episode — and it was clearly bursting with new ideas that we'd
have loved to see develop further.
6. Not picking up Firefly
Okay, so this one might have an element of wishful thinking. But
around the time that Firefly was getting axed by Fox, there was plenty
of clamor for the Sci-Fi Channel to make a bid to continue Joss
Whedon's masterpiece. There were certainly reports at the time that,
as a 2003 article from the Deseret News puts it, "Firefly was shopped
to other outlets (including the Sci-Fi Channel) but nobody bought it."
Maybe this was never a serious possibility. Maybe it was impossible,
for economic reasons. But the Sci-Fi Channel had picked up Stargate:
SG-1 from Showtime not long earlier.
7. Letting Doctor Who get away.
When Doctor Who came back to life in 2005, Syfy seemed to have mixed
feelings about it. Everybody expected Syfy to pick up the new show,
since after all the channel had launched with classic Doctor Who
repeats in heavy rotation — but Syfy dragged its feet for months, not
airing the Christopher Eccleston episodes until March 2006. The
channel frequently aired Doctor Who in first run with deep cuts to
episodes, and never seemed to have much urgency to air them soon after
their British airings. Finally, Syfy let the show go off to BBC
America, which has propelled it to new ratings heights by treating it
as a major event.
8. Not owning space opera
In the past decade, space opera on television has gone from half a
dozen shows to... none. The 2011 fall TV season in the U.S. won't
include any shows set in space or on a spaceship, on any channel. This
presents a huge opportunity to Syfy, to be the channel that gives you
what you can't get anywhere else. and here's where we mention Syfy's
mistake in cancelling Farscape, as well as the aforementioned mistakes
with Stargate Atlantis and keeping Flash Gordon grounded. Syfy can
reach out to a larger audience that doesn't want to see shows about
starships and pew-pew-pew — and still nurture the audience that seeks
those things out. Those are not contradictory goals.
9. The name change
Actually, this one is still up in the air, because Syfy's strategy
still hasn't played out. Part of the rationale behind creating a new
brand name was the ability to brand new associated Syfy ventures,
including Syfy Kids, Syfy Films and Syfy Games. So far, these ventures
appear to have generated very little heat — but it's early yet. Syfy
Films is supposed to have its first theatrical release in 2012 —
although shouldn't that already be in production at this point? In
other ways, though, we can judge the name change a failure. According
to Proud Creative (PDF), which worked on the brand campaign, the goal
was "retaining the positive associations from the genre of science
fiction, whilst appealing to a broader audience and embracing the
benefits of imagination." And the marketing campaign for Caprica, for
example, seemed to emphasize its appeal to that broader audience,
without much noticeable success. Also, as Wired's GeekDad blog pointed
out recently, Syfy's Mark Stern told io9 in 2009 that the name change
would allow Syfy to greenlight more hard science fiction, because
"hard scifi on the Sci-Fi Channel is almost like this double whammy.
Now that we have a brand that is a little broader ... it also gives us
a lot of freedom to do more hard scifi." (In the same interview, Stern
said the channel was looking at launching a new space opera in 2010 or
2011 — we're still waiting!) So if one goal of the name change was to
free up Syfy to do more hard science fiction, then it clearly hasn't
worked.
10. Canceling Eureka
And finally... this is what started us thinking about this topic.
Eureka wrapped production on its final ever episode yesterday. And
this still seems really arbitrary, for a show that was still going
strong after four seasons. It would be one thing if Eureka was pulling
in Stargate Universe numbers, but it's not. The most recent episode
drew 2.1 million viewers, compared with 2.3 million for Warehouse 13
and just 1.8 million for Alphas. As Geek Dad points out, this follows
a legacy of canceling Farscape and Dresden Files, both of which were
still enjoying decent ratings.