In what looks to be a cost-cutting decision, NBC has decided to air Day One – a sci-fi drama from Heroes scribe Jesse Alexander – Read the full post.
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Take a look at all the top grossing movies — they all have at least a touch of sci-fi. If the genre isn’t working on TV, perhaps it’s the quality, development or promotion of the programming not the overall genre.
I don’t think it’s a fear of sci-fi in particular, because there’s plenty of precedent for sci-fi providing networks with a consistent audience – TNG, SG-1, The X-Files, heck, even Andromeda had decent ratings. I think what’s happening is that program directors are becoming obsessed with making every show appeal to every viewer, with the theory being that this will lead to higher ratings in general but the result being a lot of diluted, half-baked crap that no one’s really happy with, and a few rare successes that the networks then spin off to death. I think networks these days are scared of distinct genres in general, especially with the success of a few key mixed-genre shows. House is not a pure medical drama, which is probably why it draws viewers who wouldn’t watch stuff like ER. NCIS and Bones are not pure procedurals, and they top the ratings on a regular basis.
The fact that writer Jesse Alexander has worked on Heroes may be a clue to why this particular project was axed. That show’s been seeing a steady decline in viewers, so it would make sense for NBC to consider Alexander’s project a bigger risk than the average new series.
It was the same with LOST, for many years they fiercely denied there was any scifi connection. When the audience was firmly established, they finally began to get into the meat of the story, the whys, and scifi elements like time travel turned out be a part of that. So why did they deny it for so long? There seems to be a huge stigma against the word, and network executives are afraid, at least in the early life of a show, to have the word mentioned in connection with their new show. I personally enjoy the genre, many scifi-tinged shows have more character depth than the silly prime-time soaps.
Fringe is showing a double digit drop in ratings because it was moved to Thursday against two incredibly popular shows. There is only a finite TV audience and they watch a lot of the same shows, so you move Fringe against a more popular show, guess which one they are going to pick?
Sloppy, sloppy logic to think genre is hte reason a show dropped in ratings.
The problem isn’t with the concept of scifi itself; the problem is networks sticking with lousy shows like “Dollhouse”. We all know TV execs aren’t the brightest bulbs around, so they see one show do poorly and assume the whole genre will. Other part of the problem is they don’t stick with quality series with promise and let them develop (how long did it take Seinfeld to generate great ratings?)
NETWORKS DO NOT REALIZE THAT SCI FI TAKES A WHILE TO GET AN AUDANCE. NBC CANCELLED STAR TREK AND THEN IT WENT ON TO BE MULTI BILLION DOLLAR FANCHIES!
One word: MOONLIGHT.
The networks don’t know how to handle sci-fi shows, at least NBC tries…
I agree with bhm1304, I’ve all but replaced my regular shows with cable ones.
They are “afraid” of sci-fi? And vampire shows are so popular because, what? Vampire are real???