After dropping the editorial hammer on Syfy Channel’s programming decisions over the past two weeks (not once but twice), this past Thursday we gave the network a bit of “equal time” to respond to a myriad of complaints from fans regarding the cancellation of Stargate Universe (story). Craig Engler, a senior executive from the network, emphasized SGU‘s ratings drop during its first season, when it aired on Friday night — suggesting that with fewer than 2 million viewers (Live + 7 Days) it was already in the cancellation danger zone when it headed into its second season.
In a post at his blog, Stargate Universe executive producer Joseph Mallozzi weighed in on the issue and responded directly to several of Engler’s points.
“While I can empathize with fans who object to the abruptness of the cancellation after ten years on the network, one has to understand that television is a business,” Mallozzi began. “If Syfy has alternate scripted programming that performs better on Mondays or Tuesdays in the fall, then it’s understandable why they would choose those shows over a third season of SGU. That said, certain statements in the article had me scratching my head …”
To begin with, Engler compared SGU‘s series premiere ratings to those of Stargate Atlantis, observing that the former was 25 percent lower — evidently starting out the show at something of a disadvantage from its predecessors.
“Comparing the SGA premiere to the SGU premiere is grossly unfair,” Mallozzi said. “First — Atlantis premiered during the summer while Universe — originally slated for a [summer] premiere — premiered in the much more competitive fall. Second, the time between the two premieres has seen a significant increase in DVR usage and Internet downloads, and a simultaneous erosion in live viewership. Coincidence? Maybe, but I don’t think so.”
Stargate Atlantis premiered with over 4 million viewers in July 2004, according to Syfy.
In this case, then, the issue was not so much with Stargate‘s ability to find an audience as with the difference between the summer and fall seasons (Syfy’s highest rated dramas air in the summertime) — and a change in television viewing habits and options since 2004.
“Simply put,” Mallozzi said, “back when Atlantis aired, fewer viewers were recording or downloading television and many more were watching television live.”
He also took exception to Engler’s observation that Tuesdays had been very successful for other Syfy shows, including the top-rated Warehouse 13 — since such shows were summer hits. Stargate premiered in the summer on both Showtime and Syfy for the previous 12 years, with the sole exception of Stargate Atlantis‘s fourth season.
While acknowledging that he wasn’t privy to the final decision-making process, Mallozzi also questioned Engler’s suggestion that it was MGM alone who ended Stargate Atlantis in favor of the new series. “At the time, when we asked the studio whether or not there was any interest on their part in producing a sixth season of Atlantis, I was told that, while the increased budget made a Season Six less attractive for them, there were other reasons to do it (i.e. as a lead-in to the new series),” he said.
“It’s possible that the studio had an eleventh hour change of heart — but I’m not sure why they would have.”
While the producers and the network may not see eye-to-eye on how the show’s fate was sealed, Mallozzi does acknowledge that “television is a business. It’s unfair to expect the network to pick up a third season of a show if it doesn’t make financial sense to them. But it’s equally unfair to make a case for cancellation by comparing SGU‘s performance unfavorably to shows that had the benefit of airing in the summer or were less impacted by downloads and DVR usage.”
Great artical Dazza, RIP Stargate.
I do like the way Joe Mallozi pulls not puncheshes.
I wonder if we will get a reply from the studios, as Joe as just basically called them a bunch of lieers,especially on the issue of Syfy paying for two season upfront. Which Joe said they did not.
I’m curious if Craig saw this coming… I doubt he did, but this just hurts the Syfy pr even more. Wow. At least we got conformation from Joe Mallozzi that we aren’t crazy and that, in fact, it is Syfy who is crazy. I also find it interesting that he is the only Stargate producer that is still doing posts for the fans. I would have thought Brad Wright or Robert Cooper would have brought done an interview about it. Brad didn’t even want to tell fans where he intended to take the shows/movies.
i hate it when mom and dad fight.
The “but no one used DVR when SGA aired” thing doesn’t work here because the Syfy guy quoted live + 7 ratings.
I can`t help wondering… If i got this rigth, doesn`t MGM own Stargate? And do they not care if the planned storyline of the movies/series are told to the public? In that case, all hope for more stargate is now gone forever.
@Jedi_Master You have also got to remember the erosion in conventional TV viewership overall. Less people are watching less live or even DVR’d content; especially SciFi fans. More of us have gone to getting it on iTunes. I personally have not lived in the US for over three years (Japan) but that is where I get mine. I could just torrent it but I prefer to support the show so I purchased the season pass. I am what you would call a cable cutter but I spend more on television content then most people that do have cable. This is… Read more »
@Wraithkelso
Yeah JM will probably get some crap for responding to some of the unfair BS points, but I respect him for doing so.
So again someone is only blaming outside influences for SGU’s demise. He is not even considering, that SGU itself may not have been perfect. That some people simply didn’t watch it, because they didn’t like it. It is quite simple. Brad Wright was wrong, when he said this: http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/entertainment_tv/2009/11/stargate-universe-syfy-.html “…fortunately there are enough viewers and reviewers who think ‘SGU’ is neither boring, poorly plotted, or sexist to keep us on the air long after ‘V’ is just a letter in the alphabet again.” There weren’t “enough viewers”, who thought that SGU was worth watching. The ratings went down dramatically in… Read more »
downloads stay everywhere the same cause people who dont have the channel and so on will always download series cause they dont care to wait years when they got to see it on there tv channels and tbh there is no quarente that they get to see these tv shows on there tv channels to they really need to find new ways to show people scifi genre and dont tepend only whats coing on in us SYFY channel does not have the audiance to have great raitings for any show and that is a fact if you all look the… Read more »
@ Lee_Machine
Here is a statistic: “Time spent per day watching TV 1988 – 2009”.
http://www.frankwbaker.com/mediause.htm
It seems people are watching more TV today than in the past.
It’s true season 1 and even a couple in the beginning of season 2 were not the best moments in SciFi. No where near the worst, but not the best. Sometime it takes a show a season or two to get into the groove. Use Fringe as an example. Season 1 was ok, very x-files clone, but season two get MUCH better in the latter half, and then this past season 3 was just some of the greatest SciFi ever! See Fox learned their lesson from the whole Firefly debacle. So they let the show grow, and now it’s one… Read more »
Yeah, but the US population has also dramatically increased. In 1988 it was 244,498,982, and in 2011, it is 311,363,364. Taking the number of TV owners and the change into consideration in 1988, 241,809,498 owned TV’s, and in 2011 301,088,372 own TV’s. With a difference of 59,278,874 TV’s. Not all of these TV’s have cable therefore access the the SyFy channel. Also, American housewives are not the typical demographic for Stargate. Thanks for the link though. Tom Merritt was talking about the drop of TV owners is his podcast Frame Rate. It’s attributed to new college kids and younger people… Read more »
I like season 1 and 2 of SG1. They are much more entertaining than SGU. And they obviously were also more successful. Otherwise season 3-10 and the two SG1 movies wouldn’t exist.
I still say it’s unfair, 2 full seasons is plenty of time to give a brand new show its footing, they should of decided after the end of season 2 whether or not to cancel.. Technically they gave SG:U 1.5 seasons, thats no where near enough IMHO
Men, teens and children are also watching more TV now! And look just at the last few years. There is a quite steady rise since 2003. People aren’t abandoning their TVs like Mallozzi said.
And by the way a bigger population means more potential viewers. So if there were more people living in the USA during SGU’s airing than in the years before, it should have been easier for SGU to get more viewers than SGA/SG1.
Thanks for telling it as it is, Joe, and not making up excuses like Syfy.
As much as I hate SyFy right now – and not just for cancelling some damn good shows but that certainly is a factor – lets not forget the real menace that cause SGU’s downfall; the infamous and outdated Nelsen’s Ratings! In this day and age of recorded tv shows, time delayed viewing and interenet sharing – no matter how illegal – these ratings don’t matter and its STUPID. We can attack SyFy all we like but we’re never going to see any progress until the Nelsen Rating system is overhauled for the modern age or done away with completely.… Read more »
*sigh*
As much as I respect Joe M, he is making excuses. The show had the viewers in the beginning, people gave it a shot, they dropped the show. It basically implies that Syfy did their job promoting the show since it debuted with very good numbers. It is up to the show to keep those viewers.
I wonder if Netflix could do anything for SGU or Stargate in general. http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20062943-93.html
Just when genre shows started to get funded better and the technology cheaper, along come cable companies and the DVR. While scratching my head at how ‘free television’ costs me $120/mo, the last thing I want to do is give anyone the satisfaction of actually ‘watching’ a commercial, which was supposed to be the activity that paid for the free TV … and my trusty DVR lets me do just that. Except advertisers are bailing, so scripted TV is dying, and we now have Snookie (which, while I don’t claim to be a biblical scholar, I’m pretty sure is one… Read more »
@Jedi_Master_Bra’tac First thing,nowdays even +7 doesn’t mean much and second,you forget downloading that he JM mentioned. In the end SyFy’s been caught with their pants down once again,but that’s just another trivial thing among many..after all SyFy has become just a trivial phenomenon by now.And that ultimately is a sad part,sad thing. The fact is that SF fans don’t have a tv channel oriented and focused on them and content they like anymore. And it IS every channel’s legitimate right to do what they think is best for their business,regardless of their decision being right,or completely wrong.But still a decent… Read more »
@Lee_Machine I registered simply to put forth my utter disbelief that you actually would suggest a major television network use the number of ILLEGAL torrent downloads as a ratings indicator. They make absolutely no matter from torrent downloads. Also, more people are watching television live today than they did 5, 10, 20 years ago. As well, the numbers quoted by Craig Englar were Live + 7. I can only see one point you made as valid, but iTunes sales in the world of television make so little difference that it probably wasn’t worth mentioning them. I loved SGU. Upon hearing… Read more »
@psw Yeah people maybe watching more tv nowdays,but you forget one “small” fact that was Joe’s point in the first place and that you definitely should be aware of if you live in the US…they watch tv on their own terms,in their own time of their choosing. They most definitely sit less live in front of their tv sets waiting for their favorite tv show to begin. I mean that kind of behaviour started dying out with VHS 30 years ago and by now it’s almost non-existant. Joe is absolutely right,the media world is rapidly changing and has already changed… Read more »
@AsFarAsLarry LOL,man!!!!
Mallozi can redirect the blame all he wants, the show lost 1.8 million viewers overall. Those people were interested and wanted the show to be good but gave up when they realized it wasn’t. After the first half of season one, the production knew they had to make changes but was too late when they finally did. They thought they were golden only to be brought down by their arrogance.
Yeah they did do a great job of promoting the first season, but correct me if I’m wrong but most of the second season’s promoting was kind of poor. I saw that they were mainly putting the season 2 trailers during airings of SGU, SG-1, and SGA. Then there were a few other channels at really random times and most of the times I know they were reruns. So season 2 really didn’t get the promotion that it deserved.
At the time they decided to write off SGU,it stil had around 2 mil viewers on average,Engler’s words. So yeah,later on they did lose viewers,only the answer to the question why that happened is not quite as simple as some people think. Maybe the SyFy’s decision to write off SGA and then later on to write off SGU played a “little” role in the theater of losing viewers?(mishandling of the show on every possible level) The writing is on the wall,they aren’t even trying to hide it,come on! And the first half of season one is too late!?Yeah right! And… Read more »
SyFy have resorted to banning international fans from posting comments on their wall.. Talk about crapping on a fan base!
Loved the show, and bet more would have as well with the summer slot…but none of that matters anymore
Theres a lot of talk and people campaigning to Netflix to pick up SG:U, apparently they’re creating their own original shows.. I say iTunes should, they have the biggest consumer base, fully international.. Why not have their own original shows? They have Apple TV ffs :)
Exactly,they did lose viewers,but the answer to the question why that happened is not quite as simple as some people think. Also at the time they’d already decided to write SGU off,it still had solid numbers,so maybe the decision to write off Atlantis and then later on SGU too,after giving it only half a season chance,come on!Doesn’t that tell a different story,or to be more precise tells a story about reason for cancelations in a different order!?Like channel’s decision to write those shows off and subsequent mishandling of everything SF,after it’d changed name playing some role in losing viewers? In… Read more »
The problem is SyFy is still acting like its 2005 and if they keep on doing this more shows will get canceled. V and No Ordinary Family were both canceled as well and No Ordinary Family was one of the highest rated genre shows, even though it didn’t get great ratings. As far as getting SGU picked up by like Netflix, there’s a problem. If you look on the Internet there’s like 10 different “save SGU campaigns” there’s no unity among the save SGU groups. There needs to be unity for this to work, and the “haters” need to tone… Read more »
Mallozzi is basically saying the franchise is dead…all the dumping of story lines and conclusions they held so close have been released…So to get our Gate fix we may have to resort to paperback…but I can not make any sense of what is out there…many books written by many authors with no apparent continuity beyond “Stargate Characters” Darren maybe you guys could shift a little focus to the literary side while we sit in the emptiness between galaxies…I for one would like to see a serialized official novel to finish things out…
Syfy need to stop lying to fans and just admit the obvious truth:
It’s a lot easier to make money peddling brainless shows like wrestling and vampire/ghost/comic shows rather intelligent science-rooted Sci-fi shows like Stargate, Farscape, Caprica, Star Trek etc.
It’s the brainless who spend their lives sat in front of a TV and NBC saw it as obvious that they could make more cash by having yet another channel for the brainless.
Just boycott syfy
I already have boycotted SyFy…I have not watched a single show since the last SGU…I also deleted WH13, Eureka and Sanctuary from my DVR…now I will never be tempted to get drawn into a show they offer…
So now anyone who didn’t appreciate the awesomeness of SGU is brainless!. Can we add that to the growing list of excuses. DVR usage hasn’t changed that much since SGA aired and downloading has always been high, but yet SGA still managed to obtain higher ratings than SGU. Viewers tend to watch their favourite shows live if they can and DVR the ones that they don’t like as much. SGU wasn’t even achieving high DRV numbers towards the end, so why did so many stop watching. Why did over 1 million viewers who had tuned into SGU on a friday… Read more »
While I love SGU and am upset over the cancellation, I’m certainly not going to let that impede my enjoyment of SyFy shows I already watch like Eureka and Warehouse 13. I CAN, however, make a pact with myself to no longer watch any new programs on SyFy.
Nielsen avoids choosing people whom only watch tv online and via dvr..so the people they base their statistics off of are not people whom dvr everything and download everything else…ergo, there’s no basis whatsoever in the idea that the estimated number of viewers has dropped because of these factors. The share points, perhaps, but not the estimated number of viewers. Those are determined by people whom are parked in front of the tv most of the time during prime-time television. Why? Because these are the factors that matter to the advertising game that is the reason for ratings to exist.… Read more »
Gateworld is a great place, or used to be before SGU. There are some great articles from when SGU was in development and then promoted. They even acknowledge that SyFy never did that level of promotion for any previous SG. Yet each article also has comments that question the premise of the show. It seams many viewers knew it will not work. I remember some Syfy exec something saying that SG needs to grow up. He was referring to BSG. Than BW said that BSG was serious TV, SGU will also be serious TV. It was obvious they were turning… Read more »
Agree with everthing he said there. How can these networks seriously expect to get the viewership they got ten years ago? It’s not going to happen!
Why is it the same 3 people commenting over and over how much the rest of us didn’t like SGU..or that we are calling them morons? I like all three shows, own all the DVD’s and Movies…Now we have nothing…IF SGU was carried in the same time slots/Season (IE Summer) as SG-1 AND SGA and did not carry the numbers then maybe I might except your hypothesis that I was a minority in liking the show…but since it was not, and will not be…your constant page length editorial on how much it stunk will remain a theory with no basis… Read more »
I’m not angry for SGU cancel, but for destroying SG franchise, it was very emotional afte watchingr10 years SG-1 and 5 years SGA. I was true fan, i always was watching Stargate in TV, bought every DVD edition, and what i got from you? The End of SGU which was not properly finished. You should finish it with mini TV movie – it’s the only thing that you can do to give viewers some respect after so many years. http://facebook.com/savesgu
@ForceGhost Why? They are fans just like you and I, but cannot get the show any other way. If there was a legal convenient option most of them would go that route, but they cannot. So put the show up at MGM.com and charge for it. Don’t put up geographical borders for who can and cannot pay/watch it. Are you a Dr Who fan? How did you get the newest Dr Who before they started airing it on BBC America the same day as BBC in England? Just because they are getting it via torrents does not mean they are… Read more »
What I’m noticing the SGU haters fail to recognize is that SGA and SG1 always were SUMMER show and did great in the summer. Then Syfy took SGU, which as Mallozzi pointed out was originally slated to be a SUMMER premiere, where there is much LESS COMPETITION, and they decided to be experimental and premiere a Brand New series in the FALL, where it had much MORE COMPETITION on the BIG networks.
“television viewing habits” might change over time but when a good show that people like is on, they do watch it live.
Something ppl must remember is … SyFy dos not get money from Hulu, iTunes or illegal downloads. However, I do agree SyFy did not. Consider the move from summer to fall hurt stargate universe. That was a bad choice.
Hello again everyone. I haven’t posted in a while because I’ve been reading posts, and there certainly have been many of them lately. :D I have seen quite a few new posters on here so it’s time I resurrected some links I had posted months ago regarding (sigh) Nielsen ratings. Many people continue to believe that Nielsen ratings are truly representative of ACTUAL viewership and that the ratings clearly and ACCURATELY show that SGU didn’t have a large enough viewer base, in the US, to support it. I believe this to be patently wrong. Here’s why: In 1950 Nielsen Media… Read more »
@Duneknight not if they either A) don’t own a tv at all, B) on;y use their tv for video games and dvds (no cable hook up), or C) the noght doesn’t work for them, I for instance never have classes on fridays and have all day to watch tv, but Tuesday and Monday nights don’t work for me as good during the main school year.