SyFy cancels Eureka

[Johonebesus]

Yet another fun show cancelled to make more room for wrestling and ghosts and "SyFy Original Movies." What is wrong with these channels that they think the key to success is to make themselves into yet another iteration of TBS or Discovery of a mongrel of both?

I didn't know which source would be best, so here's Reuters:

Syfy Cancels 'Eureka,' After All

[neoolong]

All the channels on cable, and you get 19 shows about pawnshops. It's an actual genre at this point.

Making something original is hard, copying what already "works" is easier. That's what's wrong.

[Kingmaker]

Science fiction is expensive and has a narrow appeal. A camera crew following a group of guys around is cheap and has a much wider appeal. It's even cheaper if they don't travel.

[StarSword]

Yeah, but this is supposed to be a science-fiction and fantasy channel. If I want to watch wrestling, and I don't, I'll go to ESPN or something.

[Temjin]

Well, that sucks. I just recently watched the series up to the first half of season four, and I really enjoyed the series. I'll miss the it.

But at the same, it's getting a five season run. For a speculative fiction series, that's nothing to be ashamed of. The genre is littered with the corpses of shows that never made it that far.

In the end, I think lasting five seasons is an accomplishment by it's self.

[Meest]

Alphas is starting to beat it in the ratings, but still seems like SyFy doesn't want to pay for a scripted show past 5 seasons anymore. Don't get what their execs want, they drop more serious grim dark drama for free good comedy that most other channels do better (most of USA network is like that). Other than cast salary going up not seeing how it's so expensive, they rarely leave their set pieces and the rest is done outside, the CGI is rare and not that crazy.

Not liking the direction network and cable is going, reality tv is so formulaic it's rare for me to be interested in 1 or 2 of that style a season. The show was also making a nice turn towards a serious season arc and it gets plugged, I just don't get it. Ah well as long as pay cable has a nice spread of shows throughout the year I'm slowly moving away from network programming. Just waiting for reality tv to fizzle out or at least take less priority over good scripted entertainment.

[FaxModem1]

A friend of mine, when I complained about Syfy's direction in airing wrestling and reality TV shows, said it was justified in that Syfy was earning itself money so that it could produce quality programming for the network. Well, that would be well and good if they had quality stuff to air, and this just proves that they don't care about that.

[Gaidin]

As a concept Eureka can only do so much. I love the show, but it is pretty repetitive, so I'd like them to end on a high note. And if they've got a final season they can plan as being the last, they can do something exceptionally epic to end the series. As a show, it was never something that could last as long as something like Stargate. It's generally why they handled seasons 3 and 4 as four separate seasons as far as plot and organization.

[TeufelIV]

Sounds like the fate of several good sci-fi shows.

[StarSword]

Sounds like the fate of several good sci-fi shows.

At least they got further than Firefly and Stargate: Universe. The former didn't even manage to finish its first season (making it the most prematurely cancelled show in recent history, IMHO), and the latter was cancelled after Season 2. I didn't even hear about SGU until a month or so before the studio killed it, and the only reason I did hear about it was because they released the season pilots as freebies on iTunes.

[Thanas]

Five seasons is the magic number for syndication and sale to foreign markets.

Few Sci-fi series last that long but the way the Idiot-name channel is going on, it will soon be all wrestling/fantasy and very little sci-fi.

[Block]

Five seasons is the magic number for syndication and sale to foreign markets.

Few Sci-fi series last that long but the way the Idiot-name channel is going on, it will soon be all wrestling/fantasy and very little sci-fi.

I think it'ss be more of a megashark vs octopus channel more than anything else. They love their rediculous made for tv movies. I love that they get old child stars to do them, I mean Jaleel White in a shark attack movie? What could go wrong?

[CaptainChewbacca]

I wrote the director of programming on SyFy asking him to turn over all the made-for-tv-movies to the MST3K guys.

I never heard back.

[TeufelIV]

Eh true if it made it that long that is a decent run.

[EmperorChrostas the Cruel]

The channel is in serious decline.
I guess after the Mansquito, it is all down hill.

[Aufbruch]

Eh, the beginning of the decline for me were the cancellations of MST3K and Farscape. I know Farscape lasted a few years longer than MST3K, but the late 90s really were a kind of golden age for the network.

The last gem they produced was the "Lost Room" mini series, which they turned into an annoyingly self conscious and hyper-hipster Friday the 13th clone.

Hearing that they were planning to air Law and Order SVU reruns was part of what made me decide to shut off my cable--Hell, _History_ channel shows more science fiction than Syfy does these days--its become not so much about "History" so much as it is "stuff that probably never happened"(Conspiracy/Bible crap) interspersed with "stuff that will probably never happen"(Conspiracy/Bible prophecy crap).

I predict that History Channel will eventually follow Siffy's lead and start calling itself "The H" sometime soon.