Oh, for God sake, why Pat Oswalt?? I absolutely HATE that guy. He is so unfunny, it hurts.

The same thing happened to BSG too. After they left New Caprica the show got slow and people started losing interest. The mutany plot near the end of season 4 was probably the most popular 2 episodes because it was fast-paced with a lot going on.

That’s all these shows need right now. Get everybody up doing something and they’ll be fine.

I do admit that it is moving slowly so far, but I still think the show h as potential. Unfortunately, it’s not off to a fast ratings start, and therefore is probably doomed.

“Btw, I thought I was getting my snacks ready to watch one of my fav shows of all time, THE X-FILES, at 2am and was horrified to see CAPRICA pop up on my tv.”

They do that a lot with the Atlantis re-runs. I try to tune in for those to support the ratings even though I own them on dvd. They make it hard though. I’d be good it Atlantis just came on at 5,6, or 7pm everyday.

I think they do it to try to get you to watch other shows. They show something they think or know people will like and then you get used to the routine and tune in to watch it, boom, another show has taken its place indefinitely. I don’t know how that’s working for them, but it’s their network.

I feel the same way I felt about Caprica a while ago when I saw the pilot. It’s so-so. I’ll give it a couple of more tries, but I really don’t think I’ll be watching it for the rest of the season like LOST. That was good tv.

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I’m surprised. Where’s the Syfy press release saying that Caprica had its second best night in history? I miss a good Syfy press release. I feel deprived.

there are some cultural pieces in there that are fascinating and some political threads but it seems to me that the primary driving plot line of interest will be the religous interpretations and the emergence of the cylon as a race. it will be drama driven with a hell of a lot fewer explosions and it may not be for the BSG fan.

after the pilot (which i watched last year) i was not sure i would be into the series. after last weeks episode i feel that many jumps in the quality of writing are working themselves out.

remember boxy? the writers figure these things out in time. i am concerned that the ratings are so low and they may prematurely impact the natural flow of the story. however, considering RDM’s writing style (which is a bit risky imho) he may need to deviate from the norm and really pull together a three year arch that is very clear.

as opposed to the episodic nature that RDM was used to on ST:TNG (ie. open ended,)begining every episode with the end in mind may not necessairly be a bad thing.

anyhoots – for my nickels worth it is certainly worth entertaining for the first short season.

…don’t get the terrorism stuff at all and how it fits into the overall story, but it’s early I guess. It’s just hard for me to get into a show, whose overall story (Galactica In Name Only) is known to be one huge, Deus Ex Machina mess, full of plot holes and characters that act wayy out of character, as it unfolds. If they hadn’t injected soapy drama into GINO and SGU, I would have been very open to a science fiction drama, if they had written it as it’s own entity, not attached to any pre-existing franchises. I don’t want my space fantasy/action shows turned into dramas or vice versa.

You’re right, to be honest. It still sucks though that a good majority of the shows I enjoy flounder in the ratings, very discouraging.

First: what is the total size of the TV broadcast/cable audience watching the tube on Friday nights now, as opposed to how big it was when the second episode of Battlestar Galactica on SciFi aired (Oct. 25, 2004) — or even, say, when the second episode of The X Files aired (Sept. 17, 1993)? I’ll bet there’s been a big decline, because people have 1) DVRs and other devices with which to record shows for later playback (and skip the ads), and 2) people have better things to do and lots of other choices of things to do, including watching downloaded DVDs, playing video games, and surfing the ‘net, than they did 17 years ago or even 6 years ago. It’s just a fact: the overall TV audience is smaller than it once was, as a percentage of total population. This means shows are fighting for a piece of a smaller pie.

Second, when you’re fighting for a share of a smaller total audience, that changes the way in which you must analyze viewer stats, particularly if you’re comparing current stats to historical stats. To forget that when comparing audiences is stupid if you’re a pro in the TV business because it means you’re thinking like an amateur.

Third, network execs and programmers are no longer willing to give a new program that might be a sleeper hit enough time to prove itself. They want instant success, or they pull the plug. Again, that’s stupid and betrays an amateur outlook: it demonstrates that they don’t understand what it takes to build an audience with staying power, meaning one that will stick with the program through not just the first season but will hang in into the second, and so forth. This is the same short-term mentality that plagues Wall Street, yet another reason why our economy runs upside-down instead of the way it should. Long-term results are what count, but try to tell that to someone who measures performance/ads/stats/whatever on a weekly or daily basis. Network execs and programmers are rabid with this disease.

Third, in judging TV/cable ratings, one must consider whether the network execs/show runners/programmers deliberately sabotaged their own shows by marketing them in such a way as to scare off the target audience (calling Defying Gravity ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ in space is a perfect example of intentionally idiotic marketing: how stupid was that if you wanted sci-fi fans or indie fans to watch?), underpromoting the shows, and/or intentionally dropping them into nonperforming time slots when few people are watching and/or the target audiences aren’t watching. If the network execs or programmers do even one of those things to a new show, they literally guarantee poor ratings (and then feel justified in dumping the show, as if they’d planned all along to do so, which isn’t a stretch to believe if the show is either expensive to produce or syndicated instead of a network product).

If you don’t take all these things into consideration when you look a ratings, you’re missing most of the story anhd can’t make an intelligent assessment. But then, sad to say, that’s not unusual in Hollywood, which isn’t exactly a hotbed of rationality …

They used to have better TV movies on the SyFy channel that now IMO are more like the old badly acted B horror movies of “Attack of the Mushroom People”.

I guess I am interested in how they deal with all the ethical issues in Caprica and I do like several of the actors on the show. Defying Gravity (like Stargate Universe) put me to sleep several times but so far Caprica has kept me very interested and I am looking forward to the next episode.

I really do believe viewer anger is playing a part in lower ratings at Syfy. The channel just seems to be going in the wrong direction to keep me and several of my friends that were soft on their loyalty already have told me they never even look at what is on Syfy anymore. I think when Warehouse 13 returns to original episodes it may help to get a few viewers back but Syfy has lost more than they will ever admit. Wrestling and Ghost shows are taking a toll on the former core viewer loyalty without getting any consistent replacements. Maybe Comcast will see the problem and make a few changes to return the channel to its niche again?

I am enjoying the show so far. I actually think that the pilot was better than the second episode, even though the pilot had a slower pace. I was so impressed that I have watched it probably 5 or 6 times since last April. I can’t understand how some people think it’s boring. I guess it it’s too subtle for some people. Not enough pew pew for everyone. I’m fine without the “‘splody space ships” and all of that.

At least we know that we’ll get at least 20 episodes of this. That’s almost as much as Dollhouse got in TWO seasons. (I also enjoyed Dollhouse quite a lot, and it never had a big audience.) I’ll enjoy Caprica no matter how long it (doesn’t) last!

Everybody tune in – I don’t want this show to get cancelled.

The powers that be at the new “SyFy” channel have made it clear that they are not fans of real science fiction. They want to attract a “younger, hipper” audience. They have made a point at every chance they get to talk about how SGU and Caprica are not like that dorky stuff(the first two Stargate series, Farscape, etc) that made the the old Sci Fi channel successful in the first place. They certainly don’t want their new “edgy” dramas to be confused with Star Trek. So they made these two new shows because they want to be like the cool kids. The problem is, the cool kids still don’t want to watch sci fi and real fans of sci fi have been alienated.

And @ Stan – This is supposed to lead up to the first Cylon War, and I suspect the Tauron mafia storyline is partially a way of showing how Admiral Adama became the man he was in BSG, esp. considering how they already showed an event in his life greatly affected by it.

Personally I’m more into heavy drama and scifi. As a female I don’t care that much about things blowing up and I don’t like graphic sex scenes. I like character development, intense acting, and good storylines. I loved Babylon 5, which compared to today had crappy CGI but shows huge development of the characters over the span of the show.

I think both shows have their merits, but I also think they’re both cynical attempts at cashing in on loyal fanbases.

I just think it’s a shame they keep re-hashing the same material. There’s plenty of character-driven science fiction out there to adapt if they can’t be bothered to come up with something new. Ursula Le Guin’s Hannish novels, say, or the Ender books after “Ender’s Game,” where Ender goes from planet to planet solving problems.

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Good idea, but that will never happen. This is why:

Hammer & co. tricked the creator of 78-79 BSG, Glen A Larson. Larson only agreed to the show, b/c at the time, DeSanto & Singer were producing a faithful continaution. …then, they pulled the old bait-n-switch and called in Moore to do a cheap-o, disrespectful, re-imagination. They did the same thing to LeGuin:

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How the Sci Fi Channel wrecked my books.
By Ursula K. Le Guin

Posted Thursday, Dec. 16, 2004, at 6:14 AM PT

On Tuesday night, the Sci Fi Channel aired its final installment of Legend of Earthsea, the miniseries based—loosely, as it turns out—on my Earthsea books. The books, A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan, which were published more than 30 years ago, are about two young people finding out what their power, their freedom, and their responsibilities are. I don’t know what the film is about. It’s full of scenes from the story, arranged differently, in an entirely different plot, so that they make no sense. My protagonist is Ged, a boy with red-brown skin. In the film, he’s a petulant white kid. Readers who’ve been wondering why I “let them change the story” may find some answers here.

When I sold the rights to Earthsea a few years ago, my contract gave me the standard status of “consultant”—which means whatever the producers want it to mean, almost always little or nothing. My agency could not improve this clause. But the purchasers talked as though they genuinely meant to respect the books and to ask for my input when planning the film. They said they had already secured Philippa Boyens (who co-wrote the scripts for The Lord of the Rings) as principal script writer. The script was, to me, all-important, so Boyens’ presence was the key factor in my decision to sell this group the option to the film rights.

Months went by. By the time the producers got backing from the Sci Fi Channel for a miniseries—and another producer, Robert Halmi Sr., had come aboard—they had lost Boyens. That was a blow. But I had just seen Halmi’s miniseries DreamKeeper, which had a stunning Native American cast, and I hoped that Halmi might include some of those great actors in Earthsea.

http://www.slate.com/id/2111107

“When people complain about the show being too slow, I always imagine that what they really want to say is “Where are all the big ’splodey spaceships”

Did it ever occur to you that these people just think the pace is too slow, or not interesting enough to keep their attention? They should change the title to “Invasion of the Sleepwalkers”. Seriously, this thing is beyond boring.

Nathan had a great suggestion. Next time SyFy wants to create a soft-sci fi series, maybe they should turn to some of the real experts like Ursula Le Guin. She typically doesn’t have any exploding spaceships in her novels, but she also doesn’t put her readers to sleep. Caprica needs exploding spaceships because the story is so lacking. We already know how this story ends.

How about simply that you like stuff that not enough other folks like to make it viable on ad supported television? (not saying that Caprica is not viable, just using your comment as an example).

Why must either you (who would like watching crap) or others (who are unenlightened masses) be wrong in some way?

I think both shows have their merits, but I also think they’re both cynical attempts at cashing in on loyal fanbases.

I just think it’s a shame they keep re-hashing the same material. There’s plenty of character-driven science fiction out there to adapt if they can’t be bothered to come up with something new. Ursula Le Guin’s Hannish novels, say, or the Ender books after “Ender’s Game,” where Ender goes from planet to planet solving problems.

Not sure if that means I like watching crap, or my taste is too enlightened compared to the masses.

Maybe I’m just reading into it too much.

JBF quotes

Fan Excuse Bingo Cards (btw, is that going to be back on the front page in April or so when the renewals and cancels start flowing fast?)

Ratings 101 information

Renewal/Cancel Indexes

Bill Gorman quotes

Robert Seidman quotes

And, perhaps, bobble heads of Bill and Robert?