Is sci fi dieing ?

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Eames said:
The only time I used to see sci fi on tv was when they showed star trek on one of the BBC channels, simply it not being on the BBC anymore would indicate its fallen out of favour with the general public.

I did enjoy the BSG remake briefly until I got bored with it, it was a very different breed of sci fi to trek and more like watching a soap opera set in space.

I don't think the style of sci fi you get in star trek is at all popular anymore and sci fi you get now is more about being a serious drama rather than a fx extravaganza. If you do get shows with lots of fx they're usually aimed at family audiences.

I miss the sci fi of old.
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i thought it was possibly the most intelligent of the sci-fi TV series. much better than the 'just reverse the polarity' you always see in star trek ;)

BBC doesnt have the budgets to get any big sci-fi series. they make their own and most of the suck.
 
But Sci Fi fans are very fickle. On forums such as this if the negative posts outway the positives it will probably be binned.

Its almost the "in" thing to do amongst Sci Fi to slate new stuff and then complain when there isn't new stuff coming on. Its also very badly handled by TV producers.
 
Demoniser said:
Sci Fi has turned into 'Sci Fi lite' in the last few years.

This is why you get shows like Lost, Warehouse 13, Eureka, Grimm, Once Upon a Time, Alcatraz etc. They add just enough sci fi or fantasy elements to entice traditional fans but have enough drama and focus on the characters
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This snip from an above post says all you need to know about Sci-Fi on TV.
 
I fear that the Sci-Fi we have come to love is dead.

The last attempt at a some decent Sci-fi in my mind was Stargate Universe. The first season really didn't pick up until the 2nd half but the 2nd season was some of the best Sci-fi I've watched.

I just can't see the likes of Bab5, TNG, DS9 or BSG being made again while ever the brain dead masses lap up any show that has a celebrity panel sat passing judgement over idiots like they are gods.

Such shows are relatively cheap to make, in return for the huge revenue they generate and make investment in expensive effects laden programmes very unattractive.

I also think that the way TV Shows are aired in the US and the times they are aired at give them no chance at all.
 
Another factor to the downfall of TV scifi is piracy. The majority audience of sci-fi are those that are technology literate, this means they are aware of the ways/means to obtain the latest episodes as soon as they air (not to avoid cost but to avoid the lengthy wait for their region plus the added bonus of lack of adverts). This in turn drops TV viewing figures and advertisement revenue that becomes overshadowed by what’s brought in by the cheap reality TV shows.
 
Well i never watched dr who but i enjoyed primeval the ITV time travel show. I watch the first five seasons when i was off after a operation for a few weeks and i got realy hooked. I bet that didn't cost too much and i think it was fairly popular.
 
The really good ones on TV have always been few and far between and even rarer for an outstanding one to be airing never mind more than one. We got lucky in the 90's is all.

On the movie side i'm a bit disappointed too with the past decade other than a few highlights but maybe it's just us all getting older and the past few decades starting to seem more condensed than they really were.
 
GSXRMovistar said:
Another factor to the downfall of TV scifi is piracy. The majority audience of sci-fi are those that are technology literate, this means they are aware of the ways/means to obtain the latest episodes as soon as they air (not to avoid cost but to avoid the lengthy wait for their region plus the added bonus of lack of adverts). This in turn drops TV viewing figures and advertisement revenue that becomes overshadowed by what’s brought in by the cheap reality TV shows.
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I'd disagree personally, that's only going to account for a small fraction of the viewing base.

What's affecting it, like you've said yourself, is the advertising revenue that the networks make back from buying/producing a series. One of the main causes is diversity because of the large number of television channels since the digital age.

When I was younger, I remember that if you wanted to watch Sci-Fi on Television, you could watch a little bit on terrestrial TV, such as Star Trek the Next Generation on BBC2. However, if you really wanted to watch it properly, you needed Sky 1, so you could watch Star Trek everyday, along with the likes of the X-Files and the numerous other shows that Sky 1 had... things like Earth2, Stargate etc...

These days though, Sky1 doesn't show as much Sci-Fi as it used to do, instead you've got dozens of Channels, many of which aren't BSKYB and so they all bid for shows separately to show on their channel. Many of these have a very small viewer bases. This is the same in the US which is the driving market. So for a show to be shown on a major network, it needs to be slick enough to attract a large audience. Lesser shows end up on smaller channels, or perhaps don't get produced at all, compared to how they may have done in the past.

I think before digital tv, people marvelled at the idea of having channels dedicated to what they loved... the reality is shows aren't getting watched as much and it's just tons of repeats.

I can't be the only one who owns Sky and realises that I've got hundreds of channels of stuff I don't watch.
 
You could be right, however GXSR and yourself have both good points, which if I was an exec could solve in one foul swoop.
Broadcast you episodes, on the internet. I have/do watch series from America when they come out, however I would rather watch them on lets say SyFy webpage if they were released on the same day across the globe, even if it did have adverts.

You could quite easily check the amount of views your video has and then you still have a viewing figure. Charge your advertisers based on downloads. In fact you could virtually do away with it being broadcast at all.
 
GSXRMovistar said:
Another factor to the downfall of TV scifi is piracy. The majority audience of sci-fi are those that are technology literate, this means they are aware of the ways/means to obtain the latest episodes as soon as they air (not to avoid cost but to avoid the lengthy wait for their region plus the added bonus of lack of adverts). This in turn drops TV viewing figures and advertisement revenue that becomes overshadowed by what’s brought in by the cheap reality TV shows.
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I was wondering when some *no insults* would turn up and spout this rubbish. I will say it here and franky. If i didn't download episodes of BSG from the net. They wouldn't have made the £250 off of me on DVD's and Blu-rays that resulted in me seeing this fantastic show. Not to mention a fair bit more money from models and other merchandise.

I also downloaded epsiodes of the new Star Trek TOS withthe new effects, now i have the complete box set coming to me on Blu-ray
 
ChroniC said:
You could be right, however GXSR and yourself have both good points, which if I was an exec could solve in one foul swoop.
Broadcast you episodes, on the internet. I have/do watch series from America when they come out, however I would rather watch them on lets say SyFy webpage if they were released on the same day across the globe, even if it did have adverts.

You could quite easily check the amount of views your video has and then you still have a viewing figure. Charge your advertisers based on downloads. In fact you could virtually do away with it being broadcast at all.
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That model can't work though, as I said in the piracy thread a few weeks back.

Shows that are produced for TV are designed around being sold to different markets around the world.

If it was just sold to one company to broadcast on the internet, it substantially reduces the revenue that can be made from selling it to markets outside of the US.

For example, if ABC have a show in the US that they own and have funded. They would sell that to every other country that was interested around the world.

Here in the UK that could mean a deal for a Sky exclusive, later though Channel 4 could perhaps show it. They are buying these shows based on the revenue stream they can generate from advertising.

Consequentially, if ABC just broadcast the show on their website, you can see how much money they would suddenly loose by not selling the show to foreign markets. This in turn would lead to the number of shows being created reduced.

You also have to remember that while you may be tech savvy, which let's face it, is what pretty much everyone on this forum is, we aren't the audience majority, most people still watch on the TV and that doesn't look set to change anytime soon.
 
Spot on really. Unfortunately all of this digital stuff is still relatively new. People have gotten used to using a tv and remote to watch entertainment. It's as common place as learning to ride a bike or swim and it's became part of peoples daily habits over several decades.

Unfortunately digital distribution just isn't that commonplace. Sure, it's had allot of exposure and has advanced in recent years but it's still in it's infancy. Until being able to watch a streamed video or some such is as easy to do for a non-tech savvy person as flicking on the tv with a remote is then it's just not going to have that big of an impact. It will happen in time but tv is here to stay for a while as the main outlet for entertainment.
 
robgmun said:
I was wondering when some idiot would turn up and spout this rubbish. I will say it here and franky. If i didn't download episodes of BSG from the net. They wouldn't have made the £250 off of me on DVD's and Blu-rays that resulted in me seeing this fantastic show. Not to mention a fair bit more money from models and other merchandise.

I also downloaded epsiodes of the new Star Trek TOS withthe new effects, now i have the complete box set coming to me on Blu-ray
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Unfortunately this isn't what counts, the only thing that matters is how many Americans watch the show (for American Network produced shows) live.

I think Netflix or something like it will have the next big Sci-Fi show.
 
someone really needs to contact peter f hamilton and get the commonwealth saga turned into a series now that would be popular!
 
robgmun said:
If i didn't download episodes of BSG from the net. They wouldn't have made the £250 off of me on DVD's and Blu-rays that resulted in me seeing this fantastic show. Not to mention a fair bit more money from models and other merchandise.

I also downloaded epsiodes of the new Star Trek TOS withthe new effects, now i have the complete box set coming to me on Blu-ray
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With very few exceptions aftersales, merchandise, immediate and even repeated syndication doesn't matter. Shows are picked up and sustained only on the base of very antiquated polling of US viewing figures. The time slot assigned for them has a certain advertising value vs cost of production and minimum viewing figure it needs to maintain.

Unless the show is produced partially by network and pulls over half a mil per piece (like Mad Men - circa $700k) a channel in immediate foreign syndications, nothing else matters. Partially because of equally antiquated calculation that any show needs to air at least 100 episodes to be viable for profitable domestic syndication - ie. never ending reruns on multiple channels that go on for years, like Seinfeld, Frasier, CSI or Friends. You can have 20 national broadcasters in Europe waiting with wallets open for new episodes and the networks in US will still pull the series. In their meeting rooms the only thing that matters is just US viewing numbers and cash flow "here and now". We've seen tens if not hundreds of shows in last decade pulled on the spot without as much as incoherent wrap up while they had tens of foreign syndication deals in place.

And the young student, geek, internaut types are never ever in the signed up, polled audience, so it's always loosing game. Many petitions and hundreds of thousands of emails were often fired into network exec mailboxes by people outraged by shows being cancelled, and it still didn't matter. Polled viewing numbers from regular viewer slice were low, advertisers received the numbers and decided it wasn't worth for them to invest any more and so the show was yanked. There are shows and scripts queued up for years for each slot on TV, all networks need to do is play safe - if in doubt - pull it out.

And we sit here, across the ocean and do wonder, who are the viewers polled for viewing numbers. How come so much rubbish goes on for 10-15 years ands so many brilliant, edgy, new shows are wrecked on the spot mid season. Many, many, many shows that would otherwise succeed sunk like bricks because they were set against big titles in the same time on different channel and lost. Many basic procedural drama shows that none cares about keep on going for years because assigned time slow is a prep - a run in for the main event show - something they keep just to create "crime thursday" and stop fat budwiser drinkers from changing channel to a can laughter "performed in front of live audience" comedy targeting lonely mothers on another channel.
 
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