Since I had avoided the Terminator series when it was first on, I was using the SyFi re-runs to catch it. But after a few shows, I lost interest. I understand it got a little better at the end, but since I stopped watching I won’t miss that it isn’t finished.
I wish SyFy could handle low-rated science fiction shows. There are a lot of fair to decent shows that can’t break into the big time, but which I think deserve an audience. If they can’t make it on the big three, it would be nice if SyFi could pick them up. But that doesn’t seem to be their niche.
I hope Haven can keep going for a while, at least they gave it a 2nd season. Of course, I would have liked to have seen Caprica extended for a while longer; I wish someone could have picked up Flash Forward, as bad as it was, just to see the end.
For a lot of these syfi ideas, I wish american TV was willing to go the BBC route — two seasons of 13 episodes, start to finish, tell your story and move on. Then we wouldn’t be left hanging on all these shows.
Most SyFy shows have very low ratings. BSG spend most of its run kicking at around 2 million viewers, Eureka hits 3, Warehouse 13 about the same. These are numbers that get canceled on most networks and those are SyFy’s hits, their non-hits pull about 1 million.
One of the big differences between BBC TV and American and that American producers are constantly trying to be renewed, so they leave plot elements hanging to get the audience to bug the network. The BBC really pushes for shows to be self contained, and often make decisions about putting a new season (series) out years later, look at Fawtly Towers where the second series was 4 years later. In America if you’re not renewed during “renewal time” it’s over, BBC has no schedule on that so there’s no push to get the decision made during the “window”.