Originally Posted by Korben Reynolds
Exactly. Nielson has been responsible for a lot of great shows being canceled. Some were even brought back when all the fans Nielson had no idea about got together to get them back.
Exactly. Nielson has been responsible for a lot of great shows being canceled. Some were even brought back when all the fans Nielson had no idea about got together to get them back.
As stated, you can't compare SyFy to major network television. You can't even compare SyFy to many other cable channels. That final number 2.1/0.7 is very solid. Great to see it finish on a high note. Hope it continues into season 2 and we get a quick call for a 3rd season. I think the more Defiance grows the more it has a chance to be a truly great sci-fi universe.
Silly me though Syfy was big in the US and as its viewers are more interested in a specific genre, it would draw a bigger audience? To have a Sci-Fi show on FOX I though, would bring a wider mix but fewer hardcore sci-fi lovers. There off a lower rating?
I saw the first season of Terra Nova, it got better in the end. They had a better budget, and it showed! (Not counting the sad animations in episode 4 or 5 I believe with the ocean creatures…)
My wife, reluctantly saw the last Defiance episode with me, and laughed when Datac entered the "Mayor’s office" before the E-rep came in. -“I can see the poor makeup and the hair that is hidden to raise the hairline.”
A show like that won’t last....
And, now I know the status of SyFy channel in the US. Thx for the info guys and girls
Makeup is makeup. So what? There was a really popular tv show that also had some popular movies based on it (not including the original series) that has similar makeup on a character. No one was fooled by it and said, "wow, that looks real". It was Star Trek: the Next Generation with Data's makeups being very similar to the Castithan's.Silly me though Syfy was big in the US and as its viewers are more interested in a specific genre, it would draw a bigger audience? To have a Sci-Fi show on FOX I though, would bring a wider mix but fewer hardcore sci-fi lovers. There off a lower rating?
I saw the first season of Terra Nova, it got better in the end. They had a better budget, and it showed! (Not counting the sad animations in episode 4 or 5 I believe with the ocean creatures…)
My wife, reluctantly saw the last Defiance episode with me, and laughed when Datac entered the "Mayor’s office" before the E-rep came in. -“I can see the poor makeup and the hair that is hidden to raise the hairline.”
A show like that won’t last....
And, now I know the status of SyFy channel in the US. Thx for the info guys and girls
The thing is there are a few comments here on the forum that indicate some thought the series got weaker and yet I also hear and read and feel myself that the show got stronger towards the end. I think they did a very good job of twisting the characters around so much to where you have a lot of unknowns as to where they will go from here.
The ensemble cast is really good. The story is still a mystery within a mystery and the fact that a lot of people are just frustrated to have to wait so long to find out what will happen means they did something right. When I look at Datak and Stahma, I see the people they are portraying and think they do an exceptional job. Stahma is such a mystery-creepy and far more than shows on the surface. The actress that portrays her was good on Dexter but is amazing in Defiance, right down to her quirky actions and the way she plays people. I also love Datak. He is at times a scared little boy with temper tantrums who doesn't want to be blamed for anything and a schoolyard bully who thinks he's someone more Machiavellian. He cares more about superficial things-looking good, being treated with honor even if he's hated, and not having blood on his hands. He so reminds me of some things I've seen in real life, people that only care about how things look.
The show does a great job of making you think you care about certain characters more than others and then it sort of smashes some of your preconceptions. There aren't really some totally good people or totally bad people, and this is difficult to do well. I've rarely gotten anxious to see what will happen in the next season of a show since I've gotten used to this delayed schedule that all series seem to have now, but I really can't wait to see what happens next.
A lot of shows are just subject to their budgets as far as production values. I understand that. Dr. Who is one show that has at times used cardboard for alien "makeup", and Star Wars' Cantina scene was a lot of people in rubber masks. But good stories with good acting and characters can make up for all that. I think Defiance is doing a great job at that.
Yah SyFy is very small potatoes compared to networks like Fox, though the acting ensemble for Defiance is much better than most major network dramas, tbh and waaaay better than some new sci-fi shows like Under the Dome. As for the effects in Defiance, people don't care about small things like the makeup or rubber faces. Stargate SG1 and Atlantis had cheesy effects and were on television forever. Cancelling Atlantis was one of Syfy's biggest blunders because its ratings were fine. It was only when they went to a more serious, higher budget Stargate Universe that the franchise tanked.Silly me though Syfy was big in the US and as its viewers are more interested in a specific genre, it would draw a bigger audience? To have a Sci-Fi show on FOX I though, would bring a wider mix but fewer hardcore sci-fi lovers. There off a lower rating?
I saw the first season of Terra Nova, it got better in the end. They had a better budget, and it showed! (Not counting the sad animations in episode 4 or 5 I believe with the ocean creatures…)
My wife, reluctantly saw the last Defiance episode with me, and laughed when Datac entered the "Mayor’s office" before the E-rep came in. -“I can see the poor makeup and the hair that is hidden to raise the hairline.”
A show like that won’t last....
And, now I know the status of SyFy channel in the US. Thx for the info guys and girls
edit: Indra Echo seems to have beat me to it.
Additionally, on the subject of high-end special effects: I don't think real sci-fi fans care as long as the story is good. Myself, I enjoy the makeup/rubber mask look as opposed to CGI. The CGI look on nearly every TV show has that uncanny valley effect that always makes it worse than a good prosthetic.
Quite honestly I've seen this claim a lot, don't particularly buy it, and it doesn't matter either way anyway. Fact is, whether you or I think they're crap is wholly and completely irrelevant. What matters is whether advertisers -- and, thus, networks -- think Nielsen ratings are crap or not.
Given that advertisers and networks -- who, by the way, make their living doing this stuff and do presumably know just a little bit about it -- do indeed think Nielsen ratings are useful, and that said ratings can and will make or break a show, Nielsen ratings, whether they're 'crap' or not, very much matter.
The doommongers should get over it. The show will run for three years without trouble. It's Syfy's latest big-name series and things with far weaker ratings have lasted for many years. It will, however, be cancelled before its time, because Syfy do that with pretty much all their fiction series.
Your last point I so much agree with-CGI can be far worse than less than perfect makeup. I tend to really like the "humanity" beneath the makeup and you lose so much of that with CGI. I mean the Bio Man wasn't exactly perfection in blue, nor are the Indogene, but the people underneath that stuff make it work.
It's really freakish what will and won't be popular and what will get cancelled. Quite often really good shows are just not understood by their producers or broadcasters.
Just look at the attention Sharknado is getting. Every major satellite "news" show did a blurb on it this morning. I wouldn't be surprised if Sharknado is a big hit for SyFy. It looks so bad that it actually might be a lot of fun to watch-for the laughs.
Just to reiterate points that I've made before:
Defiance was the highest rated cable drama in its time slot at least once, possibly more; the week that we know it won its slot wasn't even its highest-rated week. That means that in its very first season, it was beating well-established non-science fiction shows on all other cable channels, premium and non-premium. These are very good ratings, especially for science fiction on a cable television channel that isn't even basic cable.
Comcast, SyFy's parent company, is very, very pleased with the ratings Defiance has drawn, and Defiance is not expected to make a profit based on the ads sold during the hour that it airs; the ratings of Defiance increase ad revenue for every other show on SyFy. In justifying an additional $16+ billion investment in NBCUniversal to their shareholders, Comcast used Defiance's ratings as an example to show that their strategy of creating profits by developing innovative new scripted programming rather than filling time with cheap filler was a successful one. In addition, they are also a broadband provider and see the game as providing a synergistic benefit to that part of their business. Two take-aways: The people spending the money on Defiance are very happy with their investment, and they deal with such large amounts of money that $100 million, while not cheap, is not a large investment to them. (NBC, by the way, which does draw broadcast television ratings, more or less, had a big decline in ad revenue. NBC Universal more than made up for it by increases in ad revenue from their cable networks, including SyFy, which generate 9 times as much ad revenue as NBC.)
Some of those lower ratings, especially near the end, came on nights when they were up against big events which you would expect to have an effect on ratings. I would also expect the last ratings to be revised upward once the final final numbers are in. The earlier ones have crept upward as the revised numbers are released.
Warehouse 13 was SyFy's highest rated show, and was scheduled to follow Defiance because they thought Defiance would need help from Warehouse 13 to increase its ratings. However, Defiance is actually getting much higher ratings than Warehouse 13.
I've linked to all the sources before. They're in past posts on the same subject.
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