Who Killed Galactica....

[Titon]

This comes from the old Kobal files concerning who really "Killed Galactica". I know alot of the original series fans have read this article but for those fans of the new series that have not read this, take a peak at just how grand the original series was. I know there's been alot of talk on how cheesy some think the TOS was but in all honesty it was widely though of differently in 1979 by millions of people. I'm one of those millions that watched in awe as this epic series came to life and i'm one still remembers it for what it was. Battlestar Galactica. Enjoy.

Who Killed Galactica?
by William Adams

Battlestar Galactica was not a failure. By every method used to measure television it was a success, perhaps even the strongest new show of the 78-79 season. The average rating for a successful new series is 18. Battlestar, at 20.4, was a full five million viewers above that average and one of the top 25 series on television. It was the sixth highest rated new series for the entire season, and before ABC began fooling with the show, it was pulling ratings of 22 and 23, high enough to make it one of the top 15 series on TV. As for the audience shares, for a successful new series the average is 28. Battlestar, at 32, was again well above the norm.

[The demographics are] broken into five major divisions: Women 18-49, Men 18-49, Teenagers, Children, and over 50s. Galactica placed in the top ten with three of the groups and in the top 20 for a fourth. Only a handful of programs can match those demographics and all of them are still on.

Its competition was the strongest on television, with both CBS and NBC stacking their schedules against it. The night itself was only a moderate success. ABC hadn't done any better than second place for years. The leadin, The Hardy Boys, had an average rating of 13 and the program that followed Battlestar was a movie where the ratings depended on what was showing. None of the requirements needed to break 23 was present. In fact, Battlestar shouldn't have broken 20. Yet it did, and when the competition was just another new series, it broke 24. Its ratings were so high CBS panicked, booted Mary Tyler Moore out and rearranged their entire schedule less than one month into the season. They took four of their five top series and formed a wall against Galactica. NBC didn't have enough strong series to move, so they countered with their best movies, biggest miniseries and most publicized specials. NBC lost. CBS won, barely. Battlestar's ratings declined two points to fluctuate between 21 and 23, still within the top 15 shows on TV.

Battlestar did not cost ABC a million dollars an episode. According to Variety the price was more like $750,000, for which ABC bought the rights to show each episode twice (and you were wondering why such a failure reran all summer.) That was the same per hour fee ABC was paying for one showing only of the lower rated Monday Night Football and most of their Hollywood movies.

Universal Studios probably was paying a million dollars an episode, but it's not unusual for a producer to lose money. On a series like Charlie's Angels the producers were losing between one and five million dollars a year. A producer makes money by owning a series that runs long enough to go into syndicated reruns. Once that happens, the rental fees make up for the original losses. Yet, in spite of a first season cancellation and a $250,000 per episode loss, Univeral was happy. The release of Battlestar's motion picture version had already paid for all production. The money from ABC was profit.

As far as Universal was concerned, Battlestar was a financial miracle. Even ABC, despite rumors to the contrary, did not lose money on the series. According to figures from Advertising Age, A.C. Nielson, and Variety, after all fees had been paid, ABC still netted over 15 million dollars, and no matter how they pad the accounts, that still comes out to several million in pure profit.

Battlestar did not plunge down the ratings ladder. I'm well aware ABC can show a 14 point drop. It's done by carefully selecting the highest and lowest weekly figures. But, if that's how a plunge is figured, Alice, All in the Family, Fantasy Island, Happy Days, and a dozen other shows beat the Galactica to the bottom and lived to tell about it.

So why was Battlestar Galactica cancelled? In short, ABC didn't want it. The series was too expensive, so ABC killed it. That's not sour grapes, that's the conclusion of a controversial study conducted at Ball State University in Indiana.

"Hard core" SF can not produce enough profit to satisfy the networks even though the networks would love to have the SF community among their viewers. That's why we get an endless line of programming like Mr. Merlin and The Incredible Hulk, which are relatively cheap to make, but not one hard core SF series since Star Trek has been allowed to stay on. Because advertising rates are based on cost per-thousand viewers rather than cost of production, the average Galactica-like series needs ratings over 30 just to produce the same profits Real People will make with 19.

ABC, at the time the richest of the three, went with Battlestar, but only as a three-part miniseries. Unfortunately for them, once word got out, public reaction was so strong the network was forced to change its plans and order a full-fledged weekly series, but there was no intention of letting it succeed. ABC began by hyping the show. That means instead of buying ads, they got papers to give them free space under the heading of news.

No series in the history of television had ever been so hyped. In one three-week period it was the cover story for Newsweek, People, US, TV Guide, and almost all of the "TV Weeklies" published in local newspapers. During the same period it was a major part of Time and even the Smithsonian magazine did a special section on how it was being filmed. Everyone in the country thought they knew all about the series. Rumors were rampant. One SF magazine finally flew an editor to Canada just to view the actual film and hopefully find out what was really going on. Such massive hyping guaranteed two things. First of all, a huge opening audience, and secondly, an audience loss. For Dallas the loss between the "who shot J.R." episode and the next week was over 15 million viewers. Such a loss is expected. No series has ever been able to maintain a hyped rating. Yet in the case of Battlestar, which dropped from a rating of 28 to 25, or a loss of about nine million people, ABC claimed a decline proved the show couldn't hold an audience.

So you see folks, as much as alot of people have stated to the contrary, Galactica was a spectacular hit and ABC did indeed truely kill Galactica for no reason. With those ratings in today's world this would be a runaway hit unseen in television since ER hit the air. The truely sad thing is Scifi seemingly has done the same thing, hyped Galactica and spent a TON of money on advertising it. Will this eventually succeed in giving the new series the same fate?

[braxiss]

thanks don, i had heard alot of this, but it was nice to have a chance to see it

[Gemini1999]

Don -

Thanks for that interesting bit of history! I've never read that article, but of course read bits and pieces as to how our Battlestar "bit the dust". It was gratifying to hear the entire story for a change. I've heard lots of people since say that BSG was merely a mediocre show with mediocre ratings. I do remember seeing BSG on the covers of every major magazine from People to Newsweek. Everyone was talking about it before it even aired.

BSG was a cultural phenomonon even though the show only lasted one year - To be sure, it was riding on the coattails of Star Wars, but so was every SciFi television show and movie for the next couple of years. What Star Wars and BSG showed to the studios was that there was a marketable audience for science fiction, too bad in the end, that ABC felt that it wasn't the show they wanted spearheading their network.

I'll tell you something, BSG isn't the first successful TV show that was cancelled because the network didn't want to carry it. Shows such as The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction, Green Acres and Gilligan's Island were some of CBS's most successful shows during the 60's. Even thought they greenlighted these shows and were pleased with the ratings, they were loathe to think that these "low rent" comedies were the shows that people associated with CBS - hence their cancellation despite strong ratings.

*sigh* - I'll never understand Hollywood.....

Best regards,
Bryan
________
Easy Vape Bowl

[Titon]

No problem guys.

Bryan, you can look no further than CBS themselves just recently and even the Scifi channel. CBS canceled one of it's BIGGEST new hit's in The Fugitive. That show was getting ER ratings and for some reason they just cancelled it. Scifi cancelled it's only hit in Farscape. Expense always seems to be the scapegoat in hollywood but i think it's just that. Something that the studios use to justify them getting rid of a show or production because they just can. TV comes down to one thing, ego's. If you rub my back i'll rub yours. Now matter how good something is Hollywood is always out to try and prove that WE as consumers don't matter as much as you may think.

[Eric Paddon]

Even though I wasn't familiar with that article, I have always been convinced it was ABC that bore the blame for Galactica's demise, and whereas NBC had a legit reason to be annoyed with Star Trek's ratings a decade before, that wasn't true with ABC and Galactica. To me, what really influenced ABC's bad attitude was the fact that at the time they were in their swelled-headed "We're #1!" phase and as such raised the bar to unrealistic standards of what they expected ratings wise out of Galactica. If they had been in the same dire straits NBC was in at that time, Galactica's renewal I am convinced, would have been a foregone conclusion.

[thomas7g]

Thanks DOn! Excellent post!


Bryan, I read the Professor's book. Gilligan's Island was cancelled because some high exec's wife got very upset that her beloved Gunsmoke wasn't returning. To fit Gunsmoke in the schedule, they had to cancel a show to make room for it.


With BG, ABC had really unrealistic hopes for it. They saw the Star Wars ticket lines going around the block at every theater and wanted to jump on the bandwagon. (As Hollywood often does) But they thought they would be getting the number one show! So anything less was a disappointment.

They rushed BG so damn fast to get some of the Star Wars "fad" that they KNEW would end quickly. (we all know how off that was) So the speed BG was pushed at is what gave us some weakness at points in the writing.

With all the pressure for dpeed, its amazing that we got something we would love so much. But then the one thing ABC did well was that they hired the best they could and got ALOT of talent.

[nccdee]

I think things are different for todays shows. Yes, it true about cost but I it seems to me that one of things that influences show today it "re-sale", i.e. reruns and syndication numbers. Wasn't that the problem for Farscape is that it got very low rating the second airing on its own network and no one was interested in buying syndication rights? Take a look at Enterprise, Parmount will do another season just so it get have enough episodes to sell it in the syndication market. Then there is the DVD consideration...now that shows are being sold, they can more than make up the cost of doing Movies (Firefly is a good example).

Remember what happened with Baywatch? It was cancelled but demand for the shows for foreign market was so great it went into syndication production and the US was the secondary market (I believe this was the first TV to have been produce for overseas markets with the US as a secondary market).

Now, bringing it back to BSG, the new series is being produce with the help from another country...England's Sky Channel. Isn't this a premium channel like "HBO"? If BSG is not a hit in the US but it is in England would that mean the show will go on? Who will make the decision to pull the plug this time?

So I don't believe how things are decided today are the same as they were 25 years ago.

nccdee

[Titon]

So I don't believe how things are decided today are the same as they were 25 years ago.

I beg to differ. I think hollywood operates today *exactly* like they did 25 years ago when it comes to what *they* themselves think is right and wrong. It's been seen over and over again just how big hollywood's ego get's the best of it most of the time.

In the long run it's ironic. What hollywood has been spewing about Galactica's demise years ago is so far from the truth how can anyone truely take there word for anything?

[CommanderTaggart]

Galactica WILL RISE AGAIN!!!!! CFF RULES!!!! FANS RULE!!!!!!!

WE WILL BE HEARD!!!!! WE'RE GOING TO SOUTH CAROLINA AND OKLAHOMA AND ARIZONA AND NORTH DAKOTA AND NEW MEXICO!!! WE'RE GOING TO CALIFORNIA AND TEXAS AND NEW YORK!!! WE'RE GOING TO WASHINGTON AND OREGON AND MICHIGAN!!!!! THEN WE'RE GOING TO HOLLYWOOD AND TAKE BACK BATTLESTAR GALACTICA!!!!!!!!! YEAGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

[kingfish]

The sad reality is that ABC saw the error of their way in canning BG and putting Mork in it's place. Ratings fell sharply and BG was brought back as a GHOST of itself in the form of Galactica 1980.

[Gemini1999]

Originally Posted by kingfish

The sad reality is that ABC saw the error of their way in canning BG and putting Mork in it's place. Ratings fell sharply and BG was brought back as a GHOST of itself in the form of Galactica 1980.

Paul -

That is the best example of how studios think and how clueless they really are when it comes to producing television....
________
THREESOME SPANISH

[kingfish]

Larson could have also killed BG with the proposed second season script drafts.

[thomas7g]

Mork and Mindy was a HUGE hit at the time.

And I remember reasing somewhere that ABC wanted Galactica 80 to be more like Mork and Mindy. I don't have any evidence backing this. But G80 is kinda sily humurous....

[Dawg]

Originally Posted by kingfish

Larson could have also killed BG with the proposed second season script drafts.

Had that memo been what they produced in that non-existent 2nd season, Paul, I'd agree.

But since that's not what happened, since ABC canceled it at the end of Season One, we can all breath a sigh of relief that the choice never had to be made.

I've said it before - we cannot know how much, if any, of those ideas would have made it to the screen. It's entirely possible that they'd have been shot down in their entirety long before production actually began. It's a moot point - fodder only for debate, not for any really conclusive observations or conclusions about the show - so it only clouds the issue.

ABC killed BSG. Not Larson, not ratings, not revenues. The suits were responsible.

I am
Dawg

[Senmut]

With BSG such a true success, finacially and numbers-wise, the reason for it's cancellation seems clear. Someone at ABC, for whatever reason, did not like it. Whether they had an animus towards Mr. Larson, or hated the show's premise (certainly, it's religious one engendered plenty of ire in some circles), it was a decision based on personal dislike, and not numbers.
My two quantums worth.