What a load...

Scifiwire announced this morning that sciffy greenlighted "Mad Mad House," another reality show. Gimme a break. Isn't there enough reality shows on television? And isn't that a contradiction in terms anyway? Scifi-Reality?

[Darth Marley]

This is way beyond a go for production. They have this one in the can already.

I see very little real in this reality show.

Now,if they put a few continuation BSG fans together with some RDM fans,and put in the various Trek factions,that I might watch.

It is very scary,this is the kind of programme that totally changed MTV. How I long for the days of 24 hours of Kate Bush videos.

This should probably be in the "bad & ugly" section.

[jewels]

Yep, Darth, this is a gripe against Skiffy: those go in the bad section....though I think we might have a common tie in our hatred/disinterest of reality TV and of the Bonnie versions of it.

One moment please......fixing.

[thomas7g]

the reason shows like this exist is because scifi spends all its annual budget on a miniseries and its HUGE advertising costs. What's left over isn't enough to create enough shows to fill the schedule. So what they create incredible inexpensive shows like Scare Tactics which could have been made by a college student. These have almost no production costs so they are almost guaranteed to show a profit even if the ratings are miserable.

Scifi blows all its money on a big event (Taken, BG2003) and a one tv show (stargate) each year. The rest of the year its incredibly cheap and bad, until they get enough money to do another "event" next year.

[Darth Marley]

In their defense,it used to be worse. This is a network of reruns that actually produces new telemovies.

The rerun issue is as contentious as the new product issue.No one gets all (or some) of what they want.

SciFi has always been cheap and bad,with only a few exceptions.

For a few hours now,I have to take it off rotation while "Secret adventures/Jules Verne" runs until X-Files comes on. I have never met a fan of this show,but they must exist.
But while it airs,there is always the news channels,and the History Channel (All Hitler,All the Time).

On the upside,Farscape comes back for a few hours. We mini fans will likely get our wish. SG:1 goes on another season with a spinoff. Don't we get a radical adult cartoon as well?

Given corporate obsession with growth,the network has to deliver evidence of increasing numbers for the expensive projects. The cheap ones tend to pay for themselves just by the curiosity factor.

So what they create incredible inexpensive shows like Scare Tactics which could have been made by a college student.

Wouldn't it be even more inexpensive to rerun old shows that are actually good?

[Darth Marley]

Originally posted by jjrakman
Wouldn't it be even more inexpensive to rerun old shows that are actually good?

Sure it would.

The question is would a steady diet of cheap reruns deliver viewers that advertisers will pay to pitch to.

Putting aside the quality of shows,I find it telling to observe the quality of advertisments run in a show.

Feature one-shot events like the SuperBowl give us ads that are expensive to produce and air,and give some entertainment value by themselves.

I start to worry about my viewing habits when I see too many ads for "The Video Professor" or nutritional supplents designed to enhance my mental or sexual functions. These ads reveal the expected target demographic as fools that were lucky to get together with their money in the first place.

Would you really be satisfied with no new programming?

I read on another thread that SCIFI has a sister network? If so I don't understand why they don't run the non-SCIFI stuff there. After all Scare Tactics and the like should do about as well where ever they put it. I hear MTV does better now than when they played videos 24/7 but everyone I know stopped watching when the videos stopped. If no body wanted to watch videos why did they start VH1. I will never get it. At least we have Star Trek TNG on Spike TV, the former Nashville Network.

[jewels]

The sister network is USA Network. fyi

[thomas7g]

I actually would prefer no new shows rather than see the mad house or scare tactics. I'm more likly to tune into nostalgia scifi than really lame new stuff. So from my point of view, my viewing choices suffer by scifi wanting to go with profitable and trashy. But on the plus side, I am being pushed by this more into sports shows, so its no biggie to me.

I just wish the Lakers would stop sucking. God they are incredibly bad right now.

[Sept17th]

Originally posted by Darth Marley

Now,if the put a few continuation BSG fans together with some RDM fans,and put in the various Trek factions,that I might watch.

I'd be the first one kicked out of the house for beating Ted to a pulp with a VHS copy of the mini-series after a night of drinking and I'm a happy drunk!

[thomas7g]

ew ew! Lets just plain out change the subject!!!

All this "reality" TV rubbish and things like Crossing Over with John D-bag go right back to my lice-picking hominoid primates theory. While "reality" TV has lost its luster, at least it is a "mainstream" type of programming. American Tone-Deaf has gone into a new season, after all, and there is some damnable celebrity jerks in a house show that's just started airing.

So, when the lice-pickers from SciFi run across the lice-pickers from NBC or FOX, they can hold their little primate heads high and "ook ook" almost like they were equals.

It's like those one or two pathetic SF writers who maintained, sometimes for decades, that they weren't "really science fiction authors" but "authors who merely happened to write a little science fiction". Sad gits, really.

Here's the thing: Running SciFi is not a plum network exec position. You don't get the 100-metre jacuzzi and three pounds of Medellin White up each nostril on the salary of a SciFi exec. So, what a money-grubbing, anti-art, self-centered, social-climbing pathetic little excuse for an "executive" does if stuck at SciFi is to try to force as much conventional crap (the kind that is so dimwitted that even MBAs can understand it) into programming as possible. It's win-win. If the stuff flops, then the lice-picker can blame "extremist out-of-touch fan wierdos" and whine that failure was because she (now why did I say "she") was "too mainstream" for the job. If they succeed, then the lice-picker can trumpet her (there's that female gender again, why do I keep using it) success in a bid to get a better spot at the termite mound.

For years the networks like to fill time with news shows like 48 Hours, Dateline, 20/20, and 60 minutes. They don't get the blockbuster ratings but they get reasonable ratings. They are cheap to make since most of the "actors" are "free". As such these shows have very good profit margins. Reality TV has the same cost versus sales dynamic. Until people tire of the genre we will keep seeing it made. With the apparant success of Trump's "Apprentice" last week and the fairly good rating on the last survivor I don't think reality TV is going away anytime soon. Sitcoms, dramas, and space operas have to do real well to justify the cost of the large PAID cast. Unfortunately the more successful a show is the more the actors want making additional years less profitable. Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't we lose Jane Seymoure on TOS because she wanted too much money? One thing I worry about in a potential new series is that if it is popular Olmos and President Roslin may want too much money down the road. They can probably kill off Roslin but Adama is another story.

Dogface (Are you a 3 ID veteran?): Keep up the lice picking hominid stories. They give me some well needed comic relief!

[Artemis]

fyi- Roslin was dying from breast cancer anyway, so she would be easy to get rid of.
Scifi had a decent line up with Farscape, First Wave and Invisible Man and they choose to get rid of them all for the current junk, with the exception of Stargate. I don't think they really know what audience they are targeting and just keep floundering about hoping to make a hit with some random thing.

[callsignfalcon]

yah, sc-fi is pretty stupid in choosing good line-ups. (single shows tho they made a good choice w/ sg1) :/



---
"crackers don't matter!"
of course I watch farscape
---

Originally posted by Artemis
fyi- Roslin was dying from breast cancer anyway, so she would be easy to get rid of.
Scifi had a decent line up with Farscape, First Wave and Invisible Man and they choose to get rid of them all for the current junk, with the exception of Stargate. I don't think they really know what audience they are targeting and just keep floundering about hoping to make a hit with some random thing.

It is no coincidence that TSR went under while it was run by Lorraine Williams. She saw roleplaying games as just another product that could be churned out like scissors or ball-point pens. The very LAST thing she wanted was to actually have to deal with gamers--whom she considered her social inferiors (funny talk coming from a woman whose entire livelihood is leeching of grandaddy's Buck Rogers franchise).

SciFi has its own Lorraine Williams--a woman who has repeatedly shown nothing but contempt for the very art form she supposedly is publishing.