Frelling idiots

Sci Fi has officially announced Farscape‘s cancellation.

“There are no bigger fans of Farscape than we here at SCI FI Channel,” the network said in a statement. “It was one of SCI FI’s first original series and quickly became a critical and fan favorite. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts to reach a broader audience, Farscape has been unable to grow beyond its core fan base. That, coupled with the extreme and growing cost of production, has led to the difficult decision to end the series at the conclusion of season four.”

I can believe that production was costly, despite sometimes over-zealous re-dress/re-use of particular sets and settings.

But Sci Fi’s greatest failing was with its scheduling of the program — blocks of a half-dozen episodes, followed by months (!) of nothing. Occasional re-runs, but pretty minimal. Anyone who was not a fan would quickly become frustrated, and even fans would sometimes miss announcements when new episodes would return.

The remainder of the fourth season is scheduled to wrap up starting in January (!) 2003. QED.

A long laundry list of addresses and phone numbers to contact (be professional and polite, folks) can be found here.

Frankly, my own mood on this is pretty pessimistic. Farscape is, alas, a marginally successful show in a small, marginal unit (Sci Fi) of a marginally unsuccessful unit (USA Networks) of a media conglomerate which is tanking (Vivendi). Henson is owned by EM, a German media company, also looking to cut costs in the face of rising production expenses. I really don’t see this as a decision that a letter writing campaign is going to significantly influence.

Which isn’t going to stop me from sending a few.

(via SFAD)