The ugly rumors racing around the net yesterday have turned out to be true: Stargate Atlantis will end its run with its fifth season.
Even though the “+7” numbers (live viewings, plus DVRs, etc.) have consistently run higher, SciFi apparently prefers its “live” numbers to be the deciding factor. And Stargate has never been good at that. (Thanks a lot, techno-geeks!)
We can comfort ourselves with movies on the way to wrap up the cliff-hanger and bring us a few more adventures. And there are lots of intriguing projects from the cast and the production company in the pipeline. But don’t be surprised to see another fan campaign start up, either. Not that SciFi has ever responded to that….
As much as I really don’t care for any of the Stargates, isn’t SGA one of their few shows that actually gets watched? They only have a limited supply of BSG left, and no new Doctor Who for at least a year or two. (Aside from maybe an Xmas special?) So why get rid of SGA now? Their only other show I ever hear about is Eureka, and are those ratings really that great?
Supposedly the overall ratings are the same as or higher than Eureka, but the percentage of people who DVR it is higher for Atlantis. DVR equals no commercials, so it doesn’t do as well in that area.
But SciFi has been trying to kill this show for a while, now. They didn’t show any of the Season 4 reruns, except in some lame daytime marathons. They’d show previous seasons of SG1, rather than run Season 4. And the afternoon rerun slot has only been Seasons 1 and 2.
It just seemed like SciFi didn’t want the show at all. Given that their other sci-fi programming is going to be having issues, I don’t understand what they’re doing.