Monday 11 January 2010

Stargate Universe cancelled in Australia?

After showing just 3 episodes here in Australia, Channel ten seems to have decided not to show any more of Stargate Universe. It's a bit disappointing that SGU was not rating as well as, say, "Accidentally on Purpose" or "The Cleveland Show", but surely 3 episodes is too small a sample to say for sure.

Whatever the reason, what are our options as Stargate fans in Australia now? Well, we could subscribe to Foxtel at $70+ per month, wait for the DVDs (that is if region 4 is deemed worthy of publishing them here), or download them legitimately or otherwise. The siffy SyFy channel website has the first five episodes, but you can't watch them from Australia. The iTunes Music Store reportedly has the show, but that too is often region-restricted.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - So it looks like our legitimate options are to wish for DVDs.
PPS - Which doesn't always turn out well.

7 comments:

Erin Marie said...

I get really frustrated by the fact that commercial stations only show two or three episodes of a show before deciding whether or not it has a following.

There are very few shows I've seen where I've watched the first episode and said 'yep. I'm watching this from now on'.

The only one I can remember is 'Fringe', and they stopped showing that after like 5 or something.

Stupid TV.

John said...

On the one hand, it's their station, there's only so much time in the day and (hopefully) they've been at this long enough to know how the numbers will stack up if they continue with a show that's not going well.

On the other hand, there always seems to be a backlash, and our legal options for catching the cancelled shows (assuming there's more to see) are very limited. I guess the only way to win is to have our own TV station where we can play whatever we want.

Erin Marie said...

Well, I kind of do ... except I get no say over what's played. It's me, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week...

Unknown said...

I've had it with commercial television in this regards after how Ch 7 treated Atlantis. Ten were so useless in regards to Numb3rs that I just imported S5 instead of having to wait for them to show more than a couple of episodes at a time. Well over it.

John said...

I think commercial TV is probably not the right place for niche-interest programs, and probably not so great for piloting new programs either. The internet can cater to demographics that make no sense for broadcast television, and can also lower the distribution costs for new shows. The sooner people in charge realise this (and embrace it) the better off we'll all be.

Unknown said...

I think all programs are niche interest. Some just become more popular than others.

John said...

I think of "niche interest" programs as those that don't have a significant proportion of the population, but when the whole world is considered, a significant raw number of people are interested.