Pfou... ça prend du temps!CITATION Comment le Catch tue la Science fiction
par Darren Sumner
Normalement, nous ne faisons que de vous tenir au courant de l'actualité, ici à GateWorld, mais parfois je sens qu'il est nécessaire d'abuser de mes privilèges de chef et de m'exprimer dans une sorte d'édito. Aujourd'hui, j'ai de nouveau un de posts. Prenez-le s'il vous plait pour ce que ça vaut, en tant qu'opinion d'un fan de science-ficion.
LETTRE OUVERTE À LA CHAÎNE SYFY:
Merci pour les nombreuses années de divertissement exceptionnel que vous m'avez donné, ainsi qu'à mes amis. Bien que je n'ai pas été d'accord avec toutes les décisions créatives ou d'horaires, chaque personnage tué ou série annulée, je reconnais que grâce à Syfy j'ai ri, pleuré, et acclamé les séries Farscape, Stargate, Sanctuary, Battlestar Galactica, et de tant d'autres.
Depuis que vous vous êtes aventurés dans des créations TV originales il y a plus de dix ans, vous avez été l'un des meilleurs endroits à la télévision pour ce genre que j'aime tant. Et vous avez été l'un des plus surs. Les grandes chaînes mettent la pression sur les séries, et les annulent après une saison ou moins, parfois sans même diffuser tous les épisodes dont ils ont financé le tournage. Firefly. Defying Gravity. The Event. No Ordinary Family. Moonlight. Earth 2. Surface. Invasion. Threshold. Mais vous donnez aux nouvelles séries le temps de trouver leurs audiences. Vous avez sauvé des séries de l'annulation, vous avez diffusé ces épisodes non-diffusés, et vous avez permis des saisons supplémentaires alors qu'il semblaient que des séries telles Sliders et Stargate SG1 étaient terminées.
Ces derniers temps, pourtant, vous avez commencé à m'inquiéter. Considérez cela comme une intervention de quelqu'un qui vous apprécie. Alors que vos audiences sont hautes, et que les choses semblent aller pour le mieux, vous êtes sur une chemin d'auto-destruction. Et cela ne fait pas du tort seulement à vous. Cela ne nuit pas seulement à ceux qui tombent amoureux de vos séries merveilleusement écrites. Cela nuit au genre de la science-fiction.
Je comprends que la programmation de "réalité" est là pour demeurer. Parce que c'est moins cher à produire, et que cela trouve généralement des audiences aussi bonnes voire meilleures que les fictions, la télé réalité est devenue un élément essentiel dans le paysage médiatique du ving-et-unième siècle. Avec un peu de chance, cela viendra avec un équilibre entre fiction et télé réalité, et les spectateurs choisiront ce qu'ils aiment. Face Off et Ghost Hunters sont des idées cooles. Mais de grâce, n'abandonnez pas les fictions à cause d'un rapport coût-revenu moindre.
Je pense que vous savez tout cela, et ce n'est pas pour ça que j'écris aujourd'hui. J'écris pour parler du catch professionnel. Votre maman et moi-même sommes très inquiets des gosses avec qui vous avez zoné. Je reconnais que WWe Smackdown est le pote cool: il a le double des audiences de quasi toutes les autres émissions de la chaîne, ce qui est un grand bonus à vos moyennes d'audiences et, en finalité, à vos bénéfices. L'argent amassé par le catch peut ensuite être investi dans la création de chaînes qui ne trouvent pas grandes audiences. Comme le disent les Républicains, les audiences "riches" peuvent créer des places de travail pour la "classe moyenne" des émissions télé. Cela n'est pas une si mauvaise idée, même si je ne pense pas que le catch corresponde à votre chaîne.
En changeant votre nom de Scifi à Syfy, il est devenu évident que vous ne désirez plus un programme pour la niche des fans de science-fiction, vous voulez trouver un public plus large. Vous désirez être populaires. Si les rediffusions de NCIS devenaient disponibles et abordables pour vous, vous les prendriez tout de suite en incitant les téléspectateurs à "imaginer plus grand" ("Imagine Greater", en anglais, est le slogan de la chaîne).
Ceux d'entre nous qui sont d'abord fans du genre de la science-fiction peuvent voir l'écriture sur le mur: quand on en vient à attirer les foules, la SF est toujours un désavantage. De la bonne télévision de SF a besoin d'être
Those of us who are first fans of the science fiction genre can see the writing on the wall. When it comes to mass appeal, sci-fi is always at a disadvantage. Good science fiction television needs to be soignée, cajolée, et d'avoir de la place et du temps pour grandir. Mais cela ne sera jamais grandement populaire. Et vous ne semblez pas si intéressés en
soins et cajoleries, ces temps.
Traduction à continuer...
Est-ce que quelqu'un voudrait continuer un bout de la traduction, svp?
Si non, je m'y remettrai lundi...
CITATION Now don’t get me wrong — I’m not writing you off. A two-year commitment to an expensive show like SGU was terrific, and Caprica‘s ratings were pretty bad. I’m not even saying that expanding to new nights of the week has been a bad idea. I recognize the business strategy at work in your scheduling choices, and I see where it has paid off. But the last seven months have told a powerful story to the programming department, and today you have to own up to your mistakes. Let’s review the course of events that brought us here:
* You acquired WWE Smackdown, and decided to keep it on Friday nights — where its own fan base expects it. Since it is a 2-hour block, the fall of 2010 seemed like the best time to branch into another night using those shows that were previously on Fridays.
* So you planned to move Stargate Universe and Sanctuary to Tuesdays, where your other dramas have had great success during the (less competitive) summer months. (With Warehouse 13 overlapping one week into the start of the fall season on the big networks, maybe you could hold on to some of those summer viewers and keep them on Syfy on Tuesdays.)
* Caprica still needed an immediate renewal decision, however, so at the eleventh hour you put it in Sanctuary‘s place and kept Sanctuary on Fridays, after wrestling, in the one primetime hour still available there.
* Tuesday nights during the fall season are incredibly tough. Caprica sank below 1 million viewers and didn’t survive a month. Stargate, meanwhile, flirted with disaster in its own ratings, hovering just inches above the 1 million viewer threshold.
* Stargate finished out its fall run, but compared to its (falling) numbers on Friday last spring, things weren’t looking so good. You cancelled it in December.
* In January you were ready to premiere a new scripted series, a remake of BBC’s Being Human. The show started strong and did very respectable numbers on Monday nights. You renewed it and called it a win. When Stargate returned for its final episodes, you moved it to Monday, too. But it was a dead man walking, so no one expected a ratings resurrection.
* Sanctuary, meanwhile, was still on Friday nights — and now it had WWE as a monster lead-in. You know lead-ins matter. You know that Fridays at 10 p.m. is now the plum time slot on your network. You wish that the show you put there would retain a bit more of WWE‘s 2.5 to 3 million viewers, but Sanctuary was clearly doing well enough for a fourth season renewal.
*
Layla puts the squeeze on Sanctuary.
When April arrived, things got truly telling. Sanctuary started its spring season with surprisingly low numbers, considering it is a mid-season premiere and it has a 2.8 million viewer lead-in. Meanwhile, your new Monday reality series Urban Legends premiered after Stargate on Monday, and couldn’t keep even half of SGU‘s already dismal viewership. Sanctuary and Stargate have always had a similar audience, and Urban Legends could really benefit from that post-WWE time slot — so you did the logical thing and quickly switch them.
* Now on Mondays at 10 p.m., Sanctuary is pulling in lower ratings than the already cancelled Stargate Universe.
What lessons is a programming executive to learn from this? Putting original (and expensive), scripted dramas on Tuesday nights during the fall season was a disaster. Sanctuary is a good show, and it didn’t lose 40 percent of its audience because people decided to tune out. It lost that audience because people expected to watch it on Friday night, where it’s always been and where science fiction has thrived on many networks. And because it had a monster lead-in there.
Now I understand that there are only three primetime hours per night, and you have a lot of good shows. It helps the network tremendously to air original series on other nights of the week. One million for a new original is better than 300,000 viewers from a repeat of Hercules. But you must realize that the ratings for those shows will be proportionately lower than they were on Friday nights — about 40 percent, apparently. Competing with the big networks on their big nights is still tough.
In short, cancelling SGU and Caprica because they couldn’t perform on Tuesdays was a mistake. You should own up to it. You should admit that those shows would have performed much better (about 40 percent, apparently) on Fridays, and it’s your fault that they didn’t have the chance. They may well have earned enough viewers to warrant renewal. But you decided not to nurture them, to give them the space and time they needed to solidify themselves creatively and in their audience.
You know that Stargate Universe is better now than it has ever been, and is even starting to win over some of the naysayers. But you cut it off at the knees, mid-story, without so much as a shortened season or mini-series to tie up this epic story in which you convinced us to involve ourselves.
Why? What was that one critical factor that brought an end to a 14-year franchise that made you a Top 10 cable network, that could have been your everlasting Law & Order or CSI?
Because wrestling has to air on Friday nights.
WWE Smackdown is your highest-rated show, far and away. The fact that it is so highly rated — that no other show you make, scripted or unscripted, comes anywhere close — should tell you something. I’d like to tell you it’s because it doesn’t belong on your network, but I’m resigned to the fact that it is a breadwinner. But it is destroying good science fiction. If you move it off of Friday nights, most of its loyal and ridiculously large audience will follow. WWE does monster numbers for USA Network on Mondays. Wrestling fans will watch Smackdown instead of NCIS on Tuesdays, because they are already in the habit of not making good life choices. Then your ratings still have the wrestling boost, but you’re back to having three hours of primetime real estate to nurture scripted drama.
Think of it this way: If your best friend moves out to the sticks, he’ll have a hard time convincing you to come and visit as often. But if you build a 50,000-seat sports arena in the sticks, fans will carpool and rent buses to get out there.
Big Show (right) prepares to finish off Stargate Universe (left) once and for all.
If you had renewed Stargate and demonstrated that your expectations for Tuesdays in the fall are proportionately lower (about 40 percent lower, apparently), we wouldn’t be having this conversation. For the show’s creative growth, ultimately I don’t care how many people are watching it. But to cancel one series and renew another, when the only ratings difference between the two was the night of the week you aired them, was incredibly short-sighted.
You’ve done great with Friday nights in the past, and you are doing great with Tuesdays in the summertime. I think switching your summer dramas to Mondays will be an even greater success. I’m even happy with your foray into Mondays this winter and spring, even though it has been tougher-going. (I wonder if you had tried Mondays instead of Tuesdays back in October, if SGU might still be with us.)
But wrestling doesn’t belong on Fridays. Your own ratings data shows that the scripted dramas you put there will thrive for years, and those that don’t get the coveted Friday hour — well, they get killed. Not because of the show. Because none but the most loyalist follower want to watch an intense, thought-provoking science fiction drama at 10 o’clock on a Tuesday.
Syfy, move WWE Smackdown off of Friday nights. It does great there, and it will do great elsewhere. It will make your Tuesdays or your Thursdays amazing. But, more importantly, it will free up the Friday schedule to allow you to support scripted drama again. Then all of your shows will thrive, and your ratings averages and your bottom line will shine even brighter. As the schedule stands, wrestling isn’t complimenting your scripted science fiction — it is destroying it.
These shows deserve it, and your viewers who watch you because they love science fiction deserve it. Without it, you aren’t going to be a haven for science fiction any more. You’ll just be like everyone else.