This post has been updated for the recent cancellations of Happy! and Deadly Class.
The regular season is over and Syfy, the network that is supposed to be dedicated to sci fi and fantasy shows, did not not have a great year with ratings down notably and most of its shows cancelled (which includes the most recent announcements). The network aired seven scripted shows starting from September 2018 with five of those ending up getting cancelled. Here are the shows that aired on the network this past season with their status:
Syfy Shows (Sorted by Status):
| Series | Network | Status |
| Channel Zero | Syfy | Cancelled |
| Deadly Class | Syfy | Cancelled |
| Happy | Syfy | Cancelled |
| Nightflyers | Syfy | Cancelled |
| Z Nation | Syfy | Cancelled |
| The Magicians | Syfy | Renewed |
| Van Helsing | Syfy | Renewed |
Since the 2014-15, the network has aired 28 scripted shows (see full list below) and only six of those are still active including Krypton (returning in Summer for its second season), and Wynonna Earp (which is in limbo due to the financial struggles of its production company). That leaves only The Magicians and Van Helsing as shows with a renewal beyond the 2018-19 season.
Over the past five seasons, the network’s same day ratings have dropped each year with a total decline of 48% from the 2014-15 season to the 2018-19 season. And for the current season, Syfy’s average same day ratings for its scripted shows is only a 0.12 score. That’s twelve one hundredths for a ratings point! And don’t start talking to me about delayed viewing because the network is still very much old school in its thinking. The success of a show often depends on the advertising revenue it can get for the live broadcasts, and that is driven by the same day ratings. Dark Matter and The Expanse were infamously cancelled because their same day ratings were not good enough to bring in sufficient advertising revenue.
Here is the rundown of the network’s average ratings performance over the past five seasons (click to enlarge the chart) including the highest rated and lowest rated shows each season (I also included The Expanse in the chart to show that it performed at or above the network average during its three seasons):
| Season | Network Avg | % Chg from Prior | Highest Rated Series | Avg | Lowest Rated Series | Avg |
| 2014-15 | 0.24 | 0.0% | Z Nation | 0.48 | Olympus | 0.15 |
| 2015-16 | 0.18 | -24.0% | Childhood’s End | 0.36 | Hunters | 0.08 |
| 2016-17 | 0.18 | -0.6% | The Magicians | 0.31 | 12 Monkeys | 0.09 |
| 2017-18 | 0.16 | -10.7% | The Magicians | 0.26 | Ghost Wars | 0.09 |
| 2018-19 | 0.12 | -23.4% | The Magicians | 0.19 | Channel Zero | 0.07 |
The numbers keep going down for the network including for its highest rated shows, and it is essentially surviving on ratings scraps at this point. And since advertising revenue for same day viewing is important to the success of the shows it airs, that’s definitely not a good thing. The network has also done a poor job of working out streaming deals for its shows which makes it harder for them to draw in supplemental revenue from those venues. Syfy previously did a good job of partnering with international networks, particularly those up north in Canada. But we are seeing much less of that these days.
Another important thing to note is that no original scripted show has ever run for more than five seasons on Syfy. Stargate: SG-1 did have ten total, but only the last half of its run aired on sci fi. Five appears to be the cap for series (bad news for The Magicians heading into next year), and eighteen of the 28 mentioned above have gone three seasons or less (ten have only had one season). Fans have believed for a long time that this network does not support its shows, and the numbers surely reinforce that. And many refuse to get invested in new Syfy shows because because of the network’s poor track record.
There was a time when Syfy was considered a leader in original content for sci fi & fantasy, back when it was the home of Farscape, the Stargate franchise, and the Battlestar: Galactica reboot. But those shows had mostly faded by the end of the 00’s, and the network tried to rebrand and expand its audience in 2009. That worked for a while, but couldn’t sustain viewership and the backlash from the ‘sci fi lite’ shows that followed after the rebranding appears to have done more to hurt the network in the long run.
Syfy tried to backtrack and return to its sci fi roots around the 2014-15 season. But lately the network has been following a spaghetti-against-the-wall strategy of throwing different shows out there hoping one will stick as the next Walking Dead or Game of Thrones. But that has failed to produce a hit for the network and the constant cancellations continue to anger those who do tune in for Syfy’s shows. In addition, it appears to be changing its strategy again as it going for known properties such as The Magicians (based on a book series) and Deadly Class (based on a comic), with few of its current shows have much in the way of science fiction
The sci fi community in general has shunned the network, starting with the rebranding and expedited with the cancellations of fan-favorite shows like Dark Matter and The Expanse. And with the target audience turning away from the network, plus the overall ratings drying up, there is definitely a question of how much longer Syfy can remain viable. The network has not adjusted to the modern audience, and it is offering less and less that sci fi fans are even interested in.
Chiller shuttered its doors in in 2017, and that network was also owned by NBCUniversal. Quite a number of the cable channels are turning away from scripted programming knowing that they cannot compete with higher budgets that the streaming services and premium cable channels are pumping into their shows. At the least, it surely seems that Syfy is no longer competitive with its scripted originals. It would not be surprising if those faded from the network in the next couple of years or so, and surely seems possible that Syfy could become another Peak TV casualty and close down shop just like Chiller.
Syfy Shows from the 2014-15 Season to Present:
| Series | Status | Seasons | Last Aired |
| 12 Monkeys | Ended | 4 | 2018 |
| Aftermath | Cancelled | 1 | 2016 |
| Bitten | Ended | 3 | 2016 |
| Blood Drive | Cancelled | 1 | 2017 |
| Channel Zero | Cancelled | 4 | 2019 |
| Childhoods End | Ended | 1 | 2015 |
| Continuum | Ended | 4 | 2015 |
| Dark Matter | Cancelled | 3 | 2017 |
| Deadly Class | Cancelled | 1 | 2019 |
| Defiance | Cancelled | 3 | 2015 |
| Dominion | Cancelled | 2 | 2015 |
| Ghost Wars | Cancelled | 1 | 2018 |
| Happy | Cancelled | 2 | 2019 |
| Haven | Cancelled | 5 | 2015 |
| Helix | Cancelled | 2 | 2015 |
| Hunters | Cancelled | 1 | 2016 |
| Incorporated | Cancelled | 1 | 2017 |
| Killjoys | Final Season | 5 | 2019 |
| Krypton | Renewed | 2 | 2018 |
| Lost Girl | Ended | 5 | 2015 |
| Nightflyers | Cancelled | 1 | 2018 |
| Olympus | Cancelled | 1 | 2015 |
| Superstition | Cancelled | 1 | 2018 |
| The Expanse | Cancelled | 3 | 2018 |
| The Magicians | Renewed | 5 | 2019 |
| Van Helsing | Renewed | 4 | 2018 |
| Wynonna Earp | Renewed | 4 | 2018 |
| Z Nation | Cancelled | 5 | 2018 |
More Season Roundup Coverage:
List of all the Cancellations and Renewals from the 2018-19 Season
Final Scorecard for the Regular Season, Game of Thrones Sit Atop the Rankings
Scoring This Season’s Predictions for Shows Like The Orville, The Gifted, Z Nation, and More
A Look at How This Year’s Sci Fi and Fantasy Shows Did on the Linear Networks and Streaming Channels
First Look at neXt, Batwoman, Evil, and More of the Upcoming Season’s New Shows (with Trailers)
First Look at the Fall 2019 Slate of Sci Fi and Fantasy Shows
Roundup of the Renewals, Cancellations, Pickups, and Schedule Announcements from the Upfronts
More from CancelledSciFi.com:
Keep up with the ratings developments and the status of all the currently airing sci fi and fantasy shows with our Weekly Roundup posts. Join the #CancelledSciFiArmy on Twitter to bolster our ranks and help us fight for the struggling and cancelled sci fi and fantasy shows.
Check out our Sci Fi TV Schedule for debut and season finale dates and follow our Weekly Listings for a rundown of the shows airing in the current week.
A look back at forgotten magic and hidden treasures from the worlds of sci fi and fantasy TV with Sci Fi TV Genre Gems.
Well, here it is … 2020, and they have, indeed, canceled Deadly Class, proving, once and for all, they are in it to LOSE IT! The people who run this channel have absolutely NO business sense! Who are these clowns anyway? I have a business degree, and I know how to make money and keep my customers coming back and bringing their friends. If I could get a hold of the management at SyFy for ONE YEAR, they would be a success! First of all, we would no longer be SyFy anymore. Sci-Fi would be back, and there would be apologies across the board to all the faithful fans who were kicked to the curb for the sake of NOTHING! Then, I would hire a “go-getter” marketing team that would be tearing down doors to get advertising and NOT taking “No” for an answer … EVER! Look, there is always a way to make a deal! Anyway, I could go on, but we’ll just let the morons who are running things over there run it into the ground. Say your “goodbyes” now, folks, because they won’t be around much longer at this pace!
Troy – I hear you. Sad to see the shell of the Sci-Fi Channel anymore. There is little science fiction on a channel that’s about science fiction.
Comet TV is much, much better. I think SyFy is not going to be on the air much longer… with the push towards NBC Peacock, Hulu, YouTubeTV, etc. And I’ll say good riddance.
I used to love syfy channel but after shy and dominion got canceled for no reason and then the expanse I don’t even try to get invested in a syfy channel show unless it’s already on season 4 because they not only cancel shows they do it with little to no ending (final episode)
I want to give a quick shout out for the Sci Fi channel Comet TV. I just discovered this channel. They are currently running Space: 1999, older and newer Outer Limits, Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis, among other things.
I have a secret hope that perhaps they can become what the Sci Fi Channel used to be, (I.e., *not* what SyFy is today.)
The last show I enjoyed was Dark Matter. Even now I watch it on Netflix with hopes of a netflix season 4 and 5- or maybe a mini to wrap everything up.. Just as things start getting real interesting, the show gets pulled. I have tried watching the Magicians and Krypton, but without a show like Dark Matter- the flavor just isn’t the same anymore. I have stopped watching syfy altogether . Wake me up if any good cancelled shows make a return.
The death of SciFi, no SyFy, began when NBC Universal bought the channel. Prior t o the purchase, SciFi was very innovative, even thiough most of its programming were reruns of classic SciFi shows and movies. Today, Comet, and over the air digital subchannel, is pretty close to what SciFi once was.
NBC Universal first mistake, was to go with 8 hour blocks of daytime shows (binge). This was the first cost saving measure. For a while, it remained a good place fro Sci Fi, but about 2 years, before the rebranding, it was going don hill. Afterwards much faster. Fast forward to about two years ago, they acquired Futurama and have been airing its 140 episodes over and over again in three to six hour blocs.
I have not watched SyFy since the death of Z Nation, Dark Matter and The Expanse. While I liked Krypton, I just did not want to put up with another cancellation.
Also, for movies, they repeat the same movies over and over. And, are showing movies that are not science fiction or fantasy. FYI, When Chiller was operating, it was better than SyFy to add to the indignity.
Thanks to Comet, Pluto App, and other means, there is no need to bother with SyFy.
Finally, you know SyFy is dead by one indicator. On July 4, as long as I can remember, they ran a Twilight Zone marathon; not this year, though they did one on New Year’s Eve/Day. They may not be around by this New Years to see if that continues or not.
This makes me happy honestly. The cancellation of Dark Matter did it for me to start openly hating the network. Fans of that show tried so hard to get them to finish it, there were petitions and posts and articles. It seems to me that Sci-Fi doesn’t care about their fans of the popular shows, or even the shows themselves. They’re almost indecisive about their shows like “maybe we cancel this one to make this one bring in more ratings in its place”. What they don’t realize is that shows like Dark Matter have a strong fan base and when they cancel these shows with such an intense cliff-hanger, fans will start to hate the network for it and stop watching any of their shows.
When SYFY or SciFi promised a fifth season of “Farscape”, cancelled it, and gave us a cheap made-for-tv movie, I vowed never to comeback. But they lured me back with “The Expanse”. Which they promptly cancelled. Amazon Prime has more original science fiction on it now than SYFY. Somebody drive a stake through this channel and put it out of its misery.
Whatever happened to Paranormal Witness?? I know it wasn’t one of their scripted shows but it was so good and I loved it! And there’s been nothing..no word of cancellation or renewal…since its last season in 2016.
Blood Drive was unlike anything else on TV. It was arguably too much for any non-premium network, but what a ride. I don’t think any other show besides SNL does fake TV ads anymore. So clever too – you didn’t want to fast forward through breaks. I get the content was pretty dark, but i’m not the biggest horror or grindhouse fan and I loved it. The real shame is if the creators of any of the dozens of shows above had more stories to tell and can’t because of ownership/business side issues. Netflix can only rescue so much!
I suspect that Happy! got cancelled for the same reason that Blood Drive did. They couldn’t get advertisers for those shows. I think both of these shows were awesome, unique, and cut from the same cloth. Colin Cunningham *killed* (quite literally and figuratively!) on that show, very much like Chris Meloni did in Happy!
I have a few different scenes *seared* into my brain from different TV shows. One them is when Julian Slink killed that woman with a telephone. 🙂
I fondly remember Sci-Fi Fridays, and I had high hopes they were coming back when we got Dark Matter, Killjoys and Expanse. Now Dark Matter is dead, Expanse moved to Amazon, and Killjoys is left by itself to finish its run (with presumably a smaller budget than the others required).
No more Stargate, no new watercooler show like Battlestar, no well-made miniseries like Dune. At least they dropped/lost wrestling and stupid ghost hunting shows, but I don’t look to SYFY for genre programming anymore.
Netflix, Amazon and the other streaming services are now the go-to channels for genre fans. Even CW, AMC, FX and other cable channels come to mind first when I hear about a new genre show. Such a shame.
Good catch, Warehouse 13 and Eureka! I’ll also throw in there Stargate Atlantis, and to some degree, SGU. I felt that Atlantis was just hitting it’s prime in terms f writing, sophistication, character development and growth, and bam, gone. SGU, started off not very good, I thought. (Too much like Battlestar Galactica, with its emotionally flawed characters, dark story telling, etc.) But by the end of only its 2nd season, I thought there was (ahem) light at the end of the tunnel, in terms of fixing those issues, and then also: bam, gone. Phooey on SyFy. Happy! is the only show left that I watch, and then after that, I’m done. I used to check all of SyFy’s programming, 168 hrs every week, to see what I wanted to watch. Now I only look for Happy! on Wed, and ignore the channel the other 167 hrs. Just like SyFy ignored viewers like me, when they cancelled Dark Matter and the Expanse. Those two were the last straw for me personally.
They need to change their model desperately. They like to put new shows directly on their website (with advertising) for the first few episodes and then they rely on a live audience that’s been dwindling for “cable TV” for years in general . Why can’t they leave the episodes on their site with ads for the full seasons? For those who miss the live shows can at least watch them on their devices and computers. Just look at some of the recent show such as Deadly Class.. Their full spectrum viewership is THREE TIMES the live audience and yet this show is still not renewed because they couldn’t get enough people to watch it at 10pm on a Wednesday. Ugh! Change SyFy! CHANGE!
They don’t do wrestling? They haven’t in about 2 years. They knew it was a failure from the start.
I would like to see Syfy have better retention efforts. Take Wynonna Earp for example. Yes, SyFy has renewed for season 4 and 5, but I find it hard to believe that Syfy, which is owned by monolith NBC Universal do not have enough pull to get the studio that produces this show the funding to get the new season made. Fans are buying billboards in NY and LA, pleading for this show’s return. Wynonna has a loyal, diverse fanbase that consistently hit key demos last season, which makes it attractive to advertisers. Lately, it just feels like we’re ignore, and under-appreciated.
The SciFi channel was done when they changed their name to SyFy and started airing wrestling.
They shouldn’t have cancelled channel zero so many fans loved that show n were ready for more. That was a huge mistake on syfys part.
N fans want deadly class to return so if they cancel it SYFY IS STUPID!
Great Article. Eureka, Sanctuary and Warehouse 13 are other series you can add to the list.
August 2011 Eureka Cancelled. The news of Syfy canceling Eureka was a shock to everyone – especially to those who create the hit series. Upon the announcement of Eureka being canceled, Berg revealed exactly why Syfy decided to cancel their long-time staple (that continues to grow in popularity), and it all has to do with profit margins.
May 2013 – Warehouse 13 Cancelled. “This is an odd move on the part of Syfy, given that season 4 of Warehouse 13 has yet to finish and production of its follow-up won’t begin until mid-summer. The series is still pulling in decent numbers for the network / So, why cancel a well-liked and well-watched show?”
BEAUTIFUL article. You echo my thoughts exactly. I wish this could be read by SyFy execs in terms of how they took viewership for granted, and threw their various shows’ audiences under the bus.
If the ‘Siffy’ channel fails, I would call it a clear cut case of suicide. I so recall the countdown to The SciFi Channel’s debut and the day that it was launched. It began by hosting old, beloved sci t.v. stuff from my youth (Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, my favorite ‘for instance’). It was a favorite channel in my home as my kids grew and was an old stand-by when nothing else good was on any other station. And best of all. . .it was free.
Then, inexplicably, it became ‘The Siffy Channel’?! A friend explained that they wanted to broaden their audience beyond the realm of over-aged kids still living in their parents’ basements. I didn’t appreciate the comment (and no, I don’t live in my dead parents’ basement) but got the point. It was about the then that I learned it was hosting wrestling (fiction, yeah but where’s the science?) that it began to smell like something dying. Such a loss and such a shame that the glorious original came to this!
This is an old post but I just had to respond when your story sounds so much like mine. You are not alone in how you feel. I to get sick of the “to be a fanboy must mean you live in your parents basement. I have had a mortgage since I left University at 22 and I am very much a fanboy!
The evolution of the Sci Fi channel has been a comedy of errors since it’s idiotic ‘rebranding’ as SyFy. At this point they have burned too many bridges with sci-fi fans. If they are interested in surviving the only way back is to re-brand back to Sci-Fi, change their line up and couple that with a self-aware (perhaps humorous) advertising push around it acknowledging that SyFy was a mistake.