The television landscape has been going through major changes, and with the Peak TV bubble on the verge of bursting (more on that at this link), even more changes are on the way. In response to this, we will be making some changes at CancelledSciFi.com and The Sci Fi TV Site.
As to the latter, that site will be shutting down effective immediately. There are far too many sites out there with pages for television shows, and the search engines do a very bad job of determining which ones are click-bait sites and which ones have substantive content. After being active for over a year, The Sci Fi TV Site still has not been able to garner much traffic, and it faces too tough of a battle in an oversaturated market. I was hoping to build it into a site that focuses on new and upcoming sci fi and fantasy shows and enlist the participation of the fans, but I could not get enough interest in the face of heavy competition and general apathy. The listings and the premieres page will be moving to CancelledSciFi.com and all other featured posts will be shut down unless there is an interest in keeping them going at this site.
CancelledSciFi.com will continue with business as usual for now, but I will be changing up the Cancellation Watch posts. Those will be less numbers focused and I will instead be looking at developments/updates for particular shows that could impact their fates. The fact is that the same-day Nielsen ratings really don’t tell us that much anymore, and the delayed-viewing numbers are rarely complete. NBC renewed Quantum Leap last season even though it was one of the network’s lowest-rated shows and Starz’s Outlander is heading into an eighth season even though its ratings this year are hovering around a 0.02 score (two one-hundredths of a ratings point). And the streaming ratings don’t seem to tell us much either seeing as Netflix shows can top the charts and still get cancelled. The execs at these companies are looking at a larger range of data, and the numbers they release to the public only tell part of the story. I will still be tracking the numbers and note any significant developments. But I will put less emphasis on them going forward.
I am also willing to accept suggestions on other information I should bring into these columns going forward, as well as other types of posts readers want to see on the site. And if you are following CancelledSciFi.com and find it useful for keeping track of your favorite shows, then spread the word. Competition from other entertainment-focused platforms and click-bait sites has been eating away at our traffic, so any help we can get from our loyal readers is certainly appreciated. It is getting harder and harder to get our voice heard on a crowded and cluttered internet, but we have diligently followed sci fi and fantasy television for over ten years now and would like to continue to do so for many more years.
Another change at this site which has already gone into place is less in the way of retrospective pieces focusing on a particular show. I am still posting the Why Were They Cancelled, Cancelled Before It Began, and Sci Fi TV Obscurities pieces because they are appropriate to this site, but the other posts focusing on sci fi TV shows will be moving to my new site Cult-SciFi.com which is currently in the process of ramping up. Be sure to keep an eye on that site because I will be adding posts relating to all forms of sci fi and fantasy on a regular basis.
We appreciate those who have followed us through the years and urge you to stick with us as the industry is about to go through a major change. And we also ask you to spread the word so that others can discover this site as well. We are also always happy to hear your suggestions, comments, and criticisms in order to help us improve CancelledSciFi.com and make it a go-to destination for information on sci fi and fantasy television. And we will continue to post sci fi TV news, updates, trailers, and discussions at r/SciFiTV and urge you to participate there as well.
I have maybe a combined comment/suggestion. I’ll head over to Cult Sci Fi in a moment, but … I’m an old guy, and us old guys don’t like change. 🙂 So for the longest time, I did not stream. In fact, I was very anti-streaming. Network TV or bust! Two things changed that: a very good friend suggested I watch Dark a few years ago. Great, great, great. And here in the SF Bay Area, there is an old movie show called Creature Features, that I glommed on to early in covid. They used to be on network TV, KOFY 20. But that channel changed formats, so to keep watching, I had to stream. So I got a Roku, and the world changed.
Anyway, long story short, is that I have a list of older Sci Fi TV shows, streaming or not, that I maintain, and I know you’ve done this anyway, JJ, but please keep highlighting older TV shows/movies that I/we might have missed, that are worth watching. I’m just now finishing up Altered Carbon, for example. and I am just floored with how good that one is. I was on the cyberpunk bandwagon in the early days with Neuromancer, Snow Crash, etc, and to see something like that “on TV”, is just really, a dream come true. (Let’s not talk about the unfulfilled potential of Johnny Mnemonic … 🙂 ) Thank you for keeping this web site alive with your passionate posts!!
Thanks, and I am still putting up some of those posts here while others will be at Cult Sci Fi. And feel free to share suggestions on shows others might like.
Will “Sci Fi TV Listings for the Week of” be moving to cancelledscifi? I really count (counted) on this to keep up with the weeks offerings of scifi and related shows. I know there are other ways to obtain this information, but it was nice to have all the scifi related shows in one place.
Yes. The weekly Sci Fi TV Highlights posts will now have the full listings for the coming week. And the two week view will be at this link: https://www.cancelledscifi.com/sci-fi-tv-schedule/
Please let others know about these. There is not another site that I am aware of that compiles the listings on a weekly basis for sci fi and fantasy shows.