Dark Matter: No Season 4? (Updated)

[Perelandra]

The only shows I watch on Syfy are Dark Matter, 12 Monkeys, and the Expanse.
12 Monkeys will be gone after this last season but at least we will get a proper ending.
They could have done the same for Dark Matter, even if it was a shortened season with 5 episodes or so, couldn't they? I mean, we got left with a lot of cliffhangers that we are never gonna know the answers too. I think another poster on this forum mentioned they bit off an awful lot at the end of episode 3/13.
Five's sister, Sarah, Two's daughter, the aliens, the androids, we need closure at least.
I work most nights so I usually never get the chance to watch it when first aired.
And unlike other shows, it didn't have a second airing the same night in a later timeslot.
If I wasn't invested in the Expanse, I would quit watching SYFY once 12 Monkeys is done.
I'm not going to pick up any more new shows if we can't be guaranteed of a proper ending.

[Ian-S]

According to his blog, JM pitched a short 6 season arc to wrap the story up, by SYFY said no, the story is not the problem, basically SYFY did not own this series so did not make any money from international distribution, merchandising or streaming, so they essentially cut in in favour of their own 'original content' stuff like Killjoys, even though DM was one of their highest rated shows during 2017.

Seems a bit spiteful to me.

[DigiFluid]

Protecting your own bottom line has nothing to do with spite, it's protecting your own bottom line. Seefee is a business first and foremost; if there's money in the bank, it only makes sense to invest in what will give them the greatest ROI. It's unfortunate for us as viewers, but nobody with the slightest amount of financial sense is going to invest in something that'll give you a 150% ROI if you can put that money into something that'll earn you 500%.

[Annoyed]

That's not entirely bad thing, as one of the places they save $ is actors; most of these shows use lesser known actors who don't command high salaries. But you get to see some amazing new talent that will eventually show up again elsewhere. Roger Cross (Continuum & Dark Matter) and Emily Rose (Haven) come to mind immediately but there are many others.

[Gen. Chris]

According to his blog, JM pitched a short 6 season arc to wrap the story up, by SYFY said no, the story is not the problem, basically SYFY did not own this series so did not make any money from international distribution, merchandising or streaming, so they essentially cut in in favour of their own 'original content' stuff like Killjoys, even though DM was one of their highest rated shows during 2017.

Seems a bit spiteful to me.

It isn't spiteful...It makes sense. But what doesn't make sense is why this issue didn't cause it to be a "problem" sooner.

In a way, one could see this as more like Syfy is choosing to just not show it any more.

But at the same time, that COULD make it easier for them to find a new home, like Netflix. I won't count it out until we know for sure.

[planet_tv]

I found a link to this on Alex Mallari Jr. twitter. It's another Dark Matter petition and it's up to 17,131 supporters.

https://www.change.org/p/syfy-renew-...r-for-season-4

Edit: After I posted this 17,143 supporters.

This is a post Alex Mallari Jr. made about the petition: https://twitter.com/AlexMallariJr/st...51285080006656
My favorite reply to his post: https://twitter.com/CathyL_66/status/904453591443890177

[Tilarta]

Dark Matter is also a Canadian produced show, so that can't be a factor.

Signed the second petition as well.
The more public support we demonstrate, the better.

So it was all about greed then?
They weren't getting residuals or whatever from Dark Matter, but they did from Killjoys.
So they cancelled the one that wasn't earning them the most money?
I'm not usually an advocate of fanbase rivalries/feuds, but if this is true, I'm going to endorse this one......

I am wondering if there is a third factor overlooked here, subsidiary television stations.
I don't know about America/other countries, but in Australia, Free2Air television channels are where I first saw my major sci-fi series.

And this is what happened for TNG, DS9, Voyager, Stargate and Farscape:
All of the above show initially had prime time slots.
But as time went on, they were all pushed back to 11:00pm at night.
Sometimes a show that preceded them (a political talkback show and a football panel show) was allowed to exceed it's broadcast time by 1 hour, which resulted in the episode either being pushed back to midnight or removed from the schedule to recover the lost hour.
Eventually there was something like 3 weeks between episodes and the series were dropped from the channels completely before the final seasons even aired.
This is the point I started getting Dvds of the episodes instead of watching television.


Now for an economic based perspective, NCSoft lost a fair bit of money burying Tabula Rasa and Blackstar.
With purchasing the distribution rights, legal fees, court ordered settlement payments, loss of paid subs to Tabula Rasa, indulging in their personal vendetta against sci-fi cost them money.
So given that all the money it cost them to pursue a personal grudge, I don't believe decisions of this kind are completely unbiased.

[Ian-S]

Protecting your own bottom line has nothing to do with spite, it's protecting your own bottom line. Seefee is a business first and foremost; if there's money in the bank, it only makes sense to invest in what will give them the greatest ROI. It's unfortunate for us as viewers, but nobody with the slightest amount of financial sense is going to invest in something that'll give you a 150% ROI if you can put that money into something that'll earn you 500%.

That's not how you run a business, you don't drop a bread and butter product to back something unknown, after all that 500% ROI you quote, could just as easily be a 500% loss if you've misread the market.

[DigiFluid]

That's not how you run a business, you don't drop a bread and butter product to back something unknown, after all that 500% ROI you quote, could just as easily be a 500% loss if you've misread the market.

Killjoys is not "unknown," they've been airing it for as long as they have Dark Matter. They have three years of empirical financial data showing it's a better income stream than DM.

Both shows were likely to end within two years at most anyway (Seefee has never run a scripted drama series for more than 5 years/seasons), and there was a choice to make--fund the weak financial performer or fund the one that makes you more money. The shows may have been close in viewership numbers, but Killjoys makes Seefee more money.

We as viewers don't have to be happy about it, but it has nothing to do with Seefee being emotional or 'spiteful' or 'greedy.' It's basic financial sense and responsible investment of their resources. Simple as that.

[Annoyed]

Killjoys is not "unknown," they've been airing it for as long as they have Dark Matter. They have three years of empirical financial data showing it's a better income stream than DM.

Both shows were likely to end within two years at most anyway (Seefee has never run a scripted drama series for more than 5 years/seasons), and there was a choice to make--fund the weak financial performer or fund the one that makes you more money. The shows may have been close in viewership numbers, but Killjoys makes Seefee more money.

We as viewers don't have to be happy about it, but it has nothing to do with Seefee being emotional or 'spiteful' or 'greedy.' It's basic financial sense and responsible investment of their resources. Simple as that.

Haven ran 6 seasons, they just ran the final season as 5A & 5B, each 13 eps and a year apart.

On the other hand, maybe they were doing that as their way of saying the standard would be 5 seasons. Haven was one of their best/strongest shows.

[jelgate]

Irrelevant. Haven was produced for 5 seasons. How long the hiatus in the season lasts doesn't matter

[Ian-S]

Killjoys is not "unknown," they've been airing it for as long as they have Dark Matter. They have three years of empirical financial data showing it's a better income stream than DM.

Both shows were likely to end within two years at most anyway (Seefee has never run a scripted drama series for more than 5 years/seasons), and there was a choice to make--fund the weak financial performer or fund the one that makes you more money. The shows may have been close in viewership numbers, but Killjoys makes Seefee more money.

We as viewers don't have to be happy about it, but it has nothing to do with Seefee being emotional or 'spiteful' or 'greedy.' It's basic financial sense and responsible investment of their resources. Simple as that.

That assumes it was an either/or decision and they couldn't afford both series, which if you read his blog, JM sugests it was not, he basically says they chose not to renew it because it wasn't original content and they preferred to invest in original content because they can theoretically make more money from it.

As I said, a risky decision cancelling your highest rated scripted show especially if your chosen replacement original content doesn't perform as hoped (and from what I hear, it's replacement is some fantasy thing). I know why they made the decision, I just don't agree with the reasoning behind it.

[Gen. Chris]

Haven was one of their best/strongest shows.

Lol, not near the end. I still haven't finished it because the second half of season 5 is not very good for me.

[pjt]

Dark Matter is also a Canadian produced show, so that can't be a factor.

Killjoys is a Space show, and Dark Matter was SYFY original. So Killjoys costs less for SYFY, and they need all the money for Sharknado 236.

[Tilarta]

The simple fact is people aren't programs who assess everything by numerical values.
If entertainment programs were only produced based on maximized monetary profit, we'd only have two forms of entertainment, one of which would be reality tv.

And there is also the third kind of entertainment, I call it Fakality (Fake Reality).
It's basically just any crime/police or legal/lawyer show.
I don't know how many they made, but it seems like there's a lot of them.
It was a joke in one of my comics that in the future, there would be an entire 24hour channel with only CSI shows, one for each city in America.

The one factor the corporations fail to take into account is fanbase feedback.
Just because a show is made and decided it must be the popular one doesn't make it happen.
Especially if that show is low quality and just made because it's cost effective to do so.

I don't know if this principle applies to SyFy, but I have noticed that two channels is choosing the high rotation model of scheduling.
That is, they produce several shows for about a year (usually a sitcom), then cancel them one by one and replace it with another, similar show.
In that case, it didn't work, because the two derivative shows failed to gain the appeal of the original one and they had to be cancelled immediately because they failed while the first season was still a work in progress.

And one of those channels has failed to turn a significant profit for several years, so it is obviously not working! They had to do an emergency money transfer from another division (closing it down in the process) just to keep the channel financially viable.

As I said, a risky decision cancelling your highest rated scripted show especially if your chosen replacement original content doesn't perform as hoped (and from what I hear, it's replacement is some fantasy thing).

Oh no, not another fantasy show.
That's one of my instant rejection criteria, no matter what it is, if it's fantasy, then I'm never to support/accept the franchise.
To be brutally honest, there's too much fantasy genre entertainment and making more is just a waste of time/money.