I was looking forward to see what happens next now that Adama finally decided to take on the Cylons rather than running from them. I was disappointed that the show was cancelled.
Does anyone know why?
the ratings dropped week by week since the opening tv movie and it was to expensive
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Basically it was too expensive to produce given the time and era it was set in, which is heavily ironic given it set the path for other sci-fi or fantasy genre shows to cost well over 1 million dollars an episode!
And while ratings dropped, if it were any other TV show they would've been given the greenlight to return for a second year.
Battlestar Galactica's replacement in its slot was Mork And Mindy and despite the later success of that series, it failed to have higher ratings than Battlestar Galactica ever did?
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I have heard that Battlestar cost over a million bucks an episode to produce simply making it too expensive to continue on with. Why it cost so much still baffles me since they only had one big name in the show, Lorne Greene and every time they had a battle with the cylons they just reused the same stock footage over and over again.
shareOh OK thanks for the responses.
shareThe ratings started off like gangbusters and then dropped. The question I have is "Why?". With Star Wars mania still running wild, why wasn't every kid in America glued to their TV each week to get their fix? The meteoric rise and sudden fall of BSG still puzzles me.
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i for one never trusted the ratings system. the demographic they chose was perhaps not an accurate representation of it viewing audience.
shareI whole-heartedly agree with you--Especially back in the late 70s. That sort of thing is more sophisticated these days, but back then I'd say it heavily flawed.
'Cause there's thunder in your heart... every move is like lightning!
The ratings started off like gangbusters and then dropped. The question I have is "Why?". With Star Wars mania still running wild, why wasn't every kid in America glued to their TV each week to get their fix? The meteoric rise and sudden fall of BSG still puzzles me. >>> Glen Larson has said that his initial idea was to make a series of television movies. ABC, though, was the ones who thought it better to have a series. Well, ABC was wrong. By making it a weekly series, it ended up being more costly while at the same time delivering less satisfying stories. Larson obviously already had his movie ideas in mind, hence the reason that Lost Planet of the Gods, The Gun on Ice Planet Zero, The Living Legend, and War of the Gods were so much better written and far more lavish in their presentation. It is obvious that the one hour episodes were raced into production just to fill out the number of episodes needed for a series. this in turn led to the Cylons being used too much early on, and the need to try and quickly come up with other threats and adventures aside from Cylons later in the series. In other words, the series led to there being some half-baked efforts rushed into production. This is why the ratings dropped. And once you start causing people to lose interest, it is near impossible to get them back. had they stayed with the idea of doing TV movies, I think the ratings would have stayed quite consistent. Making it a series just sucked up more money and limited the time they had to get the product up on screen.
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Whose idea was it for the word "Lisp" to have an "S" in it?
ABC wanted to spread out the cost over more hours so reasonable expected revenues would cover expenses and most likely leave a small profit. 8 hours of programming most likely would not cover the cost of a bridge (Galactica), models, etc.. The Galactica bridge cost over a million dollars to build. If I had to guess as to the real reason ABC green lit BG was to show that the network could do something other than low brow comedy (Happy Days) and wiggle and jiggle (Charlie's Angels) to its advertisers. The timing was perfect as to ride the coattails of Star Wars and you never know how long a fad (Norman Lear comedies) might last. Nonetheless Larson was proven right and Gene Roddenberry early on wanted Star Trek to be a series of television movies. Assembly line type production for sci-fi seldom if ever works. The ideas run out in short order.
shareI think it cost so much not because of the SFX, but because of the actor's salaries.
shareI think it cost so much not because of the SFX, but because of the actor's salaries. >>> The effects were very costly. Never had such huge, movie quality effects work been produced for television before. This was John Dykstra using techniques developed for Star Wars, so yes, it was expensive.
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Whose idea was it for the word "Lisp" to have an "S" in it?
I did not know that. But I do recall that they had a lot of A-list guest stars, and that had to cost money.
shareIf anyone looks at Glen Larson shows in the 70's and 80's he certainly spared no cost in putting in A-list hollywood actors into his shows. If anything this was always one of Larson's; main themes and principals to have big name stars in his television shows!
McCloud, Quincy M.E., The Six Million Dollar Man, Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, The Fall Guy, Magnum, P.I., Knight Rider, The Highwayman, Team Knight Rider. All had stars of somekind who were big in the industry at one time or another.
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Why it cost so much still baffles me since they only had one big name in the show, Lorne Greene and every time they had a battle with the cylons they just reused the same stock footage over and over again. >>> Everything about the show was expensive. It wasn't just the effects that were costly, but the sets and such as well. The elaborate command center of the Galactica alone was costly to keep together, the Cylon outfits were costly to upkeep and film, and the visual effects were movie quality effects of the same ilk as Star Wars...made by John Dykstra himself. And each episode did feature new effects. It wasn't all just recycled stuff. Every episode featured at least a few new shots, and the two-part episodes were like mini-movies that featured lots of big new sets and big new effects. Remember the Tombs of Kobol, or the Gun on Ice Planet Zero, or War of the Gods? All featured lots of new effects work. And aside from Lorne Green, they had lots of well known guest actors appear throughout the series. I can't imagine what you find so baffling about it.
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Whose idea was it for the word "Lisp" to have an "S" in it?
Agreed
I'd also like to ad that it was also publicized that the working computer monitors, 40 of them on the bridge alone, leased through the Techtronics corp (rip, lol) were the major culprit for the price tag. This was quite a bit before most households would have PCs, and the tech was still brand spanking new for those models. They didn't forsee how much they would have to sacrifice to have those monitors on the set. If they had just cut down about half the number, we'd probably have had another season... ratings be damned.
The tendancy also to hire former big named stars as guests, (who, though past their prime were still demanding a heavy pay), was standard practice in the 70's, and something they could have done well without until the show wa into it's second season. But the mentality at the time was that it was a major selling point. With everything else demanding money, it didn't help.
And, yeah.. the F/X. Dykstra coming off the biggest hit in the world, they thought, was money well spent.. and it was. BUT, once Universal saw how much the bills were stacking up to be, promptly order a zero level ceiling on the production house. Hence, you'll notice that, even in the 3 hour premier, the same shots were already being repeated, ad nauseum. This fact, probably above all, made it hard to focus on the winning qualities of the best of episodes (ex: The Living Legend). This was maddening after a short time, and , no doubt, was a factor in the failure. A shame, since the outlines for the fist half of season two had killer stories planned for it. A lot of lessons learned on what to do/not to do in a show with such a major budget.
If only...
The more complex the mind.. the greater the need for the simplicity of play"
Battlestar Galactica initially was a ratings success. CBS counter-programmed by moving its Sunday block of All in the Family and Alice an hour earlier, to compete with Galactica in the 8:00 timeslot. From October 1978 to March 1979, All in the Family averaged more than 40 percent of the 8:00 audience, against Galactica's 27 or 28 percent.
In mid-April 1979, ABC executives canceled the show. An AP article reported "The decision to bump the expensive Battlestar Galactica was not surprising. The series had been broadcast irregularly in recent weeks, attracting slightly over a quarter of the audience in its Sunday night time slot." Larson has claimed that it was a failed attempt by ABC to reposition its number one program Mork & Mindy into a more lucrative timeslot. The cancellation led to viewer outrage, protests outside ABC studios, and even contributed to the suicide of Edward Seidel, a 15-year-old boy in Saint Paul, Minnesota who was obsessed with the program.
I realize that I'm looking at this with 35 years of hindsight, but the shortsightedness of Universal and ABC baffles me. Okay, Battlestar Galactica was very expensive and ratings were dropping; I understand that. But it was still a top 25 show and this was still at the hight of the sci-fi craze. I know Universal tried to shop the series to CBS and NBC and that didn't work out. But why pull the plug completely after the first season? BSG was conceived as a series of television movies and/or mini-series. They should've gone back to that concept the following season. Even one well written, high quality TV movie during the following television season could have saved the series; even if they couldn't get the whole cast back together. They did something like that for Emergency! (itself a Universal production) which extended that series life by about two years (I'm only using that example to illustrate a point, not as argument for an equally low quality production). Oh, the possibilities...
Instead, what we got was Galactica 80; and that was just a mess. After they canceled BSG, the network and producers realized they had lost a viable product and rushed to unscramble the egg; which resulted in a host of ridiculous (sometimes downright stupid, even to a ten year old), permanent changes to the show. After that you couldn't do anything with the series. Retconning G 80 as the bad fever dream of one of the original character's wouldn't have passed muster in a pre-Bobby's-in-the-Shower world (Dallas, Season 9). Honestly. something like that probably wouldn't pass today either, but I digress. My point is, if everyone involved had just thought about it a little longer, they could have kept the series alive and the franchise growing.
After reading the previous posts and doing a little research, I've found there is yet another reason that hasn't been mentioned so far regarding the declining viewership that led to cancelation: ABC's spotty scheduling. My source for the following initial broadcast dates is Starlog Magazine issue #27, from October 1979 (yes, I still have it!).
After the 8th episode, The Living Legend, there was a 2-week break before the 9th episode, Fire in Space aired on 12-17-78.
After four weeks, the 10th episode, War of the Gods aired on 1-14-79 and 1-21-79, followed by the 11th episode, The Man with Nine Lives, which aired on 1-28-79.
Three weeks later, the 12th episode, Murder on the Rising Star aired on 2-18-79, followed by the 13th episode, Greetings from Earth, which aired on 2-25-79.
Two weeks later, the 14th episode, Baltar's Escape aired on 3-11-79, followed by Experiment in Terra (the 15th episode), which aired on 3-18-79.
Two weeks later, episode #16, Take the Celestra aired on 4-1-79.
Four weeks later, the final (#17) episode, The Hand of God aired on 4-29-79.
While some of these protracted initial airdates could probably be blamed on production issues, I'll never forget how frustrating it was to watch the show and never be sure when it would be on again. During the initial run, I missed Murder on the Rising Star and Take the Celestra entirely, and never saw them until they were released to syndication. Someone could probably make a strong case that ABC had already given up on the show by December 1978 and only aired the last 9 episodes to fill the schedule and recoup production costs.
The watcher and the tower.....waiting hour by hour
The 6 year old in me (that was the age I was when it got cancelled) is still upset about it's cancellation. I'm hoping the new movie they're making will help with that. It's supposed to be based on the original series.
sharehttps://www.quora.com/What-went-wrong-for-the-1978-TV-series-Battlestar-Galactica/answer/Jon-Mixon-1
It never got over being viewed as being a cheesy Star Wars ripoff - Hell…even the Vipers look similar to Star Wars X-wing fighters. Battlestar Galactica needed to go in another direction…and it didn’t.share
ABC didn’t seem to get behind it - Basically ABC had a series which could have lasted for nearly a decade and created a marketing goldmine a la Star Wars or Star Trek and it did…not much with it. If ABC had shown that it supported the series, it could have perhaps become one of their biggest 1970s hits.
The cast wasn’t stellar - The series just didn’t get the actors that it needed to boost it to the next level. While there were flashes of brilliance (John Calicos, Jane Seymour, Herbert Jefferson, Jr, etc.) the rest of cast, including television veteran Lorne Greene, were varying degrees of mediocre. Had the cast been more dynamic, the series would have done better.
Fans didn’t get behind it - If people had watched the series and written the network letters (No email then) the series would have survived. They didn’t and it didn’t.
Lengthy science fiction television series were still a decade away, meaning that the original BSG came “too soon” - The Star Trek reboot TNG was still nearly decade away and prior to it no sci fi series lasted more than 1–3 seasons. There was no history of successful series during the 1960s or 1970s and so BSG was always fighting an uphill battle. Had the series come a decade later during the TNG/Babylon 5/ Andromeda era, it probably would have done far better.
One of the things I don't think anyone here has mentioned: you never knew when the damn show was going to be on. I was one of those kids who couldn't wait for 8pm Sundays, and was planted firmly in front of the television, only to find, week after week after week, that it had been preempted and something else was broadcast. And this frequently happened even though the TV listings in the paper (we had to check the newspaper back then to see what was on) showed it was scheduled to air that night. My parents, who also liked the show, were equally disappointed. Sometimes the TV listings showed something else airing, but ABC never made any announcement of when BG would be back. Then it would turn up again one week, and you'd think it was back on, only to have the cycle repeat. I strongly believe the irregularity of its broadcast caused a lot of viewers to drift away and this negatively impacted the ratings. Then combine the sinking ratings with the high production cost and that was it.
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