The slow death of niche market television

Cartoon Network as of late has been showing movies. Spiderman, Batman, you name it. While I suppose it has a cartoon/comic connection these movies don't relay what the network is about. Cartoons. Even the anime is better off than these movies but for sake of ratings, there has been executive decisions made to release these movies.

Sci-Fi is another story. It was only a while ago when the hit series Farscape was canceled. The ratings just weren't high enough the executives said. I'm sure with all the costume and make-up, the costs of that show were extraordinarily high too so while it was a shock to all the people that stuck by Sci-Fi for it, it wasn't something that wasn't coming. Now Stargate SG-1 is being canceled after ten years of service, five with Sci-Fi. I suppose they're banking on the fact that Battlestar Galactica will take them down the glory road but what's with this ECW wrestling?

I mean science fiction and wrestling have nothing in common. At all. Really.

So in an effort to dig for more ratings, Sci-Fi is branching out past its namesake and kicking the viewers in the shin in the process. Amusing too since the 5% of viewers that have the Nielsen rating boxes don't even watch the niche markets. Skewed data? Definitely. It's a sad time, and if the death tolls of these niche markets don't call out to new Internet technology to take its place, I don't know what will. Since television won't be the same without channels for geeks like me.