R.I.P.: Stargate Universe

Below are a series of 5 tweets from the Syfy channel about the cancellation of Stargate Universe:

• Announcement today: Syfy will end its original action-adventure series Stargate Universe when the show returns with the final ...
  
• 10 episodes of its second season in the Spring of 2011. The Stargate franchise -- consisting of Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis...
  
• and Stargate Universe -- has aired on Syfy since 2002. Syfy has a slate of new scripted projects lined up for 2011 including ...
  
• the series premiere of Being Human on January 17, the recently green lit one-hour drama series Alphas and the much anticipated...
  
• Battlestar prequel pilot movie, Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome. Warehouse 13, Eureka & Haven will also return w/new seasons next year
  

Another take on this situation can be found on John Scali's blog: Whatever. Having worked with the show he knows a little about what is going on. And I have to agree with his reasoning for why this happened.

At one time Friday night was the death knell for a television series, look at how many Fox series were sent there to die. Then the SciFi Channel worked hard to build that time block into something SF fans would come to and watch. Now the Syfy Channel has turned it into Friday night wrestling and sent the shows they premiered there off to the four corners of the week. I know I find it hard to adapt to an ever changing schedule, missing a lot of the shows I used to watch when they moved to Tuesday (the night PBS airs NOVA). Because of this, I find myself more and more waiting for the DVD collection to come out and watch it then (without commercials and bottom of the screen nonsense), which of course, as John pointed out, doesn't help a show's ratings. So how can we let the corporate suits making the decisions know what we want to watch, if we don't want to use their calendar by using DVRs, Hulu, and DVD releases?

Another option is to do what anime series do. You get 13 or 26 episodes to tell your story arc and you need to wrap it up on your last episode. If your story needs longer, you negotiate that before you start production. Maybe then we will have fewer series end on a cliffhanger that never gets resolved.