It was the geek version of ‘The Soup,’ and it seems that the big wigs at Syfy couldn’t grasp the concept as the network has cancelled ‘The Wil Wheaton Project‘ after its first season.
The news of the cancellation came from host Wil Wheaton, himself, via his blog as he related a phone call from a Syfy executive. “Well, I’m about to make your day less great,” the executive told Wheaton. “Then, he told me that Syfy will not be ordering more episodes of “The Wil Wheaton Project.”
According to Wheaton:
He assured me that it wasn’t the quality of the show. He told me again and again how much he loved it, how funny he thought it was, how much he liked me, how much he wanted to find other things to do together.
Ultimately, he told me, the executives in New York just didn’t think we had enough viewers to justify more episodes. I didn’t say anything about the total lack of promotion off the network, or point out that our ratings were on par with The Soup, or that ratings are always lower in summer than the fall. I didn’t bother saying any of that, because I know he knows that. I was reasonably confident that he made those arguments with New York when he was trying to get the show renewed. I presume he fought hard for us, but ultimately couldn’t sway executives in New York who never seemed — in my opinion — to really understand what kind of show we were doing, who I was and why I was hosting it, and how to engage with and promote to the audience who would like it.
I thanked him for the call, thanked him for the opportunity to do a show that Syfy had never tried before, and sincerely thanked him for all his creative support. He’s a good guy in an industry full of bad guys, and I genuinely enjoyed working with him. I know that he’s trying really hard to put the sci-fi back into Syfy, and if anyone can do it there (which is going to be incredibly difficult, I think), he’s the guy who can make it happen.
‘The Wil Wheaton Project’ debuted in May on the Syfy network and was greenlit for a 12 episode run. During that time, Wheaton would take the week’s most trending genre topics in film, television, viral videos and news and in wonderful Wheaton style report, discuss and snark what the geek community was talking about that week.
A television talk show just for geeks focused on genre news on the Syfy network? You would think that was a match made in heaven, but the New York executives thought differently as seen in the lack of promotion and publicity the show had.
Wheaton also goes on to write that he was okay with the network’s decision and urged that fans forgo the usual letter-writing campaign to bring the series back. “It’s not going to happen,” he writes. “We should instead put that energy into something else, like getting #butts to trend.”
You can read Wheaton’s full post on his blog.
As for Syfy, the network has yet to respond to our request for a comment but we’re pretty sure once the holidays are over, a statement will be released.
