Bad news for sci-fi geeks?

Maureen Ryan has a long story in today’s Tempo section of the Chicago Tribune arguing that the big-screen success of Lord of the Rings will not translate into more sci-fi on television: “The Lord of the Rings” collected an awe-inspiring 11 Oscars, and its best picture win was a first for a fantasy film. But ...

By , a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast.

Maureen Ryan has a long story in today's Tempo section of the Chicago Tribune arguing that the big-screen success of Lord of the Rings will not translate into more sci-fi on television:

Maureen Ryan has a long story in today’s Tempo section of the Chicago Tribune arguing that the big-screen success of Lord of the Rings will not translate into more sci-fi on television:

“The Lord of the Rings” collected an awe-inspiring 11 Oscars, and its best picture win was a first for a fantasy film. But fans of fantasy, horror and science-fiction entertainment can’t count on the critical success of “Rings” — and its box-office records — to sweep their favorite genre from the multiplex to the TV schedule. The truth is stranger — and stronger — than fantasy: Market forces have a stranglehold on even the smaller networks and cable channels that used to nurture genre TV. “I do think it’s harder for science fiction and genre shows to make it than it has been in the past. It’s harder for them to find their place,” says Dawn Ostroff, president of UPN…. But the biggest indignity may have been suffered by “Jake 2.0,” the sci-fi flavored saga of a computer nerd-turned-superhero. UPN recently aired a repeat episode of its reality show, “America’s Next Top Model,” in “Jake’s” time slot. The would-be cover girls’ rerun beat the mutant computer nerd’s usual ratings. The upshot: “Jake” is “on hiatus” (in other words, don’t look for it next year).

Read the entire thing — it’s a nice bashing of the proliferation of reality shows and Law & Order clones. That said, two quibbles. First, as someone whose sci-fi enthusiasm is actually pretty erratic, was there ever a golden age of sci-fi on television? Second, if there has been such a decline, could it also be explained by the improvement in big-screen special effects, which increases the incentive to produce sci-fi movies but reduces the incentive to create poor substitutes for the small screen? In other words, big-screen successes like LOTR are not complements for small-screen sci-fi, but substitutes.

Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner

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