Wil Wheaton Blogs His Syfy Show Is Toast

Wil Wheaton says Syfy will not order more episodes of The Wil Wheaton Project. The 12-episode summer series hosted by the actor/blogger/geek culture expert. The actor/blogger/geek culture expert blogged about it today, saying he got a call this week from a Syfy exec he did not name, as he was returning from a walk on the beach with his wife to look at the big waves.

“I have [Syfy Network Executive] for you,” a disinterested assistant said. “Okay,” I said. The line fell silent, and I knew that my work with Syfy was over,” he wrote today on his blog.  The unnamed executive “assured me that it wasn’t the quality of the show,” Wheaton wrote.

“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.”

Wheaton said he “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.”

Wheaton also urged “nerds,” who, he said, ” have a penchant for letter-writing campaigns and stuff to try and save shows we like” to please not do so in this instance. ” It’s not going to happen, and we should instead put that energy into something else, like getting #butts to trend.”

Last April, Syfy greenlit the 12-episode summer series hosted by Wheaton. The 30-minute weekly comedy premiered May 27 at 10 PM and ended its run on August 12. Each week, Wheaton dissected the week’s most popular and trending topics across science fiction film, television and pop culture, video games, viral videos and news. “Wil Wheaton’s rock star status within the genre fan base, along with his insatiable passion for all things pop culture, make him the ideal arbiter of what’s hot and what’s not in the genre space,” Syfy president Dave Howe said in making the announcement.