Women, kids, and Stargate Universe

To refer to a user on GateWorld Forums who contended that the most populous demographic watching Stargate Universe (SGU) were older (white) men who would watch any and all Stargate that was available. He asked if women and kids "killed" SGU — implying those Nielsen viewers who didn't watch Stargate Universe, thereby letting SyFy have low ratings as the official reason as to not renewing SGU.

I haven't seen the Nielsen statistics, but based on information presented here (that mostly men watched), then the conclusion is that not all [i]Nielsen[/i] women could watch the show — preferring "Dancing With The Star(let)s". — And those that could watch couldn't let their kids watch, effectively sacrificing watching it themselves.

Part of SyFy's favoured demographic wasn't adult enough: The young kids who couldn't see (under-14's), and older kids who wouldn't watch (the video game generation not interested in character drama). And assuming those were mostly male. The 'girl' demographic could have been turned off either by the very concept of science fiction, or other interests, such as Dancing With My Two Left Feet and a goth woman scientist secretly infatuated with her father-figure-boss.

There's been another thread over here questioning if any of the women characters could have been or could have become someone like Carter (I haven't read through all the thread yet, but I do have a draft reply for it), or very nearly as perfect as her. You know, these people are very few and far between anyway; the closest real-life examples are women astronauts or someone like Valerie Plame. — I have to admit I dropped my jaw when I first saw her on tv (IIRC :-).

This must probably be a cultural thing that women in nowadays' U.S.-based (or -targeted) television shows are very strong characters, possessing almost superwoman-like capabilities in each show, including NCIS, SG-1, and so on; as if that were something who young American women would strive to be, thereby failing to tolerate characters more fallible than your average superchick.

Truth of the matter is, that most people (including women) just are not as perfect as the 'hero'-type characters presented on popular tv shows. I have to contend that SGU was so realistic in its presentation that it perhaps turned viewers off to the collective dismay of us fans. I remember an unintentionally funny line by an SGU hater who wrote (on IMDb, I think) that tv shows weren't supposed to show real life...

Oh, and the kids that did watch SGU, didn't watch it from a Nielsen box, but I guess, very much on their own terms. I am also considering failures in marketing SGU, but I don't know where did the responsibilities lie as to who was supposed to do exactly what.