This thing has been bleeding viewers. The reason it didn't get that extra year is due to Moore's storytelling choices.i agree that there was a substantial viewer bleed. Much of that can be attributed to SciFi management.
- Why not play episodes during hiatus? And i don't speak of BSG marathons once every three months.
- Moving to a different time and date mid-season was a nonstarter.
- Not promoting the show as fully as it could have been promoted (no products marketed?).
Still, even with declining viewership, BSG has been a big money maker for the network, in terms of both DVD sales, and I-Tunes downloads.
There is a difficulty with any programme, especially a serial such as BSG where story lines evolve across seasons. That difficulty is that at the beginning, characters and possible directions are a
Tabla Rasa, but as time goes on, one 'writes him or herself into a corner', that is to say that they're limited by the choices made for the character in the past.
Yes, IMO, Moore has made some bad choices. For example, the conclusion to season 3 appears to have been written for 14 year olds, not the 18-54 demographic the show was attempting to reach. It was stupid, plain and simple. The very late season 3 dealings with Starbuck were also stupid impulses that should have been suppressed.
Rather than boring though, i thought that the show was entirely too
intense, and intense without letup. They needed to give their audience a break. i'm all for reality of the situation, but there is such a thing as burning out your audience.
Incidentally, it was Moore and Eick's choice to end it after four seasons. The alternative was the uncertainty of getting a fifth season, because Bonnie Hammer is still living in the 50's with her reliance on Nielsen ratings as authoritative, and an accurate measure of a show's popularity.
The bottom line is not the Nielsen numbers, rather, the bottom line is how much money the show bring to the network. After all, it exists to make money.