Interestingly, your post echoes the same feelings of Star Trek fans when NBC announced that low ratings for The Original Series might result in its cancellation at the end of the 1966-67 season. I'm sure you're familiar with what happened next - there was a huge letter-writing campaign to the network, and the executives relented and renewed the series even though it still had less than great ratings.
Having done that, however, the network never did support Star Trek much; indeed, it placed the series in a really bad time slot (Friday nights at 10 PM), which pretty much ensured it would have dismal ratings. Also, Gene Roddenberry quit as executive producer and the guy who replaced him, Fred Freiberg (or Freiberger) approved some of the show's weakest episodes. Quality-wise and ratings-wise, the series took a huge nosedive and Star Trek was cancelled by the summer of 1969.
Fox seems to NOT support Sci Fi shows very well. Its only big hit in the genre was X-Files, and that was not really traditional Sci Fi. Firefly was, and so was Space: Above and Beyond. T-TSCC might be one of the best series ever made, but if viewers don't watch it, it'll be be gone by mid-season.
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