I think it's a man running the network now, Mark something? They do seem to be going a lot more with Sci Fi these days, ironic that Smallville was shunned so much when it was one of their top-rated shows, but these days it would probably get just as much love and promotion as Arrow and The Flash get today. I'm not sure if it would have affected the budget though, even though Supernatural is doing really well for them, they still have less money to spend because of the pay rises that you get by the time of the tenth season. That would probably have been an issue with SV regardless

With shows like Gossip Girl, they seemed to be favoured over SV because the demo that they attracted still brought in far more money than Smallville when it came to what they could charge for ad spots during that show, even though their actual ratings always seemed pretty bad to me, but I'm not sure exactly how it all works