Or to be more specific, why did first run episodes suddenly stopped airing in 1997? The final six episodes (there were 18 episodes in Season 5 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Weird_Science_episodes#Season_5_(1997–98))) didn't air on USA but instead on Sci-Fi Channel the following year. One theory that I've read for why Weird Science was so unceremoniously dumped was that Barry Diller (https://apnews.com/9f1e332e16961e7ff970665ad251d543), when he started owning USA Network, was trying to clean up the network to sell and make a profit from it. Remember that it was around this same time that USA got rid of Up All Night (http://thelandofwhatever.blogspot.com/2019/02/forgotten-tv-usa-up-all-night-1989.html), which was considered too "low brow" for the "new" (http://www.slasherstudios.com/2012/02/02/slasher-studios-remembers-usa-up-all-night-do-you/) USA Network.