No Nielsen Ratings Glory for BSG Season Four Premiere

As predicted, the Battlestar Galactica season four premiere will be bested by about 20 SpongeBob airings. The season four premiere did but a 1.3/2 (Household rating/share) and a 1.1/3 in the 18-49 demo (the good news, I suppose, is that almost the entire viewership was in the demo). , I can’t say I understand the phenomenon, but, as they say, it is what it is. Overall, the show drew 2.138 million viewers.

Just another data point of Internet buzz means this: almost absolutely nothing at all. So many things including Monk and Psych on Sunday night (which was generally considered very lousy ratings) beatdown BSG so badly that it’s perplexing.

Update: more data — 1.5+ million 25-54 viewers. 1.4 million 18-49 viewers. Best 18-49 performance since Jan 13, 2006. Best 25-54 performance since October 6, 2006 (season 3 premiere). 606,000 women 18-49 watched — the best performance the show has ever had by that metric. Chicks dig BSG! (43% of 18-49 viewership was among females). It was the #3 cable program in primetime overall on Friday, and #4 in the 18-49 demo, and #1 in the 25-54 demo.

While I’m a harsh critic of BSG because it set such a high bar with its miniseries/pilot in the wayback, I thought the season four premiere very, very good. But for all the Internet buzz, for the thousands of headlines, for the New York Times coverage to boot — it did worse than a new episode of Supernatural on the CW, and way, way, way, worse than any airing of Jericho. But, I’m not surprised by that at all. I still can’t wait to see who the final cylon is, and because you can never get too much of Tricia Helfer/Number 6…enjoy: