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:
Thanks for the info. I can’t say that I’ve enjoyed the show as much as I did the first season, but I don’t understand the low numbers either. Oh well. Maybe I should check out SpongeBob must be something there I’m missing?
As much as we love the girls maybe you could show some love to your female visitors? (Not a complaint just a hopeful suggestion!)
Thanks!
I was one of those demo viewers too, and am surprised at the low numbers.
No problem Polly: we’re full service when it comes to cheesecake
Thanks for the little bonus there at the end…
On another note, I saw this press release from NBC (http://www.nbcumv.com/scifi/release_detail.nbc/scifi-20080407000000-039battlestargal.html) that is claiming a higher rating, though with the same raw viewer numbers. Don’t know if things have just changed somewhere with the data, guess it’s not a huge deal since the show is gonna get to finish its run without getting canned beforehand. But if you’re a stat junkie, this could alter the trend of the show’s performance, per the numbers collected at (http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/List_of_Nielsen_ratings_%28RDM%29).
Based on the 1.3 figure here, it would be a slight uptick from Razor’s 1.21, and more or less on par with the show’s numbers for much of the previous season. But, take the 1.6 rating that NBC (and TVGuide for that matter) claims, and it marks the shows best performance since the third S3 episode, Exodus Part I, which also got a 1.6.
Now, this doesn’t necessarily indicate anything, as the numbers were probably boosted by premiere-night sampling. Plus it’s still lower than the numbers for every episode of the first 2 seasons. Like I said, not really much of a deal, but I was intrigued by the discrepancy.
For me though, I was quite impressed with the episode. Hopefully it’s an indicator that the recovery of quality that began at the end of the last season will continue through all of this one.
the 1.6 was for the 25-54 demo. You gotta read the press releases closely, those folks were born to use the highest number available whatever it is. the 1.3/2 rating/share was the actual HH rating/share overall.
i dont watch this show but i have to think that those are good numbers for the scifi channel and especially for a friday night.
Good review thanks for all you do to keep us informed.
Here is my take and others from the many forums on which I post regularly.
Of course the question is WHY? Why did 3.5 million households watch the mini and why now, have some ratings, especially in the later part of season III fallen to below 0.9?
And why are we surprised when after all the hype it gets a 1.3?
What do these millions of former viewers think and what do they say that the writers, producers, and critics have not seemed to understand?
The answer is rather simple, and it is a combination of three elements:
The first is that the story line has dramatically changed. And by this I mean, down to the character of the characters.
In writing, and by that I mean, books, you only have the text to go by when understanding who a character is. There are no pictures, only words.
Words are important, they set the tone, and very nature of the person being portrayed.
A consistent, quality writer knows that their very heart and soul of capturing the readers focus, is to make the characters both believable and consistent.
You know what a character, in whom you have emotionally invested, is going to do. When they do it, you feel it, you love it. You expect it, and you receive the reward of pure enjoyment when you get that feeling.
However, when someone of poor skill changes their character, or makes them do one thing then another in situation after situation, you lose that attachment, you are unable to make the emotional bond, and given enough harrowing abuses, you give up altogether.
This is the first problem with the writing of the show. They have egregiously violated the sacred trust of character continuity. And they seemly do not care. Worse, in pod casts they laugh about those of us who do care about such “trivial details” mocking and scorning their core audience with insults like “It is not about X or Y but the ‘Drama’”.
The second violation is their total change of pace from Season I and the first half of season II, and the rest of the episodes thereafter.
Time was tight, regulated, you felt like you were part of the story, minute by minute for those first 20 episodes. Then they changed. They sped up time, slowly, a day or two jump, then a week, maybe. Then you were not sure how much time had passed from one to the next for your ever changing characters, only to be insulted with the 18 months later season II ending.
Which leads us to the final problem. The “Reset”. OK, here we are back in space, Tigh is a drunk, Kara is rebellious and Lee is a wuss.
Again!
Forget anything that ever happened because the writers have.
Don’t trust what you know about any character, because they writers will change it next week or go back to old behaviors as if the character did not learn a damn thing from the previous crisis.
All in the name of supposed drama?
You cannot do these things and expect to get anything other than the bare minimum sycophantic fan base of die hards who refuse to believe that their Emperor has no clothes.
How can you mention the show being “beaten” by a new episode of Supernatural or Jericho, when both are network shows with usually bigger audiences (much bigger in CBS’ case) and BSG is on Sci-Fi, whose shows are lucky to top 2 million, and are huge hits if they top 3 million. Awful article.
One question I have, those ratings are for the actual premiere right? not the 12 dozen showings of it since the premier… With Sci-Fi, a lot of people may hold off and watch subsequent showings at a more decent hour, Plus, Sci-Fi must be the most Tivo’d network, are there live +7 data for Cable shows? and if so, does it take into account subsequent showings over the course of the week?
Oh, good catch Robert! What can I say, it was getting late, and it looked like the 1.6 was talking about the overall rating when I read it initially. Now I see my mistake. But it looks like some of the demo data from the release got put in here. Good to see those extra details.
As for the performance comparisons to network shows, I’d remember that it’s still on cable. As Gavin touched upon, the numbers pretty much have no chance of getting to network-quality levels anyway. Matching the likes of even Jericho would mean raw viewers would probably require a rise all the way up to (maybe even past) the levels the miniseries got, which the main series has never hit (or even come close to). There are only a handful of cable series that are getting numbers like that these days. The Closer comes to mind right away, but it’s a crime drama, something that will sell better to the mainstream audiences right now.
Sci-fi is hard to sell in the current market, I would say mainly because there are a few more choices now than back when Star Trek: TNG was one of the most watched shows in syndication. And numbers like BSG’s are probably pretty acceptable to the SciFi Channel. Especially when NBC is touting the performance so strongly. PR-speak or not, you don’t usually make a big deal out of something unless it performs at least as expected, if not better. And I don’t think those numbers are too much different from what the Stargates have managed on some occasions. So let’s compare apples to apples and stick to cable for comparisons in the future.
I bet the buzz for the show did contribute to some viewership, just not the Season 4 premiere. As someone else noted Sci-Fi re-airs stuff all the time, so people may just figure they’ll catch one of those showings, and I would also imagine a lot of new viewers were tempted to start getting into the series. Obviously one store isn’t a trend, but I did see people buying the season box sets at Best Buy this weekend.
Robert, do you have any indication of how the live Internet stream of the show performed? I’d like to hear your thoughts on whether or not that affected the numbers.
The BSG premiere pulled in similar numbers to the SGA season 4 finale with 2.1 million total viewers. Both very successful numbers for two shows that were struggling last season.
How are you comparing BSG on a cable network with other network shows? I would expect that the numbers it drew were pretty good for Sci Fi and for cable in general (wasn’t it the number three cable show for the night?) Don’t paint BSG too harshly, Robert!
Matthew, good point on the multiple airings.
The data Robert cites is from the single airing of the S4 premiere episode only.
Cable ratings we get do not aggregate multiple shows. Later airings would appear as separate episodes [evidence our many, many Spongebobs].
It’s a challenge for the first airing of a show like BSG to make the top 40 cable list [which is all we see, and likely all others report on], subsequent airings have effectively no chance of appearing on our radar.
2.0+ Million viewers is considered Excellent for a cable show from what I’ve heard.
This is also before DVR Live + 7.
As per DVR and counting… SCI FI is a leader in the C3 index, which means more people are watching the commercials show the DVR numbers are important as well.
We will probably never see the LIVE+7 numbers or the C3 numbers for BSG. I agree that the ratings were fine and that they are actually irrelevant as this is the final season of BSG and the rest of the shows will be produced regardless.
Thinking about Internet availability, torrent downloads and multiple airings doesn’t really factor into my thinking which was merely this: Internet Buzz is indicative of almost nothing. There was no buzz around CSI: Miami last week, even though it pulled in roughly 7x the BSG numbers.
First Jericho now BSG ?
Iraq allegory to close for comfort ?
“Osama, Obama and your mamma” personality disorder ?
As I’ve said before, it’s really striking how far the bar has dropped on SCIFI. Two years ago, getting a 1.3 rating in a premiere would have ensured BSG’s almost-immediate death. The same is true for the Stargates. Today, those ratings are considered good.
(I’m not insulting any of those shows, I’m simply pointing out that it’s amazing how much more competitive the environment is.)
Robert, surely BSG is not much cheaper to produce than TSCC – yet TSCC’s lowest rating got a 3.0 in the demo and like a 5-6 rating overall. How do the economics work for these shows? (Put differently, with such low ratings, how can SCIFI afford to produce any original scripted programming at all?) (And no, their awful Saturday movies-of-the-week do not count. :p)
Outlander, actually from what I read, BSG has a relatively very small production budget for a SciFi show (perhaps 50% or less of that of a network show).
Also syndication and DVD sales factor into the mix. But exactly how the economics work, we don’t know. It’s not clear to me whether these shows are “profitable immediately” or whether they are OK with waiting a little bit for the payback.
I agree completely that it’s amazing how much more competitive the environment is these days.
and as an aside @informant — I do not care about politics at all and I let slide completely any comparisons to what the shows do versus what goes on in the real world. That said, if Jericho had Tricia Helfer in it — well, I can’t say what it might have meant for its ratings, but I can say I would’ve written about the show at least four times as much as I already wrote about it!
Personally, I think the vast majority of Americans are not smart enough to follow the show.
And certainly there are those who don’t like having to think while watching TV.
So, let them watch those dancing shows and all that crap, I’ll just enjoy this frakking final season (as soon as I finish season three on DVD).
Joe, I’d just jump directly to the last 2 episodes of Season 3, watch the season four premiere and then go back and watch the remainder of Season 3 to tide you over between season 4 episodes. Season 4 seems poised to be much more interesting than season 3 was — I hope that turns out to be the case.
I am not sure if Robert can confirm this….
What Outlander said is right on the money. These days a 1.2 on SCI FI was like a 1.4 to 1.5 about a year and a half ago. Reason being? Because the amount of households who get SCI FI was less. Now that the number has increased to who gets SCI FI, a show can still keep the same amount of households tuned in but they will still have a lower rating.
Also like to point out that a show can score the same household rating but still have a large difference in total viewers.
Marc, it’s a somewhat complex discussion. There are two HH ratings #s that could be reported: one translates to the overall television universe and one translates to only the universe covered by the cable channels. When we report #s here, and what you generally see published in the press are the overall television universe #s. More coverage would change potentially both numbers, though seemingly it would change the overall # for the better. Since I don’t have all the old data (or much data at all) for the SciFi channel, I can’t really confirm what you posted. But I can’t deny it either.
I don’t get Scifi channel so I have to get my BSG fix online. A lot of my friends do the same. I think that using just TV numbers doesn’t reflect how many people actually watch the show
Rebecca, unfortunately there are no good consistent metrics for measuring online viewing yet (not for BSG, not for ANY show — I’m sure LOST has large online viewership, but I couldn’t tell you what it is!).
You sometimes will get reports of # of streams, but that’s fairly meaningless data as it doesn’t give you an idea on average how many watched the whole episode. I do grant that BSG is likely to have more online viewing than a lot of show, but until there are consistent metrics, there is no good way to talk about it or factor it in.
It shows that one television is watching BSG, but does not show that at my house there were 50 people watching that one television. I know of many BSG season 4 premiere FRAK parties, they should multiply the numbers at least by 2.
I don’t think Sci-Fi is upset with these numbers and I don’t think they were expecting a big jump just because of all the media coverage. The publicity for the network is enough for Sci-Fi to be happy about (just like Mad Men did for AMC). Another reason why the media covered it so much was because the last original episode had aired over a year ago. The network knows that its mini-series will always be its biggest draws and they made that very clear in the upfront presentation a few weeks ago.
Regarding the economics of the BSG(2003): It’s an “in-house” production meaning NBC/Universal does not pay licensing fees to an outside production company for airing the show.
Regarding the “vast majority of Americans are not smart enough to follow the show”: That’s a load of garbage put out by Moore and Eick to justify some really BAD writing, particularly in Season 3. Rachel Faith explained it nicely above.
I couldn’t believe so-called professionals were allowed to put such a disjointed, incomprehensible mess on the air. It wasn’t just one episode either (every series has one or two crummy episodes), it was episode after episode after episode. I’m amazed it got a Season 4.
I would be easier on the show if it was offered as an entertaining story. If writers and showrunners ask me to think, then I’m not going to overlook incredibly stupid characters, plot holes, out-of-character dialogue, inconsistencies in basic elements, retcons, etc.
Eugenia (and a belated thanks to Rachel Faith). I’m not really very surprised it got a season 4. I agree with you and I ranted a lot about the quality of season 3, and it was really at Bill’s recommendation that I gutted it out and finally got to the the last couple of episodes.
I think they thought they were being artistic. It could be I’m simply too plebian to appreciate the art — but if art comes at the expense of making the story and its characters less interesting, it’s too high of a price to pay in my opinion.
I’m guessing the following assured season 4:
1. it will still be one of the better rated SciFi shows regardless of the drop off from the early years
2. I hear the DVD sales are good and coupled with your point that NBCU doesn’t have to pay licensing fees, that all goes straight to the bottom line.
3.it seems you need a few seasons worth of shows at least for syndication purposes. If there are a total of 19 new episodes left, that would put them at exactly 75 (if you count the miniseries as 2 episodes).
The S4 premiere has me somewhat optimistic they’ve taken some of the criticism to heart — we’ll see.
When the network primetime average for SCI FI is under 1.2 million for the year to date, 2.1 million viewers is a no-brainer to be very good. Each show’s success also depends on how much they cost to air/produce.
Just goes to show you that the Neilson rating have no relevance on today's media society and drastically needs to update. I can't go 24 since season 4 premiered without talking to some random person about BSG these days. It's sad to think that so many of our shows are hinged about these obviously bogus rating and now a days, who verifying their sources?