As summer season comes to a close, Lena Headey, Summer Glau & company will most definitely back tomorrow night. But after six plus hours of NFL football on Fox, it seems Fox has no love for Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
I feel like I saw the promos for Fringe’s Tuesday series debut one hundred and fifty-seven times, and another fifty or so promos for Hole in the Wall, but I’m not sure I remember even seeing one promo for tomorrow night’s season premiere of TSCC.
I’m sure I have that wrong and I’m equally sure it doesn’t matter much whether I do or I don’t. Summer loving FrankJ in the comments here wants to know what kind of ratings season two of TSCC needs to start off with. I think it doesn’t matter very much. It might have to drop below four million before Fox won’t run the thing all year as a tie-in to the fourth installment of the Terminator movie franchise in May. The ratings may need to be worse than ABC’s Wanna Bet for that not to happen.
So although it seems Fringe is getting all the love (and don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I won’t be watching it myself), Fox showed the love for TSCC merely by bringing it back for a second season. And though it’s Fringe that is getting fewer commercials in Fox’s “remote free” viewing environment, commenter Gusar points out that the fifth episode of this year’s second season of TSCC is sponsored by Dodge and will run with just 8 minutes of commercial interruptions. So there’sa little Summer loving for TSCC from Fox, at least on the advertising sales end.
Again, I don’t think TSCC has a ratings issue for this year. As for next year’s prospects, the show will need to pull a relatively healthy 18-49 demographic rating relative to Fox’s other shows. Stay tuned…
September 7th, 2008 at 6:34 pm
Warner Bros is the studio behind T4 (and the show). So Fox has no interest in the success of the movie. TSCC will still have to perform in the ratings to stay alive.
September 7th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Bob, where do you put the odds that Warner Bros didn’t cut Fox a very favorable deal in order to have the show on the air prior to the movie?
September 7th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
I do feel that if the show is not performing well Fox will hold some of the episodes in the original order for spring (perhaps because of contractual reasons) but I don’t think it guarantees a back 9 order.
September 7th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
I think FOX will always promote the shows they produce over the ones they don’t. Which is probably what explains why Prison Break is even still on the air. But I think FOX does want Terminator to succeed (remember, the executives responsible for the Firefly debacle are supposedly long gone), and I think a case could be made that Warner Brothers has a vested interest in cutting FOX a deal on episode cost on the back 9 episodes just to help them promote the T4 movie. What is it like 2 million an episode? Movie promotions can run into the tens of millions. Plus they’re making a trilogy, or hope to. That’s big bucks on the line. And Warner Brothers can make the money back on the TSCC discount with DVD and Blu-ray sales. It’s a cheap way to keep public interest high. And that goes the other way too, interest in the movies generates interest for the show. And a lot of those fans are the very same fans who will watch shows like Fringe and Dollhouse and 24. FOX really can’t lose in any of this.
September 7th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
That said, I do find it odd about the lack of TV promos vs. Fringe. You think they’d at least acknowledge the start of season two.
I know there’s a bunch out there, I’ve seen something like fourteen different promos circulating on YouTube, several of them very spoiler-ish, just not on TV.
September 7th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
i flipped on Fox this afternoon for about 5 minutes and saw a nice long promo for SCC, so no worries. If I saw 5 minutes of football and one commercial, i’m sure there were others.
September 7th, 2008 at 8:41 pm
Robin, that’s good to hear. I spent most of the first half of the early game switching over to watch Favre and the Jets anytime there was a commercial (though I still managed to see several promos for Fringe). The second half and all of the second game I spent in a sports bar with at least eight televisions and mostly watched the games, not the commercials
September 8th, 2008 at 4:04 am
I hope you’re right about TSCC Robert. I love the show and I hope it will get a back nine and a third season too. Funny how Fringe gets the hottest spot on the schedule while TSCC, which had to earn it’s own way last season without any decent lead-in besides the pilot, gets the least favored spot this season. What has Fringe done to warrant this besides having the creator of Lost and Cloverfield on it’s roster. Ah well, hopefully things will turn out for the best. Prison Break is ridiculous by the way. There is no room for storylines coz they’ll turn out disastrous. Last 2 seasons were bad but this season is just a disgrace for tv now. And it has a full 22 episode order!
September 8th, 2008 at 4:27 am
@Tony: It’s very simple. Fox has hyped Fringe so much and put so much money into it, that they can’t afford for it to flop. Terminator on the other hand, is from WB. But no, TSCC doesn’t have the least favored spot – that would have been the 9pm slot opposite Heroes. Switching the timeslot like this is a good sign that this is a different Fox now, one that does care about the show. As FrankJ said, the incompetents responsible for Firefly are gone. We still have Chuck and Big Bang Theory to worry about, not to mention Football on ESPN, but like you I hope for the best.
September 8th, 2008 at 6:20 am
Fox has done an admirable job in promoting TSCC, in my opinion. I’ve seen a lot of TSCC ads airing both on Fox and on cable networks (including USA, which is an NBC network), plus they have been pretty aggressive in getting the TSCC stars out there to do press interviews. I’ve even seen TSCC ads during the RNC convention coverage on Fox News.
My fingers are tightly crossed on TSCC’s ratings. A few of the networks are still in reruns tonight, so they’ll have a chance to score. I’m going to be very worried if the premiere doesn’t break 10 million viewers and a 3.5-4 rating in the demo.
September 8th, 2008 at 6:33 am
I know a few older male scifi fans, guys who watched every Star Trek including the one with Kate Mulgrew, who like this show. The lead is young and cute, a fanboy’s dream. With a solid schedule I also believe this show could make it.
September 8th, 2008 at 8:26 am
jay, that would definitely include me. I remember watching the original Star Treks the first time they were broadcast.
September 8th, 2008 at 10:17 am
I think Fox has done a pretty sloppy job of promotion (do different regional markets get different commercials/number of commercials?) I’ve seen the promos– but only on youtube (and I think one while I watched Prison Break). I had no idea it was starting this week and I’ve been looking forward to it all summer! I wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t come on here today. Maybe they’ve been saturating other regional markets and they just have no love for GA.
September 8th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
I will be watching Sarah and friends…(hmmm that name seems to be very popular these days…)anyways…I think FOX needs to step up a little more on Sarah C in promotions…though I have seen enough promos to remind me about tonight…I think they have the best line up ever and more to come in Jan ‘09 with Dollhouse and 24.
September 9th, 2008 at 5:26 am
They better air 22 episodes of TSCC if they are airing 22 of Prison Break – which is just plain awful (hunting down computer data? Yikes! Reminds me of the of horric computer geek series that flopped – LEVEL 9 that SCI-FI recently aired for a reason known only to God) The only season of PB that was good was Season 1. At least in Season 3 of PB they actually broke out of another prison – though it wasnt half as good as Season 1. I not planning on watching any more PB except when I get bored and when the finale airs to see what happened.