97 Responses to “Dollhouse Had Largest Share of Viewing From DVRs, Did That Save The Show?”

1. Joss's Biggest Fan says:

   June 18, 2009 at 3:55 pm

   Well of COURSE DVR numbers matter!! Everyone knows that what advertisers REALLY care about is how many people watch a show up to a week after it airs!!! And I’m sure that those good, awesome Dollhouse viewers watched all of the commercials!!! I mean, sure, FOX very helpfully informed viewers how long i would be before the show returned, and people watching on DVR COULD have just clicked their remote control and gone forward, but I bet they did NOT!!!

   Dollhouse returns in 92 days! Yippee ki-yay!
2. ABCFanatic says:

   June 18, 2009 at 3:59 pm

   Dollhouse again!

   wow at Survivor: Tocantins at 63% I really miss that season!.
3. Bill Gorman says:

   June 18, 2009 at 4:04 pm

   JBF, as I wrote the post, I wondered which way you’d go with it.

   I’d have put my money on something like “DVR, SchmeeVR, the awesomeness that is Dollhouse lead by the wonder of Joss himself and his legions of devoted fans are what saved the show. We’d have watched it on black and white sets with coat hanger antennas. There’ll be ten times the ratings next season”.

   But, as it seems, I’d have lost that bet
4. Dan says:

   June 18, 2009 at 4:08 pm

   I really dont think ratings saved the series. I think a strong fan base, and the joss whedon name ultimately saved the series. Also like Terminator last year, this series got a second chance for the fall and unlike Terminator, I don’t think Dollhouse will get a full season. FOX has a lot of returning dramas (House, Lie to Me, Fringe, Bones, Dollhouse) as well as new dramas (Glee, Past Life, Human Target) so basically if Dollhouse’s ratings dont improve, then dont expect to see it past December. My prediction is that Til Death, Brothers, and Dollhouse will perform similarly to fall 05s friday of Malcolm, Bernie Mac and Killer Instinct, probably worse.
5. Holly says:

   June 18, 2009 at 4:23 pm

   I think what saved the series is that someone in the Dollhouse camp had some really, really good blackmail on someone at FOX.
6. big package says:

   June 18, 2009 at 4:44 pm

   Thursday at 9 has 3 shows in top 10 dvr usage that says something and with a possible 4th fringe next season
7. Joss's Biggest Fan says:

   June 18, 2009 at 4:44 pm

   Oh, Bill, Bill! Poor, deluded, yet strikingly handsome Bill! I have ALWAYS believed in the power of DVRS! If you go back to my very first post, one day after the mindblowing, lifechanging event that was the Dollhouse premiere, the VERY first thing I wrote was, “DVRs will help the ratings grow!” And I . . . was . . . right!!!!!! I look forward to each and every one of my other claims coming true as well!!!

   Of course, though, Joss and his awesome fans are also strongly responsible for the awesome, awesome success of Dollhouse!!! Everything Joss touches turns to gold, or something even better than gold, if such a thing exists! I just feel privileged to get to hang out in his world whenever he blesses TV or movies with his Jossy, Jossy presence!!!

   Dollhouse returns in 92 days! Fan-freakin-tastic!
8. veronica says:

   June 18, 2009 at 4:49 pm

   Networks often stretch their standards if they see a show that is helping viewers adopt new technologies that they hope will generate large revenue streams in the future. Certainly that was a factor here.

   But there’s a larger truth. 25 percent of the people who watched the first nine episodes of Dollhouse didn’t bother to watch the season-ending climactic three episodes. That’s a deadly indication. You can’t blame that on promos. People who found the show and watched the show got sick of it.

   And the show got its budget cut. And it’s still in the time slot where it tanked on Friday night. Except now it has the new, ridiculously mismatched lead-in of the Michael Strahan sitcom and Til Death. If you like the show enjoy the second 13, that’s all you’re gonna see.
9. dollhouse sucks says:

   June 18, 2009 at 4:50 pm

   i think maybe the Obama administration is using dvr’d dollhouse episodes as their new acceptable torture practices for prisoners
10. Bill Gorman says:

    June 18, 2009 at 4:54 pm

    The Geneva Convention couldn’t have anticipated that!
11. squiggleslash says:

    June 18, 2009 at 5:00 pm

    Holly – that’s probably true. Apparently top Fox execs have been making people sign agreements (supposedly called “development contracts”) where, in exchange for a large sum of money, those people will become various fantasies. One day someone might be a psychologically disturbed victim of a government project, the next, a killer robot from the future. Another person might one day be an obnoxious overweight idiot, only to become the very same day as an insane baby and a lecherous airline pilot, and the next day an obnoxious CIA agent.

    My guess is Whedon knew all of this, threatened to tell everyone, and that’s why Dollhouse was renewed.
12. romo says:

    June 18, 2009 at 5:20 pm

    On the chart:
    Greatest % Of DVR Viewing for Broadcast TV Shows

    CBS has 0 shows….figures with their demo image.
13. djm says:

    June 18, 2009 at 5:34 pm

    props to dollhouse sucks, thats a great line!
    could somebody explain to me what the % of DVR Viewing On Airdate number means? does it mean that 50% of people who watched chuck on the date it aired watched it on DVR?
14. romo says:

    June 18, 2009 at 6:13 pm

    djm:
    no….i think it means 48% of the people that dvrd it watched it that same nite….just later in the nite.
15. james says:

    June 18, 2009 at 6:16 pm

    Where are Smallville and Supernatural on this list? I went back and looked at the data supplied by this website and those two shows were always in the top 20 of Greatest % Of DVR Viewing for Broadcast TV Shows. Did I miss something?
16. Bill Gorman says:

    June 18, 2009 at 6:22 pm

    djm, % of DVR Viewing On Airdate – Of the DVR viewing of that particular episode, what percentage was done prior to 3AM the day following the airdate.

    james, I didn’t go back through all the posts, but the possible explanation is that this list contains *every* show that aired at any point during the season, whereas weekly posts contain only the shows that aired that week. And the differences between shows in DVR viewing % are quite small past #20 on the list.

    Smallville was #27 in the first (18-49) list:
    SMALLVILLE CW 1.17 1.35 1.59 36% 26% 43%

    Smallville was #25 in the third list:
    SMALLVILLE CW 3,005 3,342 3,782 337 777 20.5% 43.4%

    Supernatural was #45 in the first (18-49) list:
    SUPERNATURAL CW 1.05 1.15 1.35 29% 22% 33%

    Supernatural was #36 in the third list:
    SUPERNATURAL CW 2,587 2,792 3,172 205 585 18.4% 35.0%

    Edit: Corrected. The first numbers were from the 18-49 list.
17. Anthony says:

    June 18, 2009 at 6:29 pm

    I liked Dollhouse..and to be fair even when I watched in on my dvr ( or any show for that matter ) I do fast forward quite a bit through some commercials but when I see something that interests me I stop and rewind a bit and watch. I do this all the time and I hate commercials.
18. james says:

    June 18, 2009 at 6:57 pm

    Thanx for the response Bill. But I’m still a little confused, and I’m wondering if you could help me out. Did Smallville average 26% % of all viewing by DVR for the year? Wouldn’t that put it in about the Seventh position on that list?

    Sorry for the confusion, any help would be greatly appreciated!
19. Bill Gorman says:

    June 18, 2009 at 7:04 pm

    james, my mistake, I took the numbers in my comment from the 18-49 chart by mistake. I will correct my original comment.
20. pete5125 says:

    June 18, 2009 at 7:10 pm

    On the DVR/Tivo thing, trying to skip dollhouse adds by fast forwarding is nearly impossible up until the last comercial break, by the time you fast forward, rewind, fast forward to get to the start after the next break you might as well watch the comercal, and by the 3 rd time trying you give up, so the Fox experiment in my mind was a success, of course the Dodge truck comercial that was made part of the plot of most season 2 T:TSCC was even more successful in my mind.

    Dollhouse, had a budget cut and is made by the same studio as network and if it sells anywhere close to all other Whedon shows than it will at least break even or make money, Fox knows that nothing they put on Friday is going to work at this point…so they are going to celebrate the fact that they have the most stable schedule in years and that they have finaly figured out Thur., Fri is a budget night nothing on the night is going to set the world on fire, but everything is as cheap as an episode of COPS, so it is a non Reality TV Night that will break even…I figure Dollhouse ratings have to go up, it is a confusing show, and Sci-Fi, alot of people don’t trust Fox not to cancle it so now viewers might give it another shot
21. Robert Seidman says:

    June 18, 2009 at 7:11 pm

    James, one other aspect is that these numbers for the season include any in-slot repeats. With the reruns factored out, the list would look different as some shows run lots of repeats in season and some do not. So again, the rankings would look different if we were only comparing new episodes. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see that view of the data.
22. Robert Seidman says:

    June 18, 2009 at 7:13 pm

    Pete, not if you programmed your DVR remote with a 30 second skip button. Then they made it amazingly easy (two presses for 60 seconds, three for 90!)
23. KN says:

    June 18, 2009 at 8:23 pm

    Looking at these particular shows, I would guess that having a large % of audience-by-DVR is due to:
    median age of audience
    audience education/income
    timeslot competition with other shows
    competition from non-tv activities (ex: movies on Friday night)
    genre shows (ex: sci-fi/fantasy fans may be more tech-savvy)

    Is these correct assumptions? Are there other big reasons?
24. KN says:

    June 18, 2009 at 8:48 pm

    Are these correct assumptions/Is this a correct assumption

    Drat.
25. Lanie Grace says:

    June 18, 2009 at 10:07 pm

    @squiggleslash

    I disagree with your reasons on why Dollhouse was renewed.

    An inside source told me that Kevin Reilly realized that Summer Glau was unemployed since suddenly becoming an Exterminator last month. Reilly is hoping she’ll get tired of the Orkin gig and join Dollhouse.

    ~Lanie~
26. Bill Gorman says:

    June 18, 2009 at 11:01 pm

    KN, all of those things, and many more are likely factors in the relative amount of DVR viewing.

    But the % of viewing from DVRs is really becoming quite even across a wide range of broadcast primetime shows. 30 Rock at #8 had 25% of its viewing by DVR, Amazing Race 13 at #56 had 15.1% of its viewing by DVR. There’s a similarly flat slope in the 18-49 demo.

    The differences between individual broadcast primetime shows are enough to be interesting to people like us, but the overall trend is for rising DVR viewing of all broadcast primetime shows. Note that the numbers in the chart above for DVR viewing would be even higher for many shows if we were able to easily factor out repeats from the averages, which we can’t.
27. james says:

    June 18, 2009 at 11:20 pm

    Robert and Bill, thanks for the information. I was going to ask about repeats and y’all answered that for me. I’m going to figure out what the SV and SN DVR numbers would look like with the repeats taken out. Thanks again for all the help!
28. Gusar says:

    June 19, 2009 at 12:59 am

    Lanie, you have insiders now? LOOOOOOOOOOOOL

    Ah, now I’ve figured it out, you’re just talking crap to get a response. I guess you missed that interview with Joss Whedon where he said he’s not even actively looking for a way to bring Summer into Dollhouse. To think that Summer had anything to do with the Dollhouse renewal is laughable. I’m saying that, and I’m a Summer fan and wouldn’t mind seeing her on DH.

    The reason Dollhouse got renewed is simple and was already stated in the article – Joss can film it on a reality-tv budget. Another reason: Scripted shows command a higher premium for ads. So when you have a choice between a scripted show or a reality show, where both cost the same, the choice is obvious.

    There’s also a good explanation for the ratings drop for the last three episodes: People thought the show is already canceled thanks to the controversy over the “Epitaph One” episode. People thought “Fox won’t show that episode, the show must already be canceled, so why should I bother.” Well, hopefully these people will catch up with the show now. The episode will be shown at Comic-Con, it will also be on the DVD.
29. TomSD says:

    June 19, 2009 at 3:14 am

    Bill, what happened to the top 100 shows table with STD live+7 numbers?
30. Susan says:

    June 19, 2009 at 4:48 am

    I’m sure the DVR increases were a factor, but not a reason. First off, even though the increase ratio looks impressive, absolute numbers remain low by any measure.
    Second, I’m sure Fox factors the show’s low production costs, and maybe, just maybe, they knew they had no potential hit on their development slate. We all know that a bubble show’s renewal chances also depend much on the alternatives out there. It’s possible that Fox has no aces in their sleeves, and combined with the other mitigating factors, opted to renew Dollhouse for 13 eps.
31. vee says:

    June 19, 2009 at 5:06 am

    American Idol, Amazing Race, Survivor have the largest audience? The largest group of idiots, no doubt.

    OK, I can probably make an exception for Idol, barely.
32. squiggleslash says:

    June 19, 2009 at 7:19 am

    Gusar – it took you that long to discover LG’s SOP?

    Kind of hard to tell exactly what DH’s chances are when we don’t actually know how much it costs, but I’m figuring if it pulls numbers in-line with both of the two camera comedies that precede it, and somehow it has the same budget, it might actually get the mid-season pick-up.

    I’m wondering how cheap it is. Didn’t JW make his name on one of the networks that preceeded the CW? And, presumably, wouldn’t any of the shows made for those networks have had to be made on an absurdly low budget?
33. Gusar says:

    June 19, 2009 at 7:43 am

    @squiggleslash: Joss’ first hit was Buffy, which aired on WB (but was produced by Fox, 20th Century studios to be exact). I don’t have details and can’t tell how true it is, but what I heard is that Buffy ended on WB because it became too expensive for them. The show then had additional two seasons that aired on UPN.

    I do hope you’re right about what Dollhouse needs in terms of ratings to succeed and that it’ll actually get the required ratings. I can’t give a prediction one way or the other, I don’t think anyone really can. Let’s just wait and see. And hope a Buffy happens (lousy first season, then an explosion in both quality and ratings for season 2).
34. Uglyboy says:

    June 19, 2009 at 8:27 am

    I don’t understand : DVR viewing isn’t without any commercials ??
35. Chris says:

    June 19, 2009 at 8:35 am

    “People thought the show is already canceled thanks to the controversy over the “Epitaph One” episode. People thought “Fox won’t show that episode, the show must already be canceled, so why should I bother.” ”

    I don’t think there are enough people who even knew about that controversy to affect the ratings. You have to remember that most people just watch the show. They don’t go online to read about all the behind-the-scenes happenings like people on this site do.
36. Bill Gorman says:

    June 19, 2009 at 8:41 am

    Tom, I have done a lot of posts and have a bad memory, but I don’t think I’ve ever done a top 100 STD Live+7 table. A few weeks ago we had a STD adults 18-49 broadcast/cable top 100 list, that originally came from TVB. Unfortunately, lots of the numbers in that list didn’t match up with the data we had directly from Nielsen, and I was unable to get any questions answered from the source, so I took down the post.
37. Lisa says:

    June 19, 2009 at 9:09 am

    The show is on at 9 on Friday so people watching via DVR makes sense. I watched most of them online because I wasn’t home when the show was on. I love the show but I’m not going to cancel plans to stay home to watch when there are options to see it later.
38. J.Norman says:

    June 19, 2009 at 9:19 am

    I haven’t read through all the posts so maybe what I’m going to say has already been mentioned.

    Anyway, It would seem that DVR viewing would mean more to the p+2 viewership than to the precious demos that this site keeps raving about.

    That is, when I, and I have to assume lot of others, DVR something to watch later-when we watch it, we don’t pay any attention to the advertisements / commercials. We just fast forward right on by. How does the the advertiser gain from that. Maybe they are reaching the coveted demo, but no one is watching their ads. So who cares!! what the demo is. If you’re not watching, then its hard to be influenced by an add.
39. Bill Gorman says:

    June 19, 2009 at 9:33 am

    J. Norman, we do rave about those demo adults, as do the TV advertisers who ultimately pay all the bills. Those lunatics.

    The fragmentary data we have seen supports the conventional wisdom that ads are substantially skipped during DVR playback, but nothing we have seen shows that different age groups skip more or less (although that data could be out there somewhere, just not in our hands).
40. Robert Seidman says:

    June 19, 2009 at 9:53 am

    For J.Norman: it should be noted that at least according to Nielsen commercial skipping (and also changing channels even for those without DVRs ) are factored out of the numbers, and the DVR increases noted are only for viewing and none of the fast-forwarding.

    If true, if you conservatively estimate even that only 50% of the commercials are skipped the DVR impact in terms of the # of DVR viewers will get understated by at least 15%. Examples:

    LOST = 1 hour duration, but if the show + credits = 42 minutes there are 18 minutes of commercials. If I skip 9 minutes of them, Nielsen will only count me as viewing 51 out of 60 minutes (.85) of a user. If I skip all 18 minutes, I’ll count as .7 of a viewer. If I skip any “previously on” or the opening/closing credits, even less.

    Again, these conventions are true even with live measurement — if you start watching a show that airs from 9p-10p at 9:02 and stop watching at 9.58. You’d only count as .93 of a viewer, even though from your perspective you watched the whole show. In the case of DVR viewing its possible to see the whole program but only be counted as 2/3rds of a viewer.
41. Riff Rafferty says:

    June 19, 2009 at 10:11 am

    Bill writes, “There’ll be ten times the ratings next season”

    Ten times? Shouldn’t that be eleventy billion times? If I had to guess, I think Susan kind of hit the nail on the head. FOX’s pilot season was reportedly a disaster. That came directly to me from a certain pal at a certain studio which produced a lot of pilots, most of which FOX took a pass on. (Figure it out.)

    Although as bad as most of them reportedly were, I’m sure most were better than a second season of this tripe. So would have been “Don’t Forget the Lyrics,” which Reilly probably cancelled for no other reason than I admitted to liking it. Who cares what people are DVRing? More people are watching the cancelled show in the earlier hour over the summer with no promotion than were watching the renewed show in the later hour in the regular part of the season with promotion. The cancelled show, which was higher-rated live in the same hour than just about every episode of said piece of tripe. Which got renewed. But Fox can’t sell eleventy billion DVD sets of “Lyrics” to Whedonuts (you know, the ones who admit to buying his cruddy shows over and over again trying to get them to #1 on Amazon so they can go on and on and ON about what a national tragedy it was for them to have been cancelled), so there you go.

    Now if a show is a “hit” on Hulu, that might be another story. You can’t fast forward through the paid ads there — what little of them there are.
42. Bill Gorman says:

    June 19, 2009 at 10:25 am

    Riff, Agreed, “eleventy billion” would have been much more faithful to the genre.
43. Matt says:

    June 19, 2009 at 10:27 am

    Do you have information for the year for “ER”?
44. Bill Gorman says:

    June 19, 2009 at 10:30 am

    ER’s numbers for the first (18-49) table:
    E.R. NBC 3.20 3.43 3.96 24% 19% 30%

    ER numbers for the second/third (viewership) tables:
    E.R. NBC 8,645 9,148 10,296 503 1,651 16.0% 30.5%
45. veronica says:

    June 19, 2009 at 12:22 pm

    Oh, and another cut the second season will have to deal with: remote-free TV is over. Dollhouse will have as many commercials as anyone else next year.

    But the biggest problem will be the totality of the night itself. It’s way too easy to perceive Friday night as Fox’s garbage dump while they build a complete schedule. Everyone knows Til Death is a dead man walking – they just need 13 more episodes to complete the syndication package. Nobody’s ever liked that show. And the Michael Strahan show looks like Fox at its worst – the lowest-common-denominator crud they throw at the African-American audience on a regular basis (as opposed to stuff like In Living Color that had real merit).

    And after those two utterly uninspiring shows comes a cut-rate sci-fi show. Has any sci-fi show ever thrived without production values? The 33 percent of Dollhouse episodes that succeeded, like Spy in the House of Love and The Hunt, looked gorgeous. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll all for trying stuff that’s never been done before. But cut-rate sci-fi feels like a desperation move born of necessity, not a genuine creative inspiration.
46. Richard Steven Hack says:

    June 19, 2009 at 2:29 pm

    Gusar: “I guess you missed that interview with Joss Whedon where he said he’s not even actively looking for a way to bring Summer into Dollhouse.”

    And what interview would that be? Last I heard from Ausiello, Whedon was VERY interested in getting Summer on Dollhouse IF he could find a suitable role for her, and that meant NOT being one of the Dolls.
47. TomSD says:

    June 19, 2009 at 2:47 pm

    Bill, do you have a top 20 or more list with final live+7 viewers and 18-49 numbers for the season?
48. squiggleslash says:

    June 19, 2009 at 3:53 pm

    RSH – I suspect Gusar was refering to this:

    …”but we didn’t honestly go into the season going, ‘Now how can we figure out how to service Summer?’ when we already have a huge ensemble. I adore Summer and she’s phenomenal, but I have to service the cast I have first. If something comes up that’s good enough, my God, I’d hound her. But the rumors of her becoming a big part of the show are greatly exaggerated.”
49. Lanie Grace says:

    June 19, 2009 at 4:03 pm

    @Gusar

    While I was being very sarcastic about the “Summer Glau Exterminator” remark I am very serious when I say the following

    Summer Glau will apear at some point in Season 2 of Dollhouse. It will boost the ratings huge and will be followed by a “Fan Fueled Fued” real or inagined, between Summer Glau and Eliza Dushku over who is the “Alpha Doll”

    Especially if you have an unamed blogger with a reputation for stirring up fans were to promote it.

    Thats my prediction for Dollhouse Season 2.

    ~Lanie~
50. Bill Gorman says:

    June 19, 2009 at 5:06 pm

    TomSD, here you go, bad formatting and all.

    Top 20 Viewers Live+7
    Rank Programs Net Persons Live (000s) Persons Live+SD (000s) Persons Live+7 (000s) Same Day DVR Viewers (000s) Total DVR Viewers (000s) % of All Viewing By DVR % of DVR Viewing On Airdate
    1 AMERICAN IDOL-WEDNESDAY FOX 22,432 25,532 26,878 3,100 4,446 16.5% 69.7%
    2 AMERICAN IDOL-TUESDAY FOX 21,368 24,743 26,308 3,375 4,940 18.8% 68.3%
    3 DANCING WITH THE STARS ABC 18,601 19,767 20,402 1,166 1,801 8.8% 64.7%
    4 CSI CBS 16,501 17,432 19,151 931 2,650 13.8% 35.1%
    5 NCIS CBS 15,729 16,804 17,989 1,075 2,260 12.6% 47.6%
    6 MENTALIST, THE CBS 15,413 16,290 17,668 877 2,255 12.8% 38.9%
    7 DANCING W/STARS RESULTS ABC 15,481 16,315 16,880 834 1,399 8.3% 59.6%
    8 NBC SUNDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL NBC 16,001 16,248 16,271 247 270 1.7% 91.5%
    9 DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES ABC 12,944 14,441 15,869 1,497 2,925 18.4% 51.2%
    10 TWO AND A HALF MEN CBS 13,218 14,113 15,095 895 1,877 12.4% 47.7%
    11 CRIMINAL MINDS CBS 12,873 13,715 15,067 842 2,194 14.6% 38.4%
    12 GREY’S ANATOMY-THU 9PM ABC 11,500 12,891 14,785 1,391 3,285 22.2% 42.3%
    13 CSI: MIAMI CBS 12,729 13,173 14,304 444 1,575 11.0% 28.2%
    14 60 MINUTES CBS 13,671 14,143 14,292 472 621 4.3% 76.0%
    15 SURVIVOR: GABON CBS 11,416 12,914 13,810 1,498 2,394 17.3% 62.6%
    16 HOUSE FOX 10,306 11,906 13,622 1,600 3,316 24.3% 48.3%
    17 CSI: NY CBS 12,163 12,529 13,500 366 1,337 9.9% 27.4%
    18 WITHOUT A TRACE CBS 11,756 12,049 13,023 293 1,267 9.7% 23.1%
    19 SURVIVOR: TOCANTINS CBS 10,408 12,105 12,997 1,697 2,589 19.9% 65.5%
    20 24 FOX 9,557 11,182 12,741 1,625 3,184 25.0% 51.0%

    Top 20 Adults 18-49 ratings Live +7
    Rank Programs Net 18-49 Live (rating) 18-49 Live+SD (rating) 18-49 Live+7 (rating) Increase From DVR Viewing % of All Viewing By DVR % of DVR Viewing On Airdate
    1 AMERICAN IDOL-WEDNESDAY FOX 7.75 9.24 9.85 27% 21% 71%
    2 AMERICAN IDOL-TUESDAY FOX 7.49 9.13 9.84 31% 24% 70%
    3 NBC SUNDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL NBC 6.02 6.15 6.16 2% 2% 93%
    4 DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES ABC 4.38 5.15 5.84 33% 25% 53%
    5 GREY’S ANATOMY-THU 9PM ABC 4.01 4.76 5.72 43% 30% 44%
    6 HOUSE FOX 3.82 4.62 5.45 43% 30% 49%
    7 CSI CBS 4.15 4.55 5.30 28% 22% 35%
    8 LOST ABC 3.33 4.24 5.17 55% 36% 49%
    9 TWO AND A HALF MEN CBS 4.30 4.71 5.12 19% 16% 50%
    10 DANCING WITH THE STARS ABC 4.19 4.65 4.89 17% 14% 66%
    11 OFFICE NBC 3.10 4.01 4.86 57% 36% 52%
    12 SURVIVOR: GABON CBS 3.49 4.20 4.64 33% 25% 62%
    13 OT, THE FOX 4.37 4.45 4.45 2% 2% 100%
    14 HEROES NBC 2.90 3.58 4.44 53% 35% 44%
    15 24 FOX 2.92 3.65 4.33 48% 33% 52%
    16 SURVIVOR: TOCANTINS CBS 3.06 3.84 4.30 41% 29% 63%
    17 RULES OF ENGAGEMENT CBS 3.57 3.91 4.23 18% 16% 52%
    18 BACHELOR, THE ABC 3.52 3.97 4.19 19% 16% 67%
    19 FRINGE FOX 3.09 3.54 4.17 35% 26% 42%
    20 BIGGEST LOSER 7 NBC 3.30 3.80 4.15 26% 20% 59%
51. Lanie Grace says:

    June 19, 2009 at 5:14 pm

    WOW, we need an edit function! I guess I shouldn’t walk and “Blackberry” at the same time ha? Sorry for the mizspellin’

    ~Lanie~
52. Boris says:

    June 19, 2009 at 5:19 pm

    Lanie Grace says:

    “Summer Glau will apear at some point in Season 2 of Dollhouse. It will boost the ratings huge and will be followed by a ‘Fan Fueled Fued’ real or inagined, between Summer Glau and Eliza Dushku over who is the ‘Alpha Doll’”

    It would be more kewl if they could separate the audience into putative FOREX traders and those who invest in rare pennies, no?
53. Robert Seidman says:

    June 20, 2009 at 12:48 am

    Tom, sorry I unintentionally I deleted your posts requesting more data including ALL broadcast and cable shows.

    But, to answer your question, yes, it is too greedy! Nielsen doesn’t want this data published regularly, and certainly not in the bulk/detail you are asking for. And all DVR info, including all broadcast and cable shows and also 18-49 increases…I don’t blame Nielsen for not allowing that to be published freely.

    BTW, I’m not sure we’ll be able to publish ANY regular “top” lists of DVR data when the fall comes, but will be happy if we can even post even the top 20 regularly. I know that won’t satisfy the folks like you who are extremely curious. If it makes you feel any better, we didn’t see the cable data.
54. Gusar says:

    June 20, 2009 at 3:33 am

    Lanie, in other words, you’ll create an artificial feud because you’ve figured out a lot of TSCC fans fall for your crap.

    Won’t work though, a lot of TSCC fans absolutely *hate* Dollhouse and bash it in any way they can. Hell, they bash _me_ at the wiki because I dare to like Dollhouse. Or are you saying other fandoms also fall for your crap? Well, even if that’s the case, this won’t work for another reason: Even if Summer will appear on the show (not a given at all, read the ling squiggleslash provided), she will NOT play a doll. The least you could do is read Joss’ words on the matter.
55. Lanie Grace says:

    June 20, 2009 at 9:34 am

    @Gusar
    I think most people who read this understood what I meant “The onscreen appeareance of two very popular female actresses” when referring to “Alpha Doll” and futhermore; concerning TSCC, noone cares about TSCC anymore including cast, production crew, and WB. It’s dead and gone.

    The infamous Terminator Wiki doesn’t even seem to really show any interest in the “resurrection” anylonger…very few people even mention it anymore on the site. The whole board has devovlved into a fanatical Summer Glau worship site of the ilk that most celebrities steer far and wide from. You know, the freaks!

    Dollhouse is going to have a great success this Season 2 and I am confident there will be a Season 3. It will out perform TSCC in ratings, revenue and viewership which is why it was renewed.

    ~Lanie~
56. freeman says:

    June 20, 2009 at 12:47 pm

    ummm, hang on here.

    if summer glau is such a ratings powerhouse, if she’s gonna save dollhouse, how come nobody watched sarah connor? sarah connor was an okay show and its ratings stunk just as bad as dollhouse’s.
57. Lanie Grace says:

    June 20, 2009 at 12:52 pm

    Simple answer:

    Because Joss Wheddon will not relegate her to a background object with more lines in the promtionals than in the actual script. That’s why.

    ~Lanie~
58. freeman says:

    June 20, 2009 at 3:40 pm

    maybe or maybe not. but here’s the question you REALLY can’t answer.

    i understand why you might want to see it and why joss whedon might want it. but why would summer do it? at this point she wants something developed for her, where SHE will be the star, something that has a chance to find an audience. why buy a ticket on a death ship like dollhouse? we know and she knows that dollhouse doesn’t do numbers. who wants to be cancelled twice in six months? that’s serious career damage.

    and even if somehow summer lifted dollhouse on her shoulders and made it a hit, she’d be the person powering a hit show, but the star and executive producer would be Her Majesty The Straight-To-Video Queen Eliza I. summer’s career trajectory is up, eliza’s is down. summer’s agent would never let her be a second banana to eliza at this point in time. it should be the other way around.
59. Richard Steven Hack says:

    June 20, 2009 at 5:48 pm

    Freeman, you might have a point, but I’m not sure Summer really cares. She likes Joss and I think she’d work for him on pretty much anything regardless of it’s potential of being canceled. Her agent might not like it, but I think she wouldn’t really care that much. I think she views her career at this point as still “new” and is willing to do pretty much anything that comes her way that doesn’t offend her.

    She apparently passed on a movie recently because it involved some risque scenes involving kissing another actress. But I doubt she’d pass on any Joss production unless she really didn’t like the role.

    As for the Joss quote above, he said nothing about Summer NOT being on Dollhouse. He just re-iterated that he wouldn’t do it unless he could craft a useful role for her. But it’s quite obvious that her presence on the show would lift ratings somewhat, so I’m sure he’s thinking about it. We don’t know yet what direction the show is going to take in season two, and I think he’s more concerned about that right now than adding Summer. Once he figures that out, he may well see a place for her, at least as an occasional guest star.

    As for whether there would be a “feud” between Summer and Eliza, Nick C said a while back that he didn’t believe that, since Eliza would be cool about Summer being on as long as it helped her show. However, as Lanie suggests, they could always create such a feud just for PR reasons. That probably isn’t a good idea, in my opinion, since such things can damage someone’s public perception. However, as the Church of the SubGenius always says, “There’s no such thing as no PR!”
60. personalitynumber23 says:

    June 20, 2009 at 6:37 pm

    She’d be insane to do more than a couple of appearances. The ratings won’t be her fault if she just does a two- or three-shot recurring character.

    Maybe if Joss adds Howie Long and Terry Bradshaw as Dolls, the Michael Strahan audience will grit their teeth and stick it out through Til Death.
61. Michael Strahan says:

    June 20, 2009 at 6:46 pm

    Dollhouse is going to taste paydirt this fall! We are going to the post season!

    Everyone I know tells me: a perverted whiteboy asking what is identity? I’m all over that shit!

    Dollhouse and Michael Strahan! All the way, baby!
62. Richard Steven Hack says:

    June 20, 2009 at 7:05 pm

    Summer won’t be RESPONSIBLE for the ratings whether she’s a regular or a recurring character. However, she will undoubtedly HELP the ratings, meaning either the ratings will go up or they’ll go down slower than they would otherwise.

    In the end, a show’s ratings depend on the story and the execution, not any given character.

    But Joss would be insane not to get her on the show if he can without hurting the STORY. And, yes, there are probably other actors you could say the same about, but Summer is a known quantity to him, just like Eliza is.
63. Riff Rafferty says:

    June 21, 2009 at 6:17 am

    Speaking of Michael Strahan, I’m taking a poll. Which is the bigger gaping hole? The one in his front teeth or the one in FOX’s Friday night lineup?

    (P.S. If you thought that joke was bad, my advice is don’t watch “Brothers” this fall. Because that’s pretty much most of the jokes that were in the pilot.)
64. karolina says:

    June 21, 2009 at 9:36 pm

    They can do cross-over episodes to tie the night together.

    Like this. Michael Strahan has a headache and he takes a handful of what he thinks is aspirin but turns out to be Viagra. So he has to go to the Dollhouse and rent out Sierra for the weekend. But they mess up and give her a nasty personality like Doris Roberts on Everybody Loves Raymond. Michael has to take a long cold shower.

    There are lots of stories like this, they can do this one if they want.
65. squiggleslash says:

    June 22, 2009 at 6:48 am

    Comment 32 was supposed to mean single camera comedies, which I believe they are. I always get those terms confused (even though I know when I sit back and think of it logically. Single camera = not “recorded live” ‘cos you have to keep moving the camera, but it sounds less expensive than two camera which is why I keep writing the wrong thing. Just ignore me.)
66. freeman says:

    June 22, 2009 at 9:50 am

    if you don’t think networks judge actors by the ratings of the shows they star in, wait and see how many networks offer eliza dushku development deals after tru calling and dollhouse.

    if summer waits six months, takes an interesting movie part or two, someone hot like j.j. abrams might develop something just for her this winter or put her on the crew of the enterprise or something. that’s the way to play it if you’re summer’s agent, you don’t go down with dollhouse.
67. Boris says:

    June 22, 2009 at 11:17 am

    Richard Steven Hack says:

    “Summer won’t be RESPONSIBLE for the ratings whether she’s a regular or a recurring character. However, she will undoubtedly HELP the ratings, meaning either the ratings will go up or they’ll go down slower than they would otherwise.”

    So, she would have an indisputable effect that is nonetheless beyond any possibility of quantification?
68. freeman says:

    June 22, 2009 at 11:58 am

    what the network will remember is, they brought in summer to make dollhouse a hit, and instead, dollhouse’s ratings declined and the show got cancelled in mid-season. and summer will have wasted her moment where she has the clout to get a show built around her. she won’t get tossed on the scrap heap like eliza, but she’ll be damaged.

    it’s a sucker move, summer might want to do it out of loyalty, but it’s her agent’s job to keep desperate producers from glomming onto her like this.
69. Lanie Grace says:

    June 22, 2009 at 9:24 pm

    @Freeman

    Dollhouse won’t get canceled in mid season 2 if even it had a 0.5 rating!

    Kevin Reilly’s rep is on the line and his ego would never allow it! That’s the same reason DH will at least go all of S2.

    DH will run for a 22 episode Season 2, you can count on it.

    Besides, I really think JW will adapt and the ratings will be better than S1.

    ~Lanie~
70. Boris says:

    June 23, 2009 at 12:31 am

    Lanie Grace says:

    “DH will run for a 22 episode Season 2, you can count on it.”

    ~ Isn’t this what wagering is for? ~
71. freeman says:

    June 23, 2009 at 9:13 am

    of course, if kevin reilly was REALLY committed to dollhouse he might have given it a better time slot or a real budget or a real lead-in. he might have given it sample screenings on better nights to expose viewers to the show – networks do that with shows they really believe in, you know.

    i’m not sure you’ll find a lot of precedent for kevin giving a THIRD season to shows without viewers. the shows he’s famous for nurturing, 30 rock, the office and the sopranos, outgrew their awkward phases and built decent audiences. when sarah connor did a second season with dollhouse-like numbers, kevin pulled the plug.

    will the second season be 13 or 22? like boris says, we can just wait to find out. it’s not up to me. and it will have more to do with when fox has its new friday night ready than dollhouse itself.

    by the way, if you’re such a joss whedon fan you shouldn’t really celebrate these pathetic charity pickups. the whole time dollhouse is scraping along at the bottom of the ratings it’s quietly eroding joss whedon’s ability to get future movies and tv shows made. if you recall, in the 1990s he did stuff that was interesting AND successful. now he hasn’t had a hit in ten years. at some point they start to notice stuff like that.
72. karolina says:

    June 23, 2009 at 9:43 am

    I came up with a second Michael Strahan/Dollhouse crossover episode.

    Michael’s boss invites him to play golf. But Michael doesn’t play golf. So he goes to the Dollhouse and gets imprinted with Tiger Woods’ golf-playing abilities. But the boss hates playing against a great golfer. Michael learns to be himself. It’s more of an emotional episode.
73. The_GodfatherSJP says:

    June 23, 2009 at 10:12 am

    Okay, my 2 cents over Dollhouse’s renewal is this:

    Forget fan demand. Forget DVR numbers. Forget ratings, or at least in the traditional sense.

    It’s M O N E Y. Personally, I very much buy Nick C.’s story that Dollhouse could be produced very cheaply, that’s the pitch that sold the show for a second season. Think about it. They get an hour’s worth of television for the price of a half hour sitcom, and its a sci-fi drama that they wholly own and produce. So they see all the money from DVD sales and syndication, and it’s a Whedon project, guaranteed fanbase. Plus they get all the advertising revenue. Win win for the network, it’s a guaranteed money maker. Of course, if the ratings really tank, that’s another story.

    Even then, they’re not overly enthusiastic about the show’s chances. If they were, why keep it on a Friday, where television shows go to die? Why lead off with a Freshman comedy, Sons of Tucson, followed by a failing sitcom, Til Death, which was only renewed because of Sony’s cheap deal with FOX? Dollhouse’s ratings tanked badly with a non sci-fi lead in, do they really expect much better with two shows that have very little audience overlap with Sci-Fi viewers? If they were optimistic about it’s chances, it would have been paired with Past Life or Human Target.

    It’s not. It got renewed because it was very cheap, FOX will give it another chance to improve, but they’re not expecting much. Show’s going in to the Fall 2009 season already on life support.
74. The_GodfatherSJP says:

    June 23, 2009 at 10:17 am

    Excuse me, mistake on my part. Brothers is at 8PM. Even worse than Sons of Tucson. A Michael Strahan comedy…
75. Lanie Grace says:

    June 23, 2009 at 9:30 pm

    @The_GodfatherSJP

    If Fridays are so bad what was the reason behind the X-Files massive success? Wasn’t the first four seasons of X-Files on Friday at 9pm?

    If the answer is X-Files had solid writing, a dedicated fan base and all around good show that overcame the “Friday Death Slot” then why didn’t the robot show make it?

    I am betting that Dollhouse will over come the Friday Death Slot and will not need a lead, hence it will be able to stand on its own, again, unlike the robot show and before anyone gets all in a tizzy, if the robot show could stand on it’s own, it would still be there.

    But anyway GF,

    Thank you for explaining,

    ~Lanie~
76. Richard Steven Hack says:

    June 24, 2009 at 12:58 am

    Freeman: Nothing is going to damage Summer’s rep except a bad performance – which I’ve never seen her give, not recently anyway.

    What would be likely to happen is that Summer is brought in to boost the ratings, they don’t boost, they go down, and everybody says what a shame it was that Summer was on another failing show.

    Just like they did with TSCC after Firefly. That’s exactly what they said. As long as most people perceive her character as engaging and her performance professional, she’s not going to have a problem with the show failing out from under her.
77. The_GodfatherSJP says:

    June 24, 2009 at 7:58 am

    Freeman, as for Joss Whedon’s career, it’s like winning coaches with Baseball or Football. People remember that they won it all in Year X, and they give them a chance well past their prime. Joe Gibbs, numerous managers and General Managers in baseball come to mind. Once you have a hit that you’re responsible for, you always get a second chance.

    Movies are another matter. Anyone heard of Renny Harlin lately?
78. max452 says:

    June 24, 2009 at 10:34 am

    @Lanie,

    If I remember correctly, the X-Files did so-so on Friday but became big when it was moved to Sundays. More people than the “dedicated fan base” started watching, and it became a hit. Fox even reran old episodes from seasons 1-4 on Sundays, which are some of the shows best. If X-files didn’t do well on season 5 on Sundays it was done. There are interviews with Chris Carter saying they were trying to wrap some threads up in case they didn’t make it to season 6.

    If all Dollhouse has is its “dedicated fanbase” and doesn’t attract new viewers, its done. When it comes to Fox, fan bases alone did not save Firefly, TSSC, Dark Angel, Briscoe County Jr, etc, etc, etc…
79. Lanie Grace says:

    June 24, 2009 at 11:23 am

    @Richard Steven Hack

    Thats a Dead On Comment, Summer’s performance will determine her reputation, not if the show fails or succeeds.

    @Max452

    Very true, DH will need an enlarged audience over the current fanbase, I expect that will happen.

    ~Lanie~
80. freeman says:

    June 24, 2009 at 1:03 pm

    i keep waiting for the tvbythenumbers people to shut this thread down and make us shut up.

    but apparently we’re still doing this. and actually, there’s actually a fair amount of agreement between everyone still left.

    I agree with the whedon fans in that:

    fox doesn’t really believe in dollhouse.

    i disagree with the whedon fans in that:

    the reason fox doesn’t believe in dollhouse is because they shouldn’t. it’s not a theoretical question any more, it’s been shown to the viewers and they’ve turned up their noses.

    the big over-arcing problem here is that in the 1990s, joss was willing to fully commit his talent to getting the viewers to identify with buffy and sarah michelle gellar and reap the rewards of the viewers’ love for buffy. but joss’ ego has grown to the point where he now needs his writing to be the star of the show. it needs to be Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse. and in the immortal words of rocky the flying squirrel, that trick never works. joss can get his not-big-enough-for-prime-time internet army to show up for that, but normal viewers only bond with people who are on the screen.

    but hey, joss has some big hits under his belt and more money than he can ever spend. if he wants to cut back on the intensity and rigor of his work so he can enjoy it more, well, a lot of writers do that in their 40s, i’m certainly in no position to judge.

    it’s only when he tries to use a fragile moment in a young actor’s career as a temporary flotation device to keep his drowning show afloat that he turns into something evil. but i guess you could argue that it’s joss’ role to try that, and summer’s agent’s job to keep it from working. so whatever, we’ll see what happens, it won’t be decided here.
81. Bill Gorman says:

    June 24, 2009 at 1:13 pm

    freeman, all our comment threads are closed automatically after 14 days, you’ve still got 8 days left!
82. freeman says:

    June 24, 2009 at 1:29 pm

    thanks bill, as long as people stay non-hateful i assume the endless debates are entertaining to anyone who peeks, but i’ve never posted here before, so you never know.
83. greennogo says:

    June 24, 2009 at 1:58 pm

    I doubt that DVR and online stats are in a position to save anybody’s show in and of themselves, but it’s hard to argue that even with factoring in the technologically changeful nature of the 18-49 demo’s viewing habits, that there are some definite inconsistencies between the terrestrial broadcast numbers and the new media viewing numbers. An increase as radical as “Dollhouse’s” is just too disproportionably large to ignore. I think even some advertisers realize this.
84. squiggleslash says:

    June 24, 2009 at 4:24 pm

    High DVR numbers might be seen as evidence that a show is poorly scheduled. The issue, for Fox with Dollhouse, I guess is that they don’t have another slot to show it in that isn’t occupied with a show they believe has higher ratings than they believe Dollhouse is capable of.
85. freeman says:

    June 24, 2009 at 6:14 pm

    i don’t think DVRs are sophisticated enough to measure this yet. but here’s my belief: there isn’t a single person in america who wants to watch the michael strahan sitcom, til death AND dollhouse. my prediction is, exactly zero people in the united states will watch the entire fox friday night lineup on september 18. DVRs can’t tell us that yet, can they?
86. Boris says:

    June 24, 2009 at 8:45 pm

    Lanie Grace says:

    “Very true, DH will need an enlarged audience over the current fanbase, I expect that will happen.”

    Why? You’ve already cognized that it might fall to a 0.5, at which point “Kevin Reilly’s ego” would take the reins in grand Swedenborgian fashion, like the comet Kohoutek. This is “the same reason DH will at least go all of S2.” So why now has that 0.5 turned into an expectantly engorged audience? (Is this the “different” reason DH will “at least go all of S2″ to go along with the “same” reason?)
87. Will says:

    June 27, 2009 at 5:39 am

    And what do we Swedenborgians have to do with DOLLHOUSE? (Or comets,
    for that matter?) I have no idea what you are trying to say.
    The plot of “Stage Fright” was stolen from Chesterton, but I
    saw nothing about “Swedenborgian space”.
88. squiggleslash says:

    June 27, 2009 at 8:32 am

    I don’t think anyone can say for definite what’s going to happen with Dollhouse, but I’d say the logic probably works like this:

    1. Most likely

    Ratings stay flat, DVD sales low, show canceled most probably after 13 episodes, though possibly allowed to lumber on, T:SCC style, to end on a full season if Fox sees it as better than cheap filler material.

    I think ratings will stay flat because I’m finding people actually hate the show. I don’t mean in an American Idol type way, I mean as in I’ve defended it before and been treated as if I just said Hitler is a pretty cool guy. I mean that literally, you have no idea how hysterial people are in their hatred of Dollhouse. The fact it portrays an evil system dispassionately, and the people running it as human beings rather than evil archetypes, really rubs critics up the wrong way. I love the show for those strengths, but alas I think it’s too complex for general audiences to appreciate. Add to that the fact it’s already not attracted a large audience, and the issues others have raised about the “main character” not being identifiable, and you don’t have something that has a large pull.

    DVD sales will be low partially for the above, and partially because the DVD set is relatively expensive for relatively little. $32 is the heavily discounted price. It’s not even on my wait order list, and I love the show.

    2. Second most likely

    Ratings remain low, but DVD sales are good. Fox finishes series 2 (including mid-season pick-up), with S3 onwards moved to FX

    I’ve already explained why I think ratings will remain low. There’s more of a chance I’m wrong on DVD sales, largely because the DVD set contains some extras many fans will feel are critical, in much the same way that fans of Firefly felt obliged to buy the DVD set because it had content missing from the network run.

    Why finish the series and put S3 on FX? Well, if DVD sales are high, and ratings don’t go lower, then there may well be enough of an audience to justify showing the show on cable especially as the cost is low and the DVD sales will help drive up revenues. Dollhouse would also appear to fit some of FX’s demographic. Why bother canceling it if the show is ultimately profitable? It’s better to find a way to keep making the show, it’s just putting it on Fox with such low ratings makes no sense.

    3. Third most likely

    Ratings go up, DVD sales are high. Show continues to limp on, with a third season commissioned for the Fox Network.

    I think both are improbable but if somehow ratings improve, I can see Fox renewing the series as they don’t have much of a justification for not doing so.

    4. Fourth most likely: Ratings plummet. DVD sales low. Show is canceled after seven or eight episodes.

    Highly improbable. I think Dollhouse has attracted a base of strong fans, so I don’t see Dollhouse dropping below the 1.0 it ended the first season on. But it’s also possible the second season will stink.

    Me, I’m hoping for the second or third most likely scenarios. I just don’t see either as particularly likely. I don’t think ratings will go above a 1.2, and I don’t think DVD sales are going to be particularly good. But I’d be delighted to be proven wrong, as the show’s awesome.
89. freeman says:

    June 27, 2009 at 9:52 am

    that’s actually an excellent analysis by squiggleslash. it looks like we’re getting ready to stop wasting this site’s bandwidth. he’s a fan and i’m not, but i agree with most of what he said.

    the thing i’d say he forgot is what most fans forget: the effect of other shows. there’s no way that horrible lead-in sitcom hour will deliver the closely-matched audience that sarah connor did for the first nine episodes. fox ruled sunday night for years with the simpsons/x-files tag team, but animation is different. animation nerds and sci-fi nerds are two mutations of the same family tree. friday night has no synergy. dollhouse’s ratings will inescapably go down.

    and, i’m not sure how big this will be, but nbc even scheduled a show at 9, medium, that might actually peel off some of dollhouse’s fringe-y audience, which can’t lose a single person as it stands.

    i think we all agree, the prognosis is not good.
90. freeman says:

    June 27, 2009 at 9:56 am

    oh, the other huge factor is fox’s pilots. the second-season pickup for dollhouse was clearly in part a reflection of fox’s pilot season wiping out. it’s only a matter of time before someone makes a pilot that fox is willing to make the centerpiece of its new friday night.

    once that happens, the ride is over for dollhouse fans. kevin reilly might be content to break even with a cheap sci-fi show in the short run, but in the long run, he wants to build a dominant night, and he knows dollhouse will never be part of that.
91. squiggleslash says:

    June 27, 2009 at 10:18 am

    freeman – The reason I didn’t raise the issue of the poor lead in was because I already had taken it into account. Dollhouse ended the season on a 1.0, while it was being paired with Prison Break and after it had already run into the start of the summer season. I don’t see any synergies between PB and Dollhouse, and even if there are some, the start of the summer season will have wiped out any meager benefits it might have gotten from PB. In the end, I think the vast majority of people watching the last three episodes of Dollhouse watched it by turning on the TV at 9 and/or tuning to Fox at 9.

    So from my point of view, it’s highly improbable that ratings will get worse unless the show itself gets worse. But I don’t think 1.0-1.2 is sustainable in the long term for the reasons you point out. It just takes Fox to get a pilot for a show it thinks can make it on a Friday and which doesn’t cost substantially more, and Fox has to consider other things to do with Dollhouse.

    The good news (from my point of view) is that there are more options with Dollhouse than there were with T:SCC. T:SCC was so expensive, and DVD sales so poor, that moving it to another network was never an option. Dollhouse may be able to move, if DVD sales are at least reasonable. I’m just not confident they will be.
92. greennogo says:

    June 27, 2009 at 10:33 am

    I think DVD sales will be pretty strong in spite of the fact that the price tag is a bit high for less than the full contingent of 22 episodes. A lot of people want to see the now mythic “Epitaph One” episode and the pre network notes original “Echo” 1st episode. (And if “Echo” matches the script that’s out there, it’ll only reinforce the perception that Joss was forced to ‘dumb it down’ over the first five episodes for the network.)
93. freeman says:

    June 27, 2009 at 1:02 pm

    that’s actually a fun part of this. it’s rare for a summer date to mean a lot for the fall schedule. DVD sales are down across the industry. if dollhouse hits the numbers the fans expect, fox will have no choice but to be impressed.

    there is, of course, another scenario. one of the telling weaknesses of dollhouse is that even the whedonesque.com hard-core whedonites are kind of split on dollhouse. that’s like the republican presidential candidate struggling to win south carolina.

    if dvd sales disappoint, i think we can all agree, it’s over. but they might not. it’s good when the people decide, not a few executives in a room.
94. Lanie Grace says:

    July 1, 2009 at 10:43 pm

    @squiggleslash

    The only people that rabidly hate Dollhouse are you and the other 43 active (I’ll be nice here) Terminatorwiki “fans”.

    Dollhouse will be fine.

    Apparently the people that mattered thought DH was a better show with more potential and the DH fans obviously communicated a stronger desire to keep their show

    ~Lanie~
95. squiggleslash says:

    July 2, 2009 at 5:47 am

    Just in case anyone has any doubts about LG’s grasp of reality: I “hate Dollhouse” and “love T:SCC” about as much as LG had access to season finale scripts for the latter.

    I made the mistake some time ago of referencing LG’s “T:SCC canceled” hoax (T:SCC was eventually canceled, but it’s fair to say LG’s story was fiction) when I tried to persuade DH fans it was not a good idea to hitch DH’s fortunes to a sinking ship. As a result, nothing I said was taken seriously, even though the central point, that T:SCC was a sinking ship regardless of whether LG was trolling or not, was obviously correct.

    I’ve made it clear I don’t trust LG’s posts, and as a result LG insists on treating me as a fan of T:SCC, a show I’ve attacked since the second season started last year.

    I normally make it a policy not to respond to LG, but in this case I’ll make an exception if only to ensure nobody else makes the same stupid error I did and in case there’s anyone stupid enough to actually think I really hate DH, a show I’ve been raving about since Ep. 6.