…it’s all about the demos.
Last night’s premiere of Warehouse 13 with 3.5 million viewers drew almost 50% more live+SD viewers than the series finale of Battlestar Galactica that drew 2.4 million. But with 1.1 million fewer overall viewers, the BSG finale averaged 300,000 more adults 18-49 — 1.6 million for BSG vs. 1.3 million for Warehouse 13. Both airings averaged 1.7 million adults 25-54.
Bottom line, more people watched the Warehouse 13 premiere than the BSG finale, and by a wide margin in terms of live plus same day DVR viewing, but those people were outside of the coveted demos.
There is not really any comparison between the two shows as they are very different. BSG, deep and dark and often broody, and Warehouse 13, just the opposite really. But Warehouse 13 is the first new series to premiere on Sci Fi since BSG retired. Warehouse 13 has a chance to build its audience. Building from series premieres seems fairly rare in this day and age, but it does happen.
It will be interesting to see how Eureka performs after almost 10 months off. Its season 3 “fall finale” was last September, but season 3 resumes with 10 new episodes this Friday. But last summer Eureka aired on Tuesdays and this year Warehouse 13 gets the Tuesday slot while Eureka will air in Dollhouse Country on Fridays at 9pm.
I watched the lengthy “Syfy rebranding video” that preceded Warehouse 13 (I’ve embedded it below) and it served at least one useful purpose with me. I learned of the show Scare Tactics. Somehow that was off my radar, but I saw the video and wondered, “why is Tracy Morgan in this rebranding video?!”
so was warehouse 13 good
i would have watched it but i fell asleep last night and i forgot
plus FIRST!!! (i hope)
Good for Warehouse 13 who cares about sci-fi’s remake of 70s “Battlestar Galactica”…sigh now they want to trash Alien Nation next
I thought WH13 was rather good. Not perfect but pilots rarely are…. I think it shows a lot of promise and the cast seems to work great together.
JTF, I agree. It struck me as the SyFy equivalent of the early days of USA’s Burn Notice. Light and fun with a cast who works well together.
i just set my dvr for the encore later toinght i forgot the tape it on Tuesday night and heard promation for it on the radio all week long
Robert, do you have any data that compares the Warehouse 13 premiere demos against other Sci Fi/SyFy premieres, such as Eureka, Sanctuary, and/or BSG? Since those shows have all had successful runs so far, I’m wondering how that data might serve as a possible predictor of W13’s success or failure.
And the Tracy Morgan cameo in that video caught me off guard as well.
Jason, good point. Though I’m not sure how to really do the comparisons. It could well be that they expect more out of a show that airs on Tuesday in the summer against lesser broadcast competition than it expects from a show that airs on Friday during the normal TV season. Still, I’d be surprised if they’re not content with the premiere. As long as the numbers don’t drop like a stone, I’d guess it would be in good shape.
It did better than Sanctuary’s premiere (you can see more data for that here. I don’t have the numbers for Eureka’s premiere. I do remember that the season averages for the first 8 episodes of season 3 of Eureka were under three million and but did a little bit better than 1.3 in the 18-49s.
What I don’t understand is why adults 18-49 are so much more desirable than those who are 25-54, they are almost the same group of people. Are the 18 to 24 year olds so much more prolific in spending habits that it makes a difference? I swear to you that, in my 40’s, I have ALOT more disposable income than I did when I was 22…
Sylvia, I don’t know how much more desirable 18-49 year olds than 25-54 year olds are to advertisers, but it’s at least “slightly more desirable”. It’s not about disposable income, but availability . I’m in my 40s too and it’s pretty clear based on data that people in their 40s watch more TV than people in their 20s. So the 22 year olds are much harder to reach with advertising.
If people in their 20s and 30s watched as much TV as people in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, we probably would rarely see discussions of age demos outside of childrens’ programming.
WH13 was b-o-r-i-n-g. Comparing the two shows is like comparing Shakespeare with Andrew Lloyd Weber. Please.
Here you go Jason:
Stargate Atlantis (4.191M total viewers). Demo breakdown:
2.526M A25-54
2.142M A18-49
Eureka (4.053M total viewers). Demo breakdown:
1.933M A25-54
1.700M A18-49
Sanctuary (2.70M total viewers). Demo breakdown:
1.40M A25-54
1.08M A18-49
It looks like Syfy is off to a good start. The pilot wasn’t perfect, but it didn’t disappoint. I’m wondering how Stargate Universe will do after another reboot, this time, in a very different direction.
WH13 looks ok… has potential. I like the guy in the WH … not too sure about the agents yet.
The WH reminds me of Indiana Jones.
WH13 episode is on Hulu.com …
Robert, thanks for those Eureka numbers. It’ll be interesting to see how W13 will compare in the same time slot during the same time of year. And thanks for those numbers, Russ. They give a good context for other SyFy premieres. I agree with you, Robert–I think that as long as the ratings don’t decrease significantly, the show should be on solid ground.
On a different topic, I’ve wondered the same thing as you, Sylvia. My dad (who is in his early 50’s) watches much more TV than me and also has much, much more disposable income. I get what Robert is saying about availability and younger people, but if the people in their 30s and 40s have more disposable income, wouldn’t they be the group advertisers would want to target anyway?
“On a different topic, I’ve wondered the same thing as you, Sylvia. My dad (who is in his early 50’s) watches much more TV than me and also has much, much more disposable income. I get what Robert is saying about availability and younger people, but if the people in their 30s and 40s have more disposable income, wouldn’t they be the group advertisers would want to target anyway?”
I can’t claim a perfect understanding of how TV advertising works, but expanding on the “availability” discussion there’s still a ton of disposable income available in the lower age demographics (to the point where it would be foolish to write younger people off), which directly leads to having to pay a premium to advertise to a harder-to-reach demographic. This isn’t directed at Jason, but a lot of people on here and elsewhere seem to think that this means that advertisers don’t care about advertising to older people, but that’s not the case. They’re just apparently less likely to turn off the TV.
I like Eureka better…
But I did enjoy Warehouse 13 a lot. When I saw the cow… I asked my girlfriend… “You think it’s a talking cow?” Then it mooed. So I told her “It is! It was announcing the galaxy it was from!” She didn’t get it
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I think “SyFy” was dumb to move their lighthearted Tuesday night comedy Eureka to Friday, their typical ‘Hard Sci Fi’ night of space dramas. They could have made a Tuesday night powerhouse of like minded shows Eureka and Warehouse 13, back to back at 8:00 and 9:00.
Enjoyed the premiere of Warehouse very much…amusing show
I also hope that Eureka is able to do well on Fridays as I really enjoy the show.
I liked WH13 and think it shows promise. I wasn’t blown away, but will continue watching to see how it pans out.
The 18-49 (18-35 really) is more coveted because that it is the time of your life you are establishing your patterns for future money spending. When did you buy your first car? When did you buy your first home? When did you get married? When did you have your first kidlet? When did you have your first “real” job? When did you graduate from college? etc etc
For most, it’s the 18-35 range. Buying patterns for future years for most items usually establish themselves usually in this age range.
Stacy, that’s a good point. I hadn’t thought of that.
You guys seem pretty knowledgeable about this stuff, so not to challenge you, this is a question.
What I have read from some people, and what makes sense, is that while you have exactly summarized how advertisers think, that a lot of these beliefs on how buyers behave is based on decades-old studies. These studies were conducted on 50-and-up members of the World War II generation, who were in fact insanely loyal to brands they remembered from the 1930s.
But there’s no real reason to assume that Baby Boomer 50-year-olds are that resistant to trying new brands. With the result that Baby Boomers above 49 get screwed by the networks for no good reason whatsoever.
But I’m not an advertising professional. It sounds like some people here might be. Have there been studies that confirm that these buying patterns persist today?
officegurl, Robert’s opinion may well be different than mine, but to me the “brand lock-in” argument is secondary to the reduced availability of younger eyeballs in TV viewing as to why 18-49 year olds are more valuable, they simply are scarcer and harder to reach. Older viewers watch more TV and are much easier to reach and therefore less expensive to reach. Part of my opinion is based on numbers we can see, like how many of each age group watches different TV shows, vs. numbers we don’t concerning that “brand lock-in”.
And as best I can I try to stay away from the “Why do advertisers think this way?” arguments. The fact is, advertisers do think that way, and decisions are made based on that thinking. That’s what really matters. Could they change at some point? Of course. But that’s an entirely different discussion.
“But there’s no real reason to assume that Baby Boomer 50-year-olds are that resistant to trying new brands. With the result that Baby Boomers above 49 get screwed by the networks for no good reason whatsoever.”
The thing is, I don’t really think that Boomers are getting screwed in any way – sure, a lot of shows are designed to appeal to young people (for instance, basically the whole CW schedule), but most shows on TV are meant to appeal to as broad an audience as possible. Look at CBS, they’re doing well with shows that tend to skew older. Most TV shows are still built around premises that are fairly universal in appeal (family dramas, family comedies, crime dramas, etc).
I wasn’t impressed, especially from the male lead. But I guess it nicely contrasts the darker action/dramas like Caprica and SG:U.
So the best Secret Service agents are reassigned into the middle of nowhere to collect dangerous artifacts?
I’m sure the pitch for this went something like “Imagine ‘The Librarian’ as a weekly series…”
The pilot felt too long (though I’m sure 1 hour would have seemed too short) and it had some problems, but it was a decent set-up and I’ll keep watching.
I thought the pitch for this series was more like … “Men In Black meets The Lost Room”
But then again, I’ve never seen the Librarian.
Thanks for the info. And again, I’m not saying anyone’s wrong. And I’m in the 18-49 demographic, I benefit from any bias, so I’m not exactly outraged.
There’s just so much sloppy thinking at the networks. It comes up in the Tonight Show debates. NBS will take this vague attitude of screw those 50-year-olds, who needs them anyway. But people in that demographic have the highest disposable income, if they’re more open to switching brands than they used to be it’s a monstrous fallacy.
But you’re right, it’s a fact. End of thread-hijacking. Resume your discussion of the show.
Eric, The “library” in the made-for-TV movies (3 so far) is basically the same thing as the warehouse. Each movie focuses on getting some artifact with some sort of power. There’s an older guy in the library (Bob Newhart) who’s been working there a while and is showing the new librarian (Noah Wiley) the ropes. They answer to a mysterious, no-nonsense woman. The searches in the movies are obviously more involved and the new librarian is a genius with extensive knowledge on all sorts of otherwise useless minutia, but the basic concept is still the same.
I have it on DVR. Haven’t gotten around to watching it, but it does seem rather interesting.
I am glad Warehouse13 performed really well. It was a good premiere. I am still upset with how MGM cancelled SGA. Obvously the network would of renewed the show. It was still performing in total viewers and demos. I am curious how Eureka will do on Friday nights which is a night for heavy DVR’ing. I know SGA pulled like 2.1 Million viewers with a 1.6 HH rating after Live+7 for their last season. Not a number you would cancel a show on, but we all know MGM was replacing SGA for SGU, which I have my doubts about. Anyway hope Warehouse13 can keep it up with some really good stories. It has a lot of potential. Sadly SGA was canned before it’s time, hopefully this show will not be.
Watched it. Didn’t think it was great, but I’ve learned multiple times never to trust the pilot or first episode.
The concept seems extremely natural to me, and in that respect everything is pitched correctly – ie correct level of humor, et al. However, the actual jokes and other one liners generally left something to be desired, and the “spooky object of the week” for this episode seemed a tad unimaginative. Wow, a historical artifact that controls people’s minds malevolently. How… original.
I’m going to give it a few more episodes before deciding whether to continue, but I’d be unsurprised to see a substantial drop next week. Obviously ratings were high this week, but I suspect tired dialog and SOOTW will have left a lot of viewers disappointed. I certainly don’t see it growing an audience, I’ve heard no-one say “Did you watch Warehouse 13 last night?” let alone “Did you see Warehouse 13 last night? It was awesome! You should watch it!”
I’ve heard no-one say “Did you watch Warehouse 13 last night?” let alone “Did you see Warehouse 13 last night? It was awesome! You should watch it!”
I never heard anything like that about Royal Pains either, and it grew…
I’m not saying Warehouse 13 will grow. I don’t think it’s as rare for a cable show to grow from the premiere as it is for a broadcast show, but it still seems unlikely.
Warehouse 13 wasn’t that bad and 3.5 million is good for a pilot on Syfy. As far a as The BSG Finale, I think many fo you already know my feelings on that.
Hope it gets better.
~Lanie~
The Battlestar Galactica remake was a disaster worthy of scorn. Moore definitely doesn’t know how to make a TV show as is seen in the boring Virtuality Pilot.
It’s really insulting when a pilot TV show has higher ratings than the finale of another TV show that has been on the air for 5 years. All I remember from the Battlestar Finale is how the fleet was abandoned and the Capricans went back to nature. Final 5? What final 5?
You know, there’s a logical reason for Warehouse 13, a show we didn’t know much about, would have gotten greater ratings than Battlestar Galactica. First of all, when was Galactica on? It took place during the Spring when people had a lot more choices to choose from with the ongoing network shows. Face it, if Sci Fi or Syfy (stupid new name) had brand new shows throughout the year and on a regular basis, then it would really compete against the network shows. Warehouse 13 premiered when there’s not much to watch out there. Most network shows are done for the summer and the new network shows feel like summer shows, i.e. not great quality. Scripted shows at this time of year are few and far between. It’s common sense why Warehouse 13 would have great ratings. When Monk and Psych premiere, they’ll also have great ratings in August when there’s literally nothing out there to watch.
I only watched part of it before I began channel surfing. It seemed like pretty standard fare to me. The upper end of the 18-49 demographic probably aren’t going to be all that impressed; it’s just not that new and interesting. I would imagine it will probably keep 2 million viewers or so, which will make it successful enough to hang around for a year or two. If I was making suggestions to the writers, mine would be simple: Make it half as long and twice as funny.
Warehouse 13 reminds me so much of Friday the 13th the Series it’s scary.
People must have liked what they saw…
The second episode of Syfy’s new drama “Warehouse 13″ retained an impressive 97% of its premiere audience Tuesday night. The show delivered 3.4 million viewers.
via The Live Feed