| Scoreboard |  |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rating/Share: Adults 18-49 | 2.0/7 | 1.7/6 | 1.4/5 | 1.0/4 | 0.8/3 |
| Total Viewers (million) | 8.41 | 5.30 | 5.93 | 2.69 | 1.83 |
Update: my apologies to users of Internet Explorer. There was a problem earlier where this page would not load correctly for IE users and they were not able to see or post comments. It has been corrected. Again, I apologize for the inconvenience!
Full details coming soon in the table below, but Friday night, Brothers got off to a slow start with 2.82 million and a 1.0/4 adults 18-49 rating and Dollhouse averaged 2.56 million and a 1.0/3 adults 18-49 rating. Smallville fared worse than a repeat of FlashForward, and CBS of course won the night. Full details now below, but here are the half hour numbers for Dollhouse: (18-49, 18-34, viewers):
9-9:30p: 1.0, 1.0, 2.698 million
9:30-10p: 1.0, 1.0 2.427 million
Here are the night’s full details:
| Time | Net | Show | 18-49 Rating/Share | Viewers (Millons) |
| 8:00 | CBS | Ghost Whiperer (season premiere) | 2.2/8 | 8.58 |
| ABC | FlashForward (R) | 1.5/5 | 4.55 | |
| NBC | Law & Order (season premiere) | 1.3/5 | 6.29 | |
| FOX | Brothers (series premiere) | 1.0/4 | 2.82 | |
| CW | Smallville (season premiere) | 1.0/4 | 2.50 | |
| 9:00 | CBS | Medium (season premiere) | 2.0/7 | 8.78 |
| NBC | Dateline NBC | 1.5/5 | 5.82 | |
| ABC | Modern Family (R) | 1.5/5 | 4.28 | |
| FOX | Dollhouse (season premiere) | 1.0/3 | 2.56 | |
| CW | America’s Next Top Model (R) | 0.5/2 | 1.17 | |
| 9:30 | ABC | Cougar Town (R) | 1.5/5 | 4.18 |
| 10:00 | ABC | 20/20 | 2.3/8 | 7.11 |
| CBS | Numb3rs (season premiere) | 1.8/6 | 7.92 | |
| NBC | The Jay Leno Show | 1.5/5 | 5.68 |
Though CBS won the night, it and won easily between 8pm-10pm, Numb3rs came in second to 20/20 with adults 18-49. The numbers weren’t off the charts for either Ghost Whisperer or Medium, but they still easily won their slots and so far seem well paired together.
Smallville on Friday, I’m guessing drew its lowest ratings ever for an original episode. But the CW notes the following:
The premiere of SMALLVILLE scored our best performance in the Friday 8pm hour among adults 18-34 (1.0/4), adults 18-49 (1.0/4) and total viewers (2.5mil) in a year (Sept. 26 2008 – Smackdown).
Versus premiere night last year, Smallville outperformed our comedies by +25% in adults 18-49 and +25% in total viewers.
What’s surprising to me is just how strong the ABC lineup of repeats of new shows (FlashForward, Modern Family and Cougar Town) was. There’s another week of ABC repeats next Friday before Ugly Betty bows on October 9. The question is, will Betty outperform the repeats!? Here are the bullets from ABC PR on the night:
- Although 2/3 if its schedule was in repeats, ABC took second place on Friday night among Adults 18-49 to CBS with its season premieres. In fact ABC (1.7/6) upset NBC’s season opening Friday by 21% (1.4/5) and Fox’s Friday opener by 70% (1.0/4). ABC’s 20/20 stood as Friday’s #1 TV show in Adults 18-49 (2.3/7).
- ABC equaled its highest-rated Friday night in 6 months – since 3/27/09.
- With replays of FlashForward from 8-9pm (just one night after its debut) and the Wednesday comedies (Modern Family/Cougar Town) form 9-10pm, ABC finished #2 in the both the 8pm hour and the 9pm hour among Adults 18-49.
- Friday’s highest-rated television show, ABC News’ 20/20 dominated the 10 o’clock hour with Adults 18-49 (2.3/7), beating CBS’ season premiere of Numbers by 35% (1.7/5) and NBC’s Jay Leno by 53% (1.5/5). The newsmagazine also finished #1 from 10-11pm in the key Adults 25-54 news demo (2.6/8).
- 20/20 earned its highest Adult 18-49 rating (2.3/7) since February, while posting its biggest audience (7.1 million) and highest Adult 25-54 (2.6/8) numbers since March – since 2/13/09 and 3/27/09, respectively.
Haters of The Jay Leno Show will revel in the 1.5 adults 18-49 rating, and nothing anyone can say will sap their joy!
You can see TV ratings from other recent Overnight ratings reports here.
Nielsen TV Ratings: ©2009 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved. Source: Marc Berman/Mediaweek.
Definitions:
Fast Affiliate Ratings: These first national ratings, including demographics, are available at approximately 11 AM (ET) the day after telecast, and are released to subscribing customers daily. These data, from the National People Meter sample, are strictly time-period information, based on the normal broadcast network feed, and include all programming on the affiliated stations, sometimes including network programming, sometimes not. The figures may include stations that did not air the entire network feed, as well as local news breaks or cutaways for local coverage or other programming. Fast Affiliate ratings are not as useful for live programs and are likely to differ significantly from the final results, because the data reflect normal broadcast feed patterns. For example, with a World Series game, Fast Affiliate Ratings would include whatever aired from 8-11PM on affiliates in the Pacific Time Zone, following the live football game, but not game coverage that begins at 5PM PT. The same would be true of Presidential debates as well as live award shows and breaking news reports.
Rating: Estimated percentage of the universe of TV households (or other specified group) tuned to a program in the average minute. Ratings are expressed as a percent.
Share (of Audience): The percent of households (or persons) using television who are tuned to a specific program, station or network in a specific area at a specific time. (See also, Rating, which represents tuning or viewing as a percent of the entire population being measured.)
Time Shifted Viewing – Program ratings for national sources are produced in three streams of data – Live, Live+Same Day (Live+SD) and Live+7 Day. Time shifted figures account for incremental viewing that takes place with DVRs which are currently in approximately 24.4% of all U.S. TV households. Live+Same Day (Live+SD) include viewing during the same broadcast day as the original telecast, with a cut-off of 3:00AM local time when meters transmit daily viewing to Nielsen for processing. Live+7 Day ratings include incremental viewing that takes place during the 7 days following a telecast.
For more information see Numbers 101 and Numbers 102.
Versus premiere night last year, Smallville outperformed our comedies by +25% in adults 18-49 and +25% in total viewers.
Really hope The CW moves Smallville to Wednesdays 8pm. If its ratings are bad, it’s because of the slot, NOT because of the show’s quality.
Not surprising.
So, DH comes back even weaker than when it left the air? How shocking. People say that Fox is patient, but how patient can they really be?
no surprises here, another season of boring Friday numbers! At least til’ mid-season.
Ouch! I’m not surprised, but I was hoping it would do better. Did FOX at least already pay for 13 episodes? That was at least bring closure to the show, but the last episode on the DVD kinda did that too.
Ouch…
What’s the problem between American People and DOLLHOUSE :@ , what’s the problem ? why the hate , it’s way better than ghost whisper
and medium
Thanks to the CW for killing off Smallvilles ratings
Aw, sucks to be Dollhouse! I was able to PVR the re-run of Cougar Town due to the fact that I didn’t watch it on Wednesday, and I had to say that I quite enjoyed it.
Bad numbers for Smallville. WB won’t be happy. I think they are going to want Smallville moved.
I’m so pleased with Smallville’s ratings! CW didn’t kill the show, the last episode did. I’m one of the viewers that has just HAD ENOUGH and chose to not watch. Supernatural and Vampire Diaries beat it!
Well, you just can’t be surprised about Dollhouse. I think it’s what most of us expected. It’s why we were all left scratching our heads when it got renewed if the first place.
I, for one, am glad to see that Medium fared well on its new network, day and time slot.
If Numb3rs continues doing those numbers this season, it will find its daytime Numb3red. Meanwhile, CBS did great (not spectacular) vs the other nets. Medium improved on Ghost Whisperer in total viewers, and was only .1 below in Adults 18-49. Isn’t NBC wishing they didn’t cancel the show now? I’m sure they don’t care, but what does NBC care about these days? Cheap programming.
If Ugly Betty, which debuts in two weeks (why so late?), can do her Thursday at 8 numbers on Fridays at 9, ABC will be okay with her for the time being. Let’s just hope a really good show can come along and boost her numbers and not some reality show no one watches. I want at least one more season after this and then I’ll let her leave my TV.
Dollhouse on FOX isn’t a bad show, but I find it easier to watch her on the internet (via Hulu) than I do watching on FOX. Not that I’m always out and have no time, I just don’t want to watch TV on Friday after a long work week. I want to relax and enjoy what I missed on the internet at the end, cause it is just reading…which doesn’t require thinking.
The premiere was such an amazing episode for Smallville and I don’t think any other show on the CW would do great numbers on a Friday when the best show gets a 2.2 in the demo.
To transfer a Marc Berman conversation here, The game show “Greed” got 9 million viewers on Friday nights. FOX canceled it because they wanted to get away from anything remotely resembling reality TV at the time. It’s cheap to produce, and did well. They need to bring it back.
Can’t say any of those numbers surprise me: Fridays are graveyards, people.
And the NBC numbers will still go down once Southland returns. Yeesh.
Actually, what was the late season average on the CBS shows? Was Numbers really only doing a 1.8 back in May?
Err, wait, 20/20 was the strongest show in the 18-49 demo for the night? Was there a special subject?
One good thing about Dollhouse was I couldn’t tell the show was produced in a cheaper manner. Not that it has much hope anyway, especially if Fox needs a slot to throw Lie to Me or Fringe in Spring.
must besad for fox, reruns on abc beat all their programming.
Well Ghost Whisperer and Medium did well, I do think that Dollhouse was hurt by Medium just because the show does attract a similiar demo of people who like good strong shows. Though I am very sad at Dollhouse’s numbers (I was hoping for maybe a 1.3 or 1.5) I also think that the coming premiere’s of Southland and Ugly Betty will hurt Dollhouse even more, possibly push the show into a 0.8 or lower
Ouch-Smallville almost got as many viewers as Dollhouse and tied it in the demo. Why is Dollhouse still on?
Now- what excuses do you think the Dollhouse apologists will make? There’s the poor lead-in, the premiere of Surrogates- can anyone think of others?
Um, Smallville’s 2.5 million viewers and 1.0 Adults 18-49 demo isn’t bad, people. It is barely below Supernatural’s performance on Thursday. The CW will be pleased with these numbers. The show even did better than 90210, The Beautiful Life: TBL, Melrose Place and Gossip Girl in total viewers. Additionally, it tied or was slightly below some of those shows in Adults 18-49. Why complain about its ratings on a Friday no less?
WOW!!1 A 1.0 for Smallville on friday is not bad, in terms of other CW like Gossip Girl or 90210 (which are more promoted) get only a 1.1 or 1.2, so a friday show which should get like 70% of that gets way more! Well down Smallville!
I mean well ‘done’ smallville, lol
Good numbers for ghost whisperer and Medium. HA HA NBC
How come all of Medium audience followed the show from a network to another, on another night, which is friday… Medium even hace slightly more viewers than Ghost Whisperer
But half the fans of Smallville left the show even if it’s only one night after the usual night. If Smallville had the numbers from last year, the CW would have been second in the 8pm time slot.
But now, Dawn really did it, managed to lose the success of all her “good” show, failed every new one (except for VD…). And now Supernatural is the 2 best rated show of the CW, wouhou!
Accept for a few select shows ratings across the board continue to erode. Network executives are like a dog trying to catch there tail. They will never catch it. There is just way too many channels and internet as competition. You can only stretch a rubber band so far. NBC’s decison to air Leno 5 nights a week, while sad is a reality that other networks and channels will contimplate copying.The viewership and budgets are way out of wack. There business models are broken with no easy answers to fix.
chuck
I think the majority of people are simply getting too stupid to be able to understand good television any more.
Hopefully the PVR and Hulu numbers on Dollhouse are enough to keep it alive.
What a low rated night even the CBS shows although they won performed below expectations.
the cw should have renewed reaper to air in the 9pm friday slot after smallville that would have made the cw more competitive. i bet after TBL the cw is wishing they had kept reaper if only for being saved the embarrasment
Well, Dollhouse did beat the Top Model rerun. Pretty pathetic overall, though!
I like Smallville. That is, I used to like SV. I watched the first 20 minutes of the season premiere and then changed the channel. It was awful. I really think it’s well past time for this one to go. Of the good characters, only Clark and Chloe remain. More importantly, the writing sucks. I hope they wrap up the show in May. Let it go out on a high note.
At 9, I watched Jockeys on Animal Planet. Any other fans here?
WOW my favorite shows are on friday and no one watch them. Sci Fi is dead.
I am really sorry for Smallville. Even do I am preaty shure that next weak he will be bather then Dollhouse.
James; you can pretty much count on Dollhouse’s Live+7 numbers to be in the range of 3.5 million viewers with a 1.4 or 1.5 adults 18-49 rating. I think it needs numbers like that in the overnights (LIVE+SD) to survive, but we’ll see…
Wow ABC repeats spanked DH in total views AND demos, I didn’t quite expect that, Fox won’t be patient for very much longer. As expected the GW/Medium line up is compatible and fairly solid.
Smallville’s Premere was awesome last night but the Friday night move
is really hurting the numbers.
@chicc-o – don’t confuse “hate” with what it really is – “disinterest.”
I’ll watch Dollhouse for however long it is on, but its renewal made no sense. The fact that it came back lower than it started is a stunner, though.
Dollhouse actually did better than I expected. General awareness remains non-existent. I expected it to premiere below 1.0 and have erosion from last season’s viewer remnants.
The good news is that it has a base of viewers that returned for the second series premiere. The bad news is that there aren’t many of them, and Dollhouse can’t beat reruns of the current week’s programming.
These ratings for FOX are horrible, and the fact that the only competition they had was from CBS only makes it worse. None of the other networks have started their Friday premieres yet so things can only go down from here once they start.
Not really surprised about dollhouse, but I honestly didn’t think it would do WORSE than TSCC lol.
James17930- people are stupid if they don’t like Dollhouse? Sorry, a reasonable person can think that Dollhouse is stupid.
Dollhouse isn’t that great, but a 1.0? Come on!!
Good numbers for Ghost Whisperer, I love this serie!
I hope Smallville beats Brothers/Til Death next week. And again what a waste of timeslot for the ANTM rerun.
I hope the CBS shows could cross the 10+ million viewers mark. I’m quite surprised none of the three CBS did that this week considering they are season premieres I would have higher numbers.
I’m worried for Ugly Betty.
@Samuel, Supernatural is 3rd in total viewers and 4th in the demo…but it’s still good for the CW.
I’m impressed with the numbers Smallville could pull on a Friday; it’s certainly has potential to beat out Fox in the coming weeks.
Nielsen live numbers are meaningless on Friday night. DVR numbers will tell the true story. To bad FOX didn’t realize this before the canceled TSCC, instead of Dullhouse.
I didn’t notice NBC had it’s premieres last night too so my comment above is less true, with ABC being the only network in repeats. ABC did better in repeats than I would have thought though. The question for ABC is if Ugly Better performs at or below these numbers do they cancel it and stick to repeats for Friday nights?
Tommy, I asked that question (re Ugly Betty) in the post itself! Of course nobody read that, but still
That begs the general question of “Are highly rated repeats better to show than lower rated originals?” Perhaps there’s a future post in that.
I confess to a feeling of dismay for all Wheaton fans: last night’s premiere was far superior to anything aired last season. Perhaps word of mouth might bring some of the fold back. Then again, it may not!
For many, Smallville did itself in with a less than stellar year last season, ( and that is putting it mildly). I suspect the ratings are an indication of the fans discontent. I am pleased that Medium did indeed find a home with CBS’s successful Friday night lineup. It deserved more respect from NBC than it got, but we’re talking NBC here: what else could one really expect.
Smallville’s been bleeding viewers since last season, they only got a bump in the ratings when Lana returned. I stopped watching after that dreadful finale.I think a lot of people are tired of Clark being so mopey, and of Chloe always getting screwed. I don’t believe this is the worst SV’s gotten in terms of ratings, but it’s definitely their worst-rated premiere. It’s too bad they show has fizzled out this way, but it should’ve ended three years ago.
Dateline down sharply from last week.
I did read that Robert, I just figured I’d build on what you had said in the post
This is how someone with any sense would have made the CW’s lineup this season:
Mondays the same
Tuesdays should have been 90210 and Next Top Model
Wednesdays should have been Smallville and Reaper
Thursdays the same
Fridays repeat of Vampire Diaries, repeat of NTM
TBL was dead from the start, Reaper should be back, and Smallville on Friday is ridiculous!
But I was at a concert last night and couldn’t watch Dollhouse. Surely Fox understands that all the viewers were at concerts?
I think Southland’s numbers won’t come close to what Dateline is getting.
Smallville was a little darker and at times Clark acted more like Batman than Superman but it was still pretty good. Ideally it should be moved back to Thursdays with Vampire Diaries going to Wednesdays. That said if it maintains these numbers on Fridays it should be fine. Its still doing as well as a bunch of other CW shows all of which have better nights.
Surrogates! Damn you, Bruce Willis.
I wasn’t 100% serious when I mentioned the CW could beat Fox on Fridays, but maybe I should have been. A CW show premieres at 2.50 compared to Fox’s 2.56 million.
Oh so close this week.
Everywhere I turn, there is CCH Pounder.
As far as Dollhouse goes I watch it but I’m not really invested in it. I could care less if it stays or goes.
I know we all expected Dollhouse to bomb, but few of us expected it to bomb THAT badly. As for Smallville, I pray this may signal the death of that series and thus Tom Welling’s career.
Chad, I *almost* watched Brothers just to see CCH, but instead got my fill with the Warehouse 13 finale I hadn’t seen yet.
Indeed, I went to see Bruce kicking some asses… But came back in time to watch Dollhouse…
TSCC was a great lead-in for Dollhouse. I’m a big TSCC fan and that’s the only reason I watched Dollhouse last year and there are many others like me. I think I saw all but one episode. I wanted to like it and I wanted it to have high ratings. I wanted Friday Sci-Fi night to succeed.
That said, I have yet to be truly impressed by the show. And I’m not saying it’s bad – it’s probably better than much of what’s out there. It’s an interesting concept and I really like several of the characters (Adele, Topher, Ballard), but it hasn’t really captivated me yet. I still think it has potential, but I’ll put it this way – I don’t look forward to new Dollhouse episodes all week like I did for TSCC, I have no interest in buying the DVDs and I’m not going to rush home from work to watch. And realistically, it’s definitely too far out there to ever get big numbers. But what we’ve seen this week is much lower than expectations.
The lead-in this year (Brothers) makes absolutely no sense. I don’t see there being much crossover between either audience. That won’t help.
There are also a large number of TSCC fans who are now boycotting Fox because of the TSCC cancelation. I’m not sure any of them are Nielsen households, but clearly there is a part of the Dollhouse audience that is bitter and not watching. Many of the TSCC fans that are boycotting are also Firefly fans – they’ve simply been burned by Fox one too many times and don’t want anything to do with that network. *shrug*
Wow, I’m a little shocked at those CBS numbers. That’s some pretty major erosion.
I don’t know what kind of ratings other CW shows get, but shows like Gossip Girl and 90201 get the kind of demos the network is after, even if they’re total viewer numbers are low. They’re also considerably younger shows compared to Smallville, which is in its 9th season. It makes sense that they’d put promotional money behind the shows that can still build on their audience.
Lisa – all the “good characters” are gone from SMALLVILLE? Umm, hello, Erica Durance’s Lois has been THE reason to watch this series for the last couple of years! She’s more engaging than Kristin Kruek’s mopey Lana Lang ever was.
I feel SMALLVILLE has gone through a really good creative period between last season and the beginning of this one. Those numbers are actually solid for a Friday. Frankly I felt the series was much lazier and cliched when it was one year of Lana and Clark after another. It’s much more entertaining now.
Thanks CW for killing off Smallville ratings! Last night’s episode was AMAZING! I hope they move the show to another night! :\
CW is wasting Smallville in a graveyard-slot and also wasting a Wednesday-slot on reruns, that’s stupid.
As for Dollhouse, too bad but expected.
And how did Medium do compared to it’s NBC airings?
Oh, and it probably doesn’t help the ratings that they cut DeWitt’s hair. I was totally appalled when I saw that.
Melbye, a bit worse with 18-49, but comparing Monday at 10pm to Friday at 9pm seems kind of pointless to me.
I think the bigger thing is that the 9pm occupant on CBS Fridays typically seemed to dip by ~1 million viewers and a bit in the 18-49 demo. Medium went up a little bit in viewers, and retained almost all of the 18-49. My guess is that GW picks up some steam as the fall rolls on, particularly once Daylight Saving Time ends.
Aw man…if Dollhouse could just at least move up to 3 million it can have all its 13 episodes aired or maybe a full season…one can wishh :/
@Hudson: Yay, another one who doesn’t like Adelle’s new hair-do. I thought I was the only one. As for the ratings… I’m still bummed, but on the other hand, they’re not really surprising. 13 episodes (if that) it is then. Oh well, at least now I won’t be fretting about the ratings every Saturday, I’ll just enjoy whatever number of episodes we’ll be blessed with.
Fox really, really needs to get awareness for Dollhouse out there. Advertise the crap out of it. See if the numbers go up.
I’ll be honest, after how awesome last season’s finale was, this season’s premiere was quite disappointing…
I don’t expect to see this show last long if left as is.
Smallville
Yes it beat the numbers that 2 shows that were already figured to be cancelled at the end of the year did. Two inexpensive sitcoms. Here is the CW most expensive show (well it was at one time, I don’t know if that is still true).
And you get a 1.0 in both primary demo groups.
Now I could see you keeping it their if, the rest of your lineup was strong. But guess what the rest of your lineup is limping out of the starting gate, with only SN not suffering double digits losses in Demo’s (hell the rest are suffering at least 20-40% declines year to year in demos).
Now perhaps someone can tell us viewer for viewer which night generates higher ad rates, Wednesday, Tuesday, or Friday.
Unless the answer is Friday you have to move the damn show (And I don’t like it, they have taken all the charm and appeal out of the show , oh about 5 years ago), but it has performed.
Smallville was way better than the finale last year in terms of quality.
Loved Callum, and Erica was great as always.
I don’t see them moving Smallville’s slot, even if I don’t like it.
They did do well for where they are and the CW doesn’t seem to care past that.
pathetic, Dollhouse couldnt even hold or exceed the lead-in from Brothers.
Wow, Dollhouse beat Smallville…
I agree with Kitty … The CW is happy with the Smallville results on Fridays. I doubt CW thought EHC and The Game where on their way out at the start of last season.
Unless the CW has a high abundance of new shows next season I predict a 10th and last season for Smallville just like OTH will have a 8th season and SN will get a 6th season.
I am sorry to say that JBF will not be able to post anything today. Moments after JBF saw the ratings for Dollhouse, he collapsed to the floor and had to be rushed to the hospital. As he was being placed in the ambulance, I heard him mutter something about “DVRs will help, right? . . . and Hulu . . . never forget Hulu . . . “ But then he started babbling nonsense about finding ways to do away with Patricia Arquette, Tony Shalhoub, Ed O’Neill, and Courteney Cox, and he had to be sedated. There’s no word yet on what caused the unfortunate incident, but I’m hopeful that he’ll recover in time for Dollhouse next Friday. At this point, the best guess is that watching Dollhouse 8 hours a day all summer, when combined with the shock of the lower-than-expected ratings, resulted in this tragic event.
Be sure to watch DOllhouse next Friday, because I’m not sure JBF can survive if you don’t! The fate of a man’s life is in your hands.
CBS won as expected, but the numbers seem a little low for them. I’m sure they’ll build during the year as usual, but not the best start.
Still, much better than the start for FOX and NBC. Neither can be all that happy with their premieres. If the CW had originals for both hours, they’d have a chance of beating these two.
ABC had a good night for the third night in a row. Coming in second with of this week’s premieres is great.
Smallville fared okay for being on the Friday night Misfit schedule. Top Model is doing so horrible this season so far compared to last year, even if they do pair Smallville with Top Model, they both have totally different audiences. Smallville is more men oriented, and Top Model is more of The CW’s target women demo.so a change like this might actually damage Smallville’s rating further since it probably wouldnt get a good lead-in from Model. they were the 2 strongest shows last season (for The CW), now their both sinking, so then again, The CW might just pair them together just to finish off their poor miserable rating suffering. Top Model isnt contracted through the end of this season, so after Cycle 14, and considering its numbers, its gone after this year. Smallville is the same, 9th season, they have series finale prepared in case of last minute cancellation, it is was expected to be its last season by most people, and its numbers suffer for it. and since they moved it to Fridays, im pretty sure my prediction for the fate of Smallville is correct. Supernatural, well, we can go either way with that show, it loses a lot of viewers from Vampire Diaries, but still hold a decent demo rating, but at the same time, they also rumored this to be its last season, and they gave it a new show as a lead in, while moving the Smallville, its only real compatible show, to Fridays, so your guess is as good as mine on that one.
JBF, get well soon!
Dollhouse has bad ratings. I know that. But why the hell does everybody loves that it has bad ratings?
“Vows” was awesome. Way better than the majority of the episodes last season. The thing is… the premiere didn’t have anything to attract new viewers.
Let’s go Dollhouse!
BTW, way to go The CW! You screwed up your highest rated series! Nice work.
year, smallville should take tbl’s timeslot. but the storyline this season is still bogus.
Smallville should be moved to Tuesdays, it deserves it after lat night’s episode. Dollhouse was great especially Amy acker and the faints are suprisingly better then I expected. And can we add the repeat episodes of ABC’s shows to their full ratings! NBC does it so why shouldn’t ABC?
“Joss’s Biggest Fan’s Spokesperson says:
September 26, 2009 at 10:16 am
I am sorry to say that JBF will not be able to post anything today. Moments after JBF saw the ratings for Dollhouse, he collapsed to the floor and had to be rushed to the hospital. As he was being placed in the ambulance, I heard him mutter something about “DVRs will help, right? . . . and Hulu . . . never forget Hulu . . . “ But then he started babbling nonsense about finding ways to do away with Patricia Arquette, Tony Shalhoub, Ed O’Neill, and Courteney Cox, and he had to be sedated. There’s no word yet on what caused the unfortunate incident, but I’m hopeful that he’ll recover in time for Dollhouse next Friday. At this point, the best guess is that watching Dollhouse 8 hours a day all summer, when combined with the shock of the lower-than-expected ratings, resulted in this tragic event.
Be sure to watch DOllhouse next Friday, because I’m not sure JBF can survive if you don’t! The fate of a man’s life is in your hands.”
Oh, I was waiting for Friday ratings only to see the JBF posts..
I enjoyed the fight scenes on smallville though, they were awesome. pretty cool that their are enemies that can measure up to clark.
Watching Dollhouse for 8 hours a day would do anybody in. I feel for JBF.
Smallville should be moved to Wednesday, End Of Story. . .The Quality Of The Show Is Too Great To have those low numbers. . .
Smallville needs to just get canceled. The plotlines are horrendous.
Damn. Going to see Nightman Cometh and then drinking last night made me sleep in and miss all the fun.
I wonder how far Dollhouse will be allowed to sink before it’s pulled. I was sure that it would look decent enough to allow for all 13 episodes to air, but now I’m not so sure.
Is anyone – including FOX – surprised by DOLLHOUSE ratings? Was FOX expecting huge numbers? Doubtful.
Speaking as a fan of the show, the second season premiere did nothing to hook new viewers. Heck, as a fan, I found some things hard to follow. Plus, the premiere was BARELY advertised.
The real question is: What are FOX’s expectations for DOLLHOUSE? We know the production costs were cut way down. Are CW-like numbers enough to keep it alive on Fridays, in exchange for a rabid following? Does Hulu and DVR viewing factor in? DVD sales? If so, how much?
Before declaring DOLLHOUSE D.O.A., I think we need to know what FOX was expecting in a second season…. which is barely advertised.
And if its canceled after 13, Joss Whedon needs to take his next show to F/X, HBO, Scyfy or another netlet… where those ratings are perfectly acceptable and the new Whedon-show can have a healthy multiple season life.
In other words, maybe Whedon shows cant survive the new network landscape.
wow antm encore on fridays beat an original tbl!!!
I’m actually a little surprised how weak ghost whisperer was if I’m not mistake it was averaging over 10 mil last year I wonderwhat happened
mike says:
September 26, 2009 at 9:29 am
This is how someone with any sense would have made the CW’s lineup this season:
Mondays the same
Tuesdays should have been 90210 and Next Top Model
Wednesdays should have been Smallville and Reaper
Thursdays the same
Fridays repeat of Vampire Diaries, repeat of NTM
TBL was dead from the start, Reaper should be back, and Smallville on Friday is ridiculous!
I kind of like the line-up. I knew it giving up Sunday was a bad decision, also for reaper. I think if they didnt give Sunday up, they would put Everybody Hates Chris and the Game 7pm, Life UneXpected on 8pm and so they have 1 sport left, maybe for Privileged on 9pm?? or a new show.
Numb3rs didn’t do bad. Sure it did better in the past but it really isn’t much lower than the few shows above it on Friday night. Pretty good numbers for a Friday.
And I am sure NBC is happy with Jay Leno’s numbers. It’s cheaper than scripted shows, so 5 million viewers is mostly likely fine.
I love Jay Leno, but it was Numb3rs I DVRed last night instead. Pendant Race baseball trumps most this time of the year with me.
sorry to anyone using Internet Explorer who couldn’t previously access the comments on this post. It has been fixed…
I am interested what were the numbers for Psych and Monk last week. Did they performed better then ABC,NBC,FOX and the CW?
People still using Internet Explorer
Firefox FTW!
Someone, interestingly this is a case of one Microsoft product breaking things *only* for users of *another* Microsoft product. They are *reverse* evil geniuses!
So glad to see Medium not being the low point in a CBS Friday 9pm slot. Overall, though, all three look kinda low. Mediums was as good as ever and they picked up right where they left off with no big changes. Haven’t seen GW yet as I had to record it.
Someone, over half our traffic (53% in the last month) came from various flavors of Internet Explorer. That’s much less than the ~75% when we launched this blog, but still a lot of people and for now still MOST of our visitors!
Thanks Robert. Not surprised by the numbers – for any of them really – but I think the focus should be if the numbers for DH can hold or if they drop off even more. I think the key word is “consistant” even if it is low. But yeah, back nine looks farther away than before.
Poor poor Dollhouse …
Gosh if only it could get to 1.5 and stay there
1. whedon fans should hope DH gets canceled quickly, so he can move on to worthwhile projects.
2. Who thought a sitcom starring a football player with no acting experience was a good idea? Clearly all that promotion during football games didn’t payoff, so nobody can complain about that show not getting its fair shakes.
3. I can’t believe that 1.0 scripted show is the best way for fox to make money on a Friday night. Even if semi-successful reality is worse, how bout reruns or a movie of the week, or get this a scripted show that does better than a 1.0 It’s got to be possible, right?
4. That’s an impressive rerun for flash forward. I expect viewers to go up, not down next week.
5.L&O numbers should pick up if people get wind this is the last season, if it is in fact the last season. A 1.3 on a friday night is still better than dollhouse. Although I’m sure dollhouse is more profitable.(not including syndication)
6. Congrats Leno. You were the most watched show on NBC last night.
off topic, but internet explorer is the best. firefox is awful.
Wow that is pretty terrible for DH. Im guessing the dvr additions will at least make it somewhat respectable. Im of the mind that since it got renewed with the terrible numbers it had, Fox isn’t really expecting more than this. The show can still be somewhat profitable for them if its budget really is dirt cheap and it can get critical acclaim and possibly turn that into healthy dvd sales.
Not to hi-jack the topic but has there been any word on the ratings for HBO’s Bored To Death? I didn’t watch it but I might if it got a chance at staying around.
Anything?
Looks like this year most TV reviews are right . They predicted Brothers would do bad and it did. And they predicted Vampire Diaries, Flashforward, Community, Modern Family , NCSI LA and the Good Wife to do well and they did.
Well , Dollhouse , sorry for the fans , but I don’t think it will get any better. Well, at least you’ll enjoy some episodes of a second season.
Well, still some series to premiere and others to come back with new season. It will be interesting to see of TV critics will be still right.
Yes, Friday is a bad TV night. I am sure networks don’t espect too much.So my guess CBS is happy with the numbers they got.
Eliza mentioned on her Twitter page that she is still hoping to get more episodes beyond the 13 ordered. Probably not very likely now.
I understand that people don’t want to be couch potatoes the entire week and want to other things than sit in front of the TV all night. So I’m sure alot of DVR’s were set last night. So it’s not shocking at all that the live viewership on Friday was low.
I am glad to see GW and Medium do moderately well for the evening.
ShockingTobeSoNotShocked you should change your moniker to SearchingToBeSoNotSearched!
Translation: use our frakkin’ search tool, please (upper right hand side of the site), where if you type in “bored to death” you will find info on the first week’s numbers for Bored to Death
I called it. I expected 3.5 million at the highest yet Dollhouse only got 2.5 million. This confirms what I have expected all along, the series will be axed by December and its official NO ONE watches television on fridays. What happened with the series premieres of Numb3rs, Medium and Ghost Whisperer. All 3 were consistent, yet the numbers were lower than I expected.
I thought all the predictions of a 1.4 and higher were overly optimistic but I didn’t realize how much. I thought 1.0 + a small bump due to the pre-season renewal controversy = 1.2, but it doesn’t look like the bump ever materialized.
Fox barely publicized this episode, beyond an occasional ten second spot and a rather tragic Twitter campaign.
The positive part is that the episode was well received. Haven’t seen it yet, but I’ve not heard anyone have a bad word to say beyond the usual DH haters, so hopefully it’ll build a little audience over the coming weeks. Whether that’ll be enough to save it on the other hand…
Chrome baby
i still will never understand why fox picked up dollhouse for a 2nd season? what did they expect to happen? All thats happen is what every normal person expected, it to sink even futher.
whaced Wisper Meduim and Numbers good to CBS still win friday nights
Dollhouse’s problem isn’t that no one watches TV on Fridays- it’s that the people who do watch Flashpoint or Medium instead of Dollhouse.
squiggleslash, I found it to be one of the better DH episodes. It’s up on Hulu already BTW, at least for folks in the USA:
http://www.hulu.com/watch/97669/dollhouse-vows
Because Dollhouse is produced by 20th Century FOX and has a significantly cheaper licensing fee than Terminator, which was a WB show. From everything I read, it got a 2nd season because FOX and 20th Cent TV negotiated cheaper production costs.
Wonder if NBC will admit to making a mistake with letting Medium go? Getting almost 9 million viewers on a Friday night would be cause for a week long celebration if it happened on NBC.
If the CW didn’t expect this kind of response for Smallville on Friday nights they seriously need to have their heads examined. Move it to Wed nights before ANTM and it will probably return to being one of the highest rated shows on the network.
FOX knew what Dollhouse was capable of and still renewed it. There is nothing to blame but lack of interest. I didn’t see a ton of advertising for Dollhouse but running a commercial every break during the rest of the week probably still wouldn’t be enough to boost this show to respectable numbers. I love the show but I dont expect it to last very much longer so might just wait for the Blu Ray release.
Hopefully the decent repeat ratings on ABC mean that Flashforward and Modern Family are going to be legitimate ratings players past the first episodes. Only two new shows I picked up this year.
for some reason i was drawn into watching 20/20 last night….odd
Medium was amazing last night…while Ghost Whisperer was meh
Gleebo, “Wonder if NBC will admit to making a mistake with letting Medium go? Getting almost 9 million viewers on a Friday night would be cause for a week long celebration if it happened on NBC.”
Certainly a rhetorical question, nothing like that is ever admitted publicly. Even behind closed doors that answer is likely dependent on how Chuck does when it returns. Or is there another returning show you’d have cancelled to have kept Medium?
Michael – Everyone expected FOX to bomb and they did. It was just a little worse than they expected. This night got the worst numbers for a friday premiere since FOX’s Nashville in 2007. I thought Smallville would beat Brothers but thhey didnt.
However the biggest surprise for me was how down CBS’s trio was. However unlike last year’s The EX List disaster, CBS can’t blame one of their series for this. Newly picked up Medium did the best of the night. CBS’s Friday should stay the same throughout 2010.
Gotta say I’m disappointed in Fox, and particularly Dollhouse’s numbers. I can think of two reasons why it’s not doing as well. One, it’s target demographic is not the kind of person that stays home on a Friday night. Second, compared to the amount of people watching TV, I think a relatively small percentage even “get” Joss Whedon. Buffy was the exception, but Joss’s stuff usually has a fairly small but RABID fan base. Unfortunate because every Joss Wedon fan I know LOVED Firefly, which got canceled almost right away. I was glad to see Fox picked up a second Season of DH. Hopefully it will improve in the ratings.
I think FOX has missed the boat with Dollhouse. They should have aired the unaired episode on the DVD with some kind of special promotion in the summer. This show still is a mish mash of weird storylines if you didn’t see that episode. That episode is what brings clarity to the characters and the series. This coming from a fan of the show. I think they will air the thirteen they’ve paid for and that will be it.
CW has made one mistake after another. Smallville should be moved back to Thursday. The Vampire Diaries should be moved to the TBL spot. Also they never should have canceled Reaper as it was pulling numbers better than the majority of the product they have on now. One question: Will the CW be around next year?
Brothers was very mediocre and probably the worse of the new comedies aired this fall. Paired with Till Death it will kill any chance of FOX pulling numbers on Friday.
Lizard
The thing is,though, would Medium be getting these kinds of ratings if it was on NBC? Probably not.
Well, Medium was airing post-Heroes last season and you know how most people feel about that show nowadays.
I think pairing it was GW, which has a very similar audience, was a great idea.
And I believe the main reason why Medium was cancelled from NBC was because Patricia Arquette’s contract gives her 22 episodes worth of work, but NBC wanted to cut back to 13.
Wow. WOW. Can’t believe Dollhouse’s numbers.
While UB might have had trouble last year, I think on Fridays it will get very decent numbers. People love the show and it has the fun end-of-week appeal that Monk and Psych have over on USA. I did notice that they haven’t promoted UB AT ALL.
Not sure what to say about Dollhouse. The show is even starting to lose me and I love Whedon’s stuff. Vows was kind of boring and I actually FF through parts so that’s not a good sign. Just don’t know.
Bill – I agree, but I dont think NBC would ever regret it. NBC made all of their decisions and also noted that My Name is Earl and Medium were series that were aging while they were getting younger. NBC’s midseason is crowded enough, and Medium would have just been shuffled around. CBS found a perfect spot for the series sandwiched between Ghost Whisperer and Numb3rs and now Medium gets 22 episodes and actually better ratings.
As for Smallville, the series is aging so CW doesnt care about the show getting a spike in ratings. Instead of focusing on the series low ratings they just care about how much better it did than the season premieres of Everybody Hates Chris and The Game last year.
Donovan, Buffy wasn’t the exception. It got only 5.3 million viewers in its best year. Joss was just lucky that that was enough for UPN and the WB. It would have been a failure if it got the same numbers on one of the big 4. Joss was never anything more than a big fish in a small pond.
flashpoint, cougar town, and modern family are definitely hits
@ Lizardman I agree Smallville needs to move to another night. VD on the other hand performs rather well on Thursdays against a lot of competition so that should be left where it is.
Ok Robert, I searched and I found. I didn’t search first becasue I visit the site daily and never noticed it on the main page so I guessed/assumed that it just wasn’t available. Guess I just missed it first time around. Those numbers don’t look so hot…
Thanks robert for fixing it for us poor IE users!
I have to admit that I used Safari to post my previous comment, because I didn’t want to be a pain in the **s.
Anyway, now I can come back to IE!
Shocking: some days we have more than 30 posts a day. Your best bet is to subscribe to the RSS feed and scan it if you don’t want to miss anything. Often we can’t get everything on the main page…
Tommy,
You’re probably right on that call. I just can’t believe they are going to replay unsuccessful episodes of Melrose in place of TBL for the time being!?! They need to shuffle something. Also they have no good series in the wings to take any of the failures places.
Lizard
anonymous: it’s ok to be a pain in the ass about stuff like that because often if nobody let’s me know, I never find out. and with over half our readers still on IE, I’d definitely prefer to fix that kind of thing as quickly as possible!
‘Smallville’ did well for a CW show on a Friday. That said and with ‘The Beautiful Life’ gone, the CW should move ‘The Vampire Diaries’ to Wednesdays and return ‘Smallville’ to Thursdays. No matter how they try to spin it, ‘Supernatural’’s ratings are down with ‘The VD’ as a lead-in compared to last year.
so far i picked up new Shows NCIS LA, Cougar Town, Modern Family, and the Goodwife and Vampire Daires as GW is in its 5th season still pulling in over 8 million meduim 5th season? 8.7 million and Numbers shows still are doing great CBs is still going strong on Fridays is exxcelnt
Kevin Reilly, Do you belive in Josh?
Smallville is the CW’s hero right now. Its saving their Friday night. Sure, if you compare it to its Thursday performance — its down — but they don’t care about SV on Thursday EXCEPT to crow about Vampire Diaries beating it in their precious demo.
I hate to say it was a good move — because SV deserves better treatment from the CW than it has ever gotten — but its not a disaster.
I am so thrilled that Dollhouse did not do well!!! Fox should have known that Cancelling The Terminator Sarah Connor Chronicles and keeping Dollhouse was a bad mistake. They failed to see that they had a wonderful show and the threw it away. I hope they learn their lesson!!!
The odd thing here is you’d think that CBS was going to survive; however, they’re already being looked at as having a chance of filing for bankrupcy this year due to heavy debt issues.
It’ll be interesting to see if the so called big 4 are a big 3 next year. With one of the leads dying due to bad finacial management.
I’m sure glad CBS got rid of The Unit for the amazing Medium. Please read with immense sarcasm. The Unit’s numbers weren’t fantastic, but they were way better than the Medium’s numbers.
michael, actually i believe buffy got as high as 8 million in its best season.
Ten years from now, people are still going to be doing college seminars on the existential meaning of “Dollhouse”. Exploring the ethical, technological, social, moral, feminist, psychological and narrative form aspects of the show. Buying DVDs, downloads, games, books, comic book tie-ins, scripts, figurines, commemorative plates, holding fan conventions. Doing anything and everything they can to continue and prolong the experience. Generally spending an amount of time exorbitantly and massively out of proportion with what the raw viewing numbers indicate.
Think anyone will be doing that for Courtney’s eminently forgettable peep show “Cougartown” three weeks from now?
And time translates directly to dollars, bucko.
Just like Buffy.
Just like Angel.
Just like Firefly.
CHA-CHING ! ! !
If Fox Network executives cannot find a way to turn major league profit from that kind of committed fan base, then Fox frankly needs to find some brighter executives.
I think CCH Pounder is Guyanese, from South America, I always found her accent weird while watching Law & Order.
Speaking of L&O- isn’t six mil really low? South Land could go either way- above or below six million.
bill, The Unit’s numbers weren’t “way” better, not even measurably better. Last season Medium averaged a 2.4 18-49 demo rating (but that was, I believe, with no repeats), and The Unit averaged a 2.3 (which included at least one repeat). Because I’m not going to go back now and look at original episode numbers, let’s call it a tie.
Perhaps the most depressing result from Dollhouse’s numbers is the lack of JBF analysis.
reneeccski, you should at least rent the dollhouse DVD so you can see the unaired finale episode, it does alot to make you, not only like the show, but accept that it is a sci-fi show that can make you think…
I do agree that I can’t see Fox even being a little bit surprised by the numbers, it is a show that will be very hard for the average viewer to get into and while (season2 episode1)was probably one of the best aired episodes of the series, it did very little to explain what was going on for the new viewer catching it for the 1st time, also having flashbacks within the episode could be very confusing for someone that never saw the show.
If Joss wants new viewers than a portion of every episode should explain the premesis of the show, even if it is something cheesy like a narriator in the opening credits(hey it worked for Quantium Leap)and several other sci-fi shows.
CW, Needs to move Smallville to either Tue or Wed stat…their schedule is crashing fast and I am sure it will beat TBL’s ratings or a rerun of Melrose which can move to Friday night.
Shem, a 1.3 demo rating for L&O is almost certainly its worst ever for an original episode, and I’d be stunned if it weren’t its worst ever for a premiere. But NBC doesn’t care that much. You’ve got to believe it’s on the schedule this season to (1) Hit the 20th season milestone (ala Gunsmoke), (2) Keep Dick Wolf happy (although I may be imagining that). I’d bet it’s 13 and gone after the big PR over the season record.
The CW schedule should be something like this
Monday:
One Tree Hill
Gossip Girl
Tuesday:
90210
Melrose Place
Wednesday:
Smallville
Life Unexpected
Thursday:
Supernatural
Vampire Diaries
Friday:
ANTM
New Reality show
or this:
Monday:
One Tree Hill
Gossip Girl
Tuesday:
90210
Melrose Place
Wednesday:
ANTM
Smallville
Thursday:
Supernatural
Vampire Diaries
Friday:
Encores
New Reality show
Rethinking it, the CW should move ‘The Vampire Diaries’ to Wednesdays at 8pm, which has weaker competition than Thursdays at 8pm. Move ‘ANTM’ to Wednesdays at 9pm. With ‘The VD’ as a lead-in, that should help boost ‘ANTM’’s ratings some. Move ‘Smallville’ back to Thursdays and that should boost its ratings as well as ‘Supernatural’’s.
It’s better programming for all four shows that are anchoring the network right now.
As a huge fan of Joss Whedon’s quality work, I get a bit offended when people assume all of us are going to blindly support his lesser efforts. I have no desire buy Dollhouse DVDs or enroll at Dollhouse University, because the show simply isn’t that good. I’d like to believe even the die hard Whedon fans can think for themselves and admit when their master has failed.
FOX may not get any money out of me for Dollhouse, but they will continue to get my $1.29 for every new Glee single that they release.
Ah, TV by the Numbers the home of commodity aestheticism.
Without Terminator Dollhouse bombed hmmm who saw that coming.
Cody, *with* Terminator Dollhouse bombed. Who (but a crazy TSCC fan) can’t have recognized that?
Bill, where would we be without the *crazy* Chuck, TSCC, and Dollhouse fans?
Well Fox gave him a chance so you whedonites drinking kool-aid can now shut up.
Go away Whedon… you talent is still back in the early 2000s.
Michael,
Your points would be so much better if every other post wasn’t, in fact, bashing Dollhouse. I’m a Dollhouse fan and I DO NOT stay home on Friday. I probably never will.
Look at the numbers. Flash Forward pulled the same ratings as Modern Family. Dollhouse pulled the same number as Brothers. Ghost Whisperer and Medium barely change. There’s an increase in viewers in that time slot but they are watching Medium and Dateline which aren’t exactly shows that my demographic watches.
Dollhouse is surviving because there is a very specific demographic that Fox apparently likes having. As I recall, the season finale pulled a 1.0 as well. For a show with very little if any promotion outside the internet, that’s not exactly unexpected. And it’s not also out of the question that in addition to the budget cuts and ancillary sales (Itunes/Hulu/DVD) that Dollhouse will be more profitable with a 1.0 than something like Flash Forward with a 1.5 and a promotion budget.
Honestly, I don’t know if 1.0 will be enough to sustain the show… but I do know that it was last year when everyone said it would be cancelled. So maybe we have to accept that we don’t know as much about the TV biz as we’d like to think we do. Hell, every major network is creating a new rating system because apparently THEY don’t trust the Nielson’s either.
dear FOX, please drop DH and bring back TSCC!
I hope FOX airs all 13 episodes of Dollhouse. 9 episodes are scheduled through November 27. FOX could easily double up on the remaining four. They may as well just finish up the series.
As for TBL/Smallville by December, wednesdays will have some combo of CW’s two new reality series airing until March. I think The CW wouldnt air Life UnXpected any earlier than March though.
Oh dear…
That seems to sum up last night quite well for everyone except CBS although even they didn’t do quite as well as I might have expected. I am however looking forward to following the ratings for Friday night’s just to see how low Fox, NBC and ABC will let their line-ups go before pulling them. There’s also the weekly, which will perform worst contest to be had, especially when Southland returns and continues its slide from last season.
On the subject of the actual numbers, I was way off on my Dollhouse prediction although if the +7 holds with last season then I should just about break even on that. None the less those Dollhouse numbers are a worry and raise all the same questions we were asking last year. But as with last year I think Dollhouse is going to be wait and see, at least for another week. The shows momentum (and the rest of the Fox schedule) is going to play a bigger part in its future than its actual numbers I suspect.
The new Fox sitcom seems to be DOA as well the real question there is will it drop even further when paired with ‘Til Death? Seems likely doesn’t it. Personally I still think that if Fox wants to have a decent showing on Friday night then they need to find at least one quality genre show to put in there and Dollhouse is not it and I suspect the poor word of mouth for last season has done too much damage for the second season quality to make that much damage. Essentially they need to replicate what they did with The X-Files.
Elsewhere the ABC repeats did very well for Friday’s and managed to beat or equal their original competition on Fox, The CW and NBC that’s probably not a good sign for those three networks. ABC must surely be over the moon though, maybe they really do have hits on their hand with FlashForward, Cougar Town and Modern Family. God knows they need them.
The final thought, what happens with Smallville now? Will Dawn O cave in and move the show earlier in the week? I can’t even begin to imagine how she can possibly justify keeping what was The CW’s biggest success on Friday’s with those numbers whilst airing repeats of the bombing Melrose Place during the week.
Carl, FOX renewed Dollhouse for that reason, but they did say if ratings dont get better, than the series isn’t likely to stick around. The demo was bad also, Brothers tied with Smallville. FOX was beaten by repeats of the three series that ABC is more likely to renew.
Relatively good #’s for Ghost, Medium, Smallville. I wonder about the W18-34 for SV though.
Bad #’s for L&O, decent #’s for Jay Leno.
Dollhouse’s premiere was mostly boring until the last act, hmm. If Whedon can’t maintain a consistently good show anymore, maybe I’ll be okay with just two short seasons…Epitaph One still pwns, though.
Robert says at September 26, 2009 at 12:26 pm:
“Ten years from now, people are still going to be doing college seminars on the existential meaning of ‘Dollhouse.’ Exploring the ethical, technological, social, moral, feminist, psychological and narrative form aspects of the show. Buying DVDs…”
Wow. That’s great that people will be buying “Dollhouse” DVDs ten years from now.
Too bad they’re not buying them today. While it’s only anecdotal info from one retail sales report that I saw, the net 30 numbers on “Dollhouse” DVD sales from its first month in release weren’t good at all. Lots of unopened returns from “Dollhouse” fans that apparently tried to pump the sales by purchasing more than one copy and then returning the extras three weeks later.
Why do these crazy people do that? It’s just a huge waste of time, doesn’t go unnoticed, and only makes the already anemic sales that much worse.
Expecting the same bad behavior from TSCC fans. The net 30 sales may look even worse than “Dollhouse,” since the S2 sales for TSCC already appear atrocious in its first week of release.
That’s disappointing. I actually liked Brothers..
Thanks for fixing the problem, Robert!
Anyway, not that anything here is a shocker. I opted to watch Medium last night and although the episode was somewhat of a letdown after the fantactic season finale back in June, I still found it quite enjoyable. I even dig Arquette’s new “do”.
But the real highlight of the evening for me was the season premier of Law and Order. After several years of creative mediocrity and political cooptation (not to say cop out), the writers decided to bring back real ethics to the show. Very well played, particularly in the second half.
I can’t comment about Dollhouse since I haven’t seen it yet.
Summer will be free for the new episodes of Terminator : The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
Or at least for a direct-to-DVD movie sequel as suggested producer James Middleton (who also produced Terminator Salvation).
Have a look at http://io9.com/5368511/producer-dont-give-up-on-the-sarah-connor-chronicles !
ChrisfromTSCCLand, does your world have a single yellow star like Earth?
this is disappointing for dollhouse! =[
Carl, I don’t think there is much merrit in comparing DH to a Flash Forward repeat. Unless you are trying to say, yes, there were people intertested in watching Sci-Fi-ish TV staying home on Friday nights and they wouldn not touch Dollhouse with a ten foot pole.
The CW needs to move Smallville to Tuesday@8 and 90210 to Wednesday @9 and just show repeats of shows on Friday. They need to give Friday up just like they did Sunday!
Alex – FOX basically took, both of their lowest rated series and put them on the lowest rated night and added a new series to create FOX fridays. FOX renewed Til Death just because of the cheap licensing fee from Sony. So why not add a new comedy to air before Til Death and along with Dollhouse, hope Fridays will magically have high ratings.
The thing is, FOX would normally pull Brothers after such a disatorous premiere, but then it would just be a repeat of last year. Furthermore when Til Death returns next week, Brothers will probably be the highest rated series of the 3. That along with already lowered expectations for fridays, puzzles me.
Robert – just watched it (we DVR’d it, like most people who normally watch Dollhouse we were out yesterday night visiting the in-laws. I just hope they take that massive audience segment into account…
I agree it was one of the better episodes, and it did a certain amount to put my fears to rest that S2 would be more of the Whedon I never got into.
I hope a few good episodes means that word-of-mouth will build a bigger audience over time. At this point, it looks like Fox gave up before the second season even began. Which, to my mind, means that what happens from here on is completely unpredictable. Renew on a 0.8? Cancel on a 2.0? Confuses the hell out of me.
Doesn’t CBS’ Friday night usually do a lot better than this?
ABC must be happy right now.
In the meantime this Fox Friday night ain’t seeing midseason. I expected the numbers to be bad, but not this bad. And since this is premiere week they’ll just keep sinking from here.
So Ghost Whisperer is way down from last seasons highs and has returned to its average which is strong for Friday.
And Medium built on its viewership.
That’s exciting to see.
Not only did Mediums move not hurt it, it’s bolstered it.
The demos leave a bit to be desired, but it is Friday and ultimately pretty adequate. I would like to see either Ghost Whisperer build back up and watch how that affects Medium, or see Medium outgrow Ghost Whisperer and how that would affect things.
Brilliant pairing. Nice ratings. Interesting development, for Medium I find.
does anybosy know what happened on Blonde Charity Mafia.They used to have ot on their site and now the dont!!why??
Yes, thanks for the fix. It was frustrating to see the amount of comments, but not the comments themselves.
I am disappointed for Dollhouse. I had hopes it would do a little better then last season, but no go there. I think a lot of folks left before it started to get good. It really did get so much better. I admit the first few episodes were painful. At this point I will just hope for the full 13 to be aired and certainly not for a third season.
The demos for Fridays are always toward the older viewers, which isnt surprising or unexpected.
@Bill Gorman : it turns out i may be right when i added a few thousand votes for the “under” option at http://tvbythenumbers.com/2009/09/18/over-or-under-13-more-new-episodes-of-dollhouse/27592.
And therefore your friend Lanie Grace may be right too when she announced as soon as early august that “at a minimum there are plans to pickup where Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles left off and go straight to DVD”.See http://www.fmqinc.com/sarah-connor-chronicles/
Fox deserved to bomb. They only renewed Dollhouse because the lead girl wears skimpy clothes constantly.
I don’t know what the weather is like in the rest of the country, but where I live the temperatures have been significantly above normal. That could especially impact ratings on a Friday if people were getting an early jump on the weekend. Of course, even if every man, woman, and child in Montana was outside enjoying the beautiful weather it wouldn’t even lower viewer numbers by one million.
Dollhouse is a dull pointless half-witted unsexy waste of an hour.
Joss Whedon may have been a pretty good writer there for a bit, but whatever collective Muse may have once lifted him up, has let him down, and not recently either.
It got better ratings than it deserved. I’ve seen episodes of Knight Rider that had more ‘zazz.
I mean the REMAKE of Knight Rider.
Not kidding.
I propose a game. It’s the “why my show is getting bad ratings” excuse checklist. We make a list of all these tired excuses (people are too stupid to understand the show, everyone is watching it on DVR/online, lack of promotion, etc.) and the first person to catch someone using each of them gets points. Whoever has the most points at the end of the day, wins.
lol @ TV by the Numbers “Bingo!”
I think it would work better as bingo, Holly. We can make up cards for everyone who wants to play!
Robert: Jinx!
Smallville Rocks! Tom Welling is a Superstar. The Nielson ratings are outdated and the CW people ought to get their heads examined for putting Smallville on Fridays and for not promoting it appropriatly. Check out iTunes: Smallville Episode “Savior” is #6 on TV Episode hit list today. Smallville Season 9 is #7 on TV Seasons Hit list.Obviously the Nielsons don’t tell the whole story.
CW is happy that Smallville has improved on its 8pm from last year.
honestly i kinda hope most FOX shows bomb since FOX is going to make a renew or cancel decison on 24 BEFORE season 8 premieres and with their current strong lineup i’m worried they might cancel it
I just scored for Nielsen is flawed!
Dateline had low numbers this week and 20/20 increased. I thought 20/20 was on their way out but looks like they still have life.
We can call it KINGS! Free space in the middle. But calling out “K-Sundays at 8pm is an awful timeslot!” is a.) a lot of work, and b.) a lot of text to fit into a card.
And sadly, though the excuses seem endless at times, I think Holly got 80% of them in her comment. I’m not sure there’s enough to fill up one card, let alone randomize it across multiple cards.
Might make for a decent coffee mug collection though.
“Nielson is a flawed, antiquated system” would definitely be the first in the set!
We could have one where Nielsen is actually spelled correctly, but is it just my imagination or is it NEVER spelled correctly in that context?
Might make for a decent coffee mug collection though.
Merchandize TVBTN! You know you want to.
At least this person got the i before e right.
I’m not up to date with cable ratings, but next week will be interesting. Will Dollhouse beat the premier of Stargate Universe which airs on Syfy?
1) worst lead in ever
people are already expecting it to get cancelled so they won’t give it a try
2) it airs on Friday/Saturday/8pm/some day of the week everyone I know has classes/ anywhere that isn’t directly after American Idol
3) reality tv ruins everything
4) America is too dumb to get my show
5) it airs against House/Ghost Whisperer/a repeat of Til Death, let’s try it somewhere with less competition
6) but a million people downloaded the torrent
7) the tenth Harry Potter is still in theaters
9) Nielsen is making the numbers up anyway
10) too much old people forgot to turn of CBS
11) the show is too serialized
12) (insert whatever day show airs on) is the most competitive day of the week by my completely made up personal calculation
13) the network never promotes the show
14) but the DVD numbers are slightly less abysmal
15) It needs time. Remember Seinfeld, the X-Files and Cagney and Lacey? Rating totally climb in the fifth season. True fact.
My personal favorite reason ever why TSCC did poorly was “Jennifer Love Hewitt has big boobs”.
Porky, you’re stealing my Thunder…I have a post already prepared for next Friday morning on that topic!
Those are some strong numbers for ABC repeats. They beat FOX and NBC which had all new programming. NBC is in soo much trouble this year!
WOW 20/20 improved a lot. I watched it and it was a very sad story.
I really think ABC could become the #1 network! They do deserve it!!
In order to boost the ratings, Fox needs to call it “Tyler Perry’s Brothers – and just hire a guy named Tyler Perry to act like he’s the host.”
Fifteen reasons why Dollhouse’s ratings sucked:
1) People are too stupid for genre shows that are meditations on the nature of identity.
2) TSCC fans have fled en masse and put a curse on the Fox network.
3) Firefly fans have fled en masse and put a curse on the Fox network.
4) Lack of promotion.
5) F@#&ing Leno.
6) F@#&ing Bruce Willis.
7) F@#&ing decrepit Nielsens. It’s the pony express of viewer measurement.
9) F@#&ing lead in.
10) F@#&king Medium crossover.
11) All the cool kids will just DVR it.
12) Nobody watches TV on Fridays anymore.
13) Dollhouse was on last night? I forgot…I guess I’ll just have to catch up with it on Hulu.
14) “TV By the Numbers, why hast thou cursed us poor Whedonites!”
15) What bad ratings? These are ‘good’ ratings. Everyone across the board is down on Fridays, and we all know TV is just a niche medium now anyway.
The conventional wisdom is that a network may bring back a struggling, but promising series for a second season because it might show a pop in viewership. If it doesn’t pop in the second season, it never will. There’s Dollhouse for you, in a nut shell.
I’m a worried about my Ugly Betty, especially with the across-the-board declines on the night. ABC hasn’t promoted it yet, but it doesn’t premiere until the 9th, so that makes sense. I really think that UB needs at least a 1.8 for the premiere for ABC to be happy with it.
ABC seems to have lost faith in Ugly Betty. Putting her on Friday night and not even 1/10th the promotion of Housewives or Grey’s.
Re: Dollhouse
The facts are these:
Dollhouse had 1.0/3 18-49 Rating/Share and was watched by 2.56 million people (though I like Marc Berman’s 2.70 million number better).
END OF FACTS.
Everything else is only conjecture and personal bias.
The numbers don’t look great, but they didn’t look particularly great last Spring either.
Friday 13th Millions 18-49 Viewers/Share
9:00 Dollhouse 4.73 2.0/6
9:30 Dollhouse 4.70 2.0/6
Friday 20th
Dollhouse 4.22 1.7/5
Friday 27th
Dollhouse 4.13 1.6/5
March 6th
Dollhouse 3.55 1.5/5
March 13th
Dollhouse 4.3 1.6/5
March 20th
Dollhouse 4.13 1.5/5
March 27th
Dollhouse 3.87 1.3/4
April 3rd
Dollhouse 3.49 1.4/5
April 10th
Dollhouse 3.56 1.4/4
April 24th
Dollhouse 2.99 1.2/4
May 1st
Dollhouse 3.09 1.1/4
May 8th
Dollhouse 2.75 1.0/4
And yet Dollhouse was renewed. We’ve heard some reasons why, but I don’t think that too many people really understand those reasons. And even less know what Fox’s expectations are.
Do I think that Fox is happy with last night’s numbers? No, I do not.
As a fan, am I concerned? Definitely.
Do I think that they are bad enough for it to be quickly pulled or canceled? I don’t know, but I don’t think that you (whoever you are) do either.
To the people who are certain that they do and it will be canceled:
If you are SURE that Reilly was lying when he said that Fox would be fine with the same ratings as S1 then please present evidence.
If you are so in the know about Fox’s internal thinking, then I am sure that you knew that DH would be renewed weeks before it was. Can you please present a link to your posts in advance of it’s renewal (anytime in April would be nice) so that we can all see how much privy you are to their thinking then the rest of us?
I look forward to reading any posts by people who are informed on Dollhouse’s unique circumstances.
FYI: Marc Berman’s # isn’t 2.7 million, he only posted rounded half hourly data and that is the rounded result ONLY for the 9-9:30p portion. I have posted the non-rounded versions above in the post but the first half hour it was 2.698 million and then went down to 2.427 million.
Though 18-49 held steady, a definite downward trend in viewers. the 2.698 million was less than the last half hour of Brothers 2.814 million.
If you are SURE that Reilly was lying when he said that Fox would be fine with the same ratings as S1 then please present evidence.
How is 1.0 the same ratings as season one? It’s lower than every week but one, and nearly 30% below the season average.
As I am sure is true in most parts of the country, Friday night in the fall/winter everyone is at a high school football game. The local news spends almost 10 minutes on the games in my area. We are in Kansas and games start at 7 and last until about 9:15/9:30 and then people get a bite to eat. There goes your prime time (7 to 10). Who’s watching TV? We are talking across the board age groups here. Throw in a movie that people want to see and those concerts mentioned above and how many demo viewers are left?
I don’t know about anyone else but I will be watching “Psych” until the end of this “season’s” run and then I will watch “Numbers” again. That might be some of the lower numbers on “Numbers.” I’m not sure but I think in previous years “Psych” did not overlap in the beginning of the new season.
FACT: Kevin Reilly said he liked the consistent nature of the 1.5 18-49 rating bouncing up to a 2.0 in Live+7.
FACT: that average was achieved by premiering with a 2.0 adults 18-49 live+SD rating and ending with a 1.0 rating
FACT: last night was well below that average, and that was for the season premiere.
FACT: the numbers last night sucked. Even for a Friday. Less viewers than the last half hour of Brothers!
Thank you for the FYI and explanation Robert.
This has been a very disappointing day and I am looking for the ‘least worst’ take on things.
Theres no way FOX will order a full season now. FOX paid for the episodes and made the decision to renew it so its likely all the episodes will air. Hopefully the schedule satys like this.
Episode 1: September 25
Episode 2: October 2
Episode 3: October 9
Episode 4: October 23
Episode 5: October 30
Episode 6: November 6
Episode 7: November 13
Episode 8: November 20
Episode 9: November 27
Episode 10: December 4
Episode 11: December 11
Episode 12: December 18
Episode 13: December 18
FOX aired all of Terminator repeat free last year, so hopefully Dollhouse will turn out the same.
AO, while I thought DH would do a bit better last night, the numbers aren’t really surprising. Though I think those who think there’s nothing indicative from last night’s ratings, barring ratings improvements, I unfortunately do think they are indicative. However, despite running a site about ratings, I think the best bet with any show you like is to just enjoy it as long as it airs, however long that is!
I really dont think ratings would ever improve at this point. The numbers could only go down.
When are the finals coming out?
thats right just like i have enjoed anything i have whaced and will be sad when it goes i just know that a show cant last forever and just like i have enjoed everything……… in the Dollhouse cause i have tried a few times and coulnt get into it
Ricardo, final ratings probably won’t be available until Monday, unless someone with inside info hears something sooner.
“FACT: Kevin Reilly said he liked the consistent nature of the 1.5 18-49 rating bouncing up to a 2.0 in Live+7.
FACT: that average was achieved by premiering with a 2.0 adults 18-49 live+SD rating and ending with a 1.0 rating
FACT: last night was well below that average, and that was for the season premiere.
FACT: the numbers last night sucked. Even for a Friday. Less viewers than the last half hour of Brothers!”
Okay. Thank you for taking the time to clearly lay it out.
Sidenote: That has always been an aspect that I have felt like I wanted to see more of from this site. You guys of course do give some perspective on the numbers in the original postings, but I am the sort that prefers a more in-depth analysis and so thanks again for doing so now.
My personal opinion has been that it would be very unrealistic of Fox to expect to again come near the S1 premier numbers. Some of the people who tried it just did not seem to like it (and the numbers do seem to bear that out). I especially didn’t expect it to do too much more than it did given how Dollhouse hadn’t seemed to bottom out last year, how there was not any big promotional campaign and how the lead-in this year was not going to be any help (again imo).
So if he truly expected it to debut as well as last year, then i would be genuinely surprised. But that could be the case. I honestly think that it will retain this audience and be very stable going forward, and if that happens then I hope that it will mean something, that’s what I thought that they wanted, but we’ll see.
AO, no one has ever implied that Reilly expected Dollhouse to get a 2.0 for its premiere. What he did and does seem to expect is the show to meet its average from last year. That average was 1.5 Live+SD and 2.0 Live+7. While I didn’t predict Dollhouse to do much better than it did last night, 1.5 was not out of the realm of possibility.
I can easily see Fox allowing Dollhouse to complete its production of 13 episodes, but pulling the show before November. That might help the DVD sales that are so sorely lacking.
AO,the point isn’t that Dollhouse didn’t come near the premier episode. The point is that Dollhouse only did this bad in the demo once last season.
Julia – production will finish on all 13, and its possible all episodes will air. If they dont that it would be great for a DVD release. FOX may as well burn all episodes off. They spent money on them, they should air them.
AO, I’ve hashed Dollhouse numbers so much I figured eh, it could wait until the final 18-49 ratings and the renew/cancel index next week!
I didn’t see any point in doing any analysis in the post because I’d just be accused of trying stir the hornets nest/getting traffic. Besides, no matter what I said, really I think the #s speak for themselves.
I don’t think last year’s premiere numbers were expected. My best guess is that if FOX was OK with 1.5 L+SD –> 2.0 L+7 last year, a 1.3 or 1.4 L+SD average this season wouldn’t have broken their hearts, even though “remote free” is gone and so Dollhouse won’t have relatively better viewing of ads for DVR viewers in the C+3 numbers, lessening the importance of the DVR viewing versus last year.
Dan, the question is (at least if I understood Julia’s comment correctly), would you burn them off during November sweeps? If you know you’re simply going to burn them off anyway, January Fridays might seem more attractive than November Fridays.
I’m just waiting to see how the numbers are once Til Death returns.
“AO, while I thought DH would do a bit better last night, the numbers aren’t really surprising”.
Robert, It looks like I am a bit behind you in replying, sorry.
“Though I think those who think there’s nothing indicative from last night’s ratings, barring ratings improvements, I unfortunately do think they are indicative”.
I am sure that you are very right, as I said in my last post, I had what I thought to be logical expectations for S2. And actually my expectations seem more in line with the reality
I just assumed that Reilly’s statements were thinking along those lines too. I’m still hoping that they were more modest in their predictions and so they won’t be as surprised by these results, but that could just be false hope.
“However, despite running a site about ratings, I think the best bet with any show you like is to just enjoy it as long as it airs, however long that is!”
Ultimately, that’s probably the best perspective. But for whatever reason then I started thinking about TV show ratings when I was still pretty young and I have been disappointed dozens of times.
I heard that a Fox show that I really enjoyed in the Spring of 1993, “Class of ‘96″ was canceled solely because the 90210 characters were moving to college and Fox didn’t want two “college shows” on their schedule (though I don’t know if that’s actually true). I am still amazed that Fox couldn’t make a hit out of Bruce Campbell and Carlton Cuse when they were on “Adventures of Brisco County Jr” in 1993-94.
In all honesty, a Studio should just hire me as a one-person permanent focus group, for if I like something then there’s over a 90% chance that it will fail quickly (I’m still bewildered that anyone else liked the West Wing and it wasn’t canceled in the first month).
Dollhouse isn’t even a show that would make my all-time Top 10 or probably Top 20, but there are so many that have been canceled or that I never had the chance to fight for, so I feel like I need to speak up even more now for those that I like that might be saved. I guess that I do sometimes go overboard (though I don’t think that I’m alone around here in that).
Just seen Dollhouse opener… I don’t know, that’s what I want from the show. Some direction and editing problems aside, it had some of the finest acting so far, Dushku was probably the best I’ve seen her, and it progressed many storylines nicely.
On the other hand, I can see perfectly why it’s not a hit. And I wouldn’t want it any other way. While I’d love to see it stick around, these two aspects don’t mix. I’m not gonna bother with ratings anymore, I’ll enjoy it while it lasts and hope other people who’d enjoy it get to see it and perhaps turn the numbers around.
Well if everyone should enjoy the series while it last, than enjoy Dollhouse for the next 2 months.
NBC should have kept “Medium” imo. They could have had it go head to head against “Ghost Whisperer”. I’d have put Law and Order on at 9–it is show that seems more like a 9PM show anyhow and I’ll bet it would have done better. Leno is up in total viewers from last night and its 1.5 rating among 18-49 year olds is better than L&O and tied “Dateline.” As it is nobody did too great in the “vital” 18-49 group on Friday. People are out or watching cable apparently.
Medium would have gotten killed going against Ghost Whisperer.
Hi Julia,
Given all the factors and my personal expectations for how it would do, I guess that I assumed that they wouldn’t expect as much as they are. (My thinking seemed logical to me
). I did hope that it would go up from the finale, but I’m honestly surprised that the “1.5 Live+SD and 2.0 Live+7″ was the expectation. So I guess that I should take a step back and re-assess the situation. Which I will do.
I would think it logical for them to film the rest of the 13 episodes, no matter what. They have a lot of great guest stars still to come and I truly do think that the ratings will remain stabile in the weeks to come. I have never thought there to be much overlap with the audiences of Medium, Southland and UB and guess that those who tuned in last night are the die-hards and won’t go anywhere.
Dan, the question is (at least if I understood Julia’s comment correctly), would you burn them off during November sweeps? If you know you’re simply going to burn them off anyway, January Fridays might seem more attractive than November Fridays.
I can actually see them not burning them off at all, and saving them for DVD. But, yeah, either way I don’t see them airing it during sweeps unless ratings seriously pick up in coming weeks.
Some Chloe fans are pathetic, just because they’re not happy they want SV to fail, yet they’re still posting and whining about such an “horrible” show. Get a freaking life, you’ve been bitching in front of a computer for 8 years now, enough already!
What is relevant here, is that as long as the CW is satisfied with Smallville’s ratings, they will get a Season 10, period.
Tetsuya, while CW is probably happy enough with these numbers and won’t be pulling SV any time soon, I can’t imagine a 10th season in the cards for SV. Shows only get more expensive as they get older. I don’t see how there’s any way that these numbers are paying for another season, even if they are helping to improve CW’s Fridays.
@ Robert,
“I’ve hashed Dollhouse numbers so much I figured eh, it could wait until the final 18-49 ratings and the renew/cancel index next week!
I didn’t see any point in doing any analysis in the post because I’d just be accused of trying stir the hornets nest/getting traffic. Besides, no matter what I said, really I think the #s speak for themselves.”
You’re probably right for the overall viewership of your site. And some percentage will always find fault with any approach. I may well be in the minority in my preferences (I often am) and it seems my expectations were off too. You gave me what I asked for when I did, I can’t ask for anything else.
“I don’t think last year’s premiere numbers were expected. My best guess is that if FOX was OK with 1.5 L+SD –> 2.0 L+7 last year, a 1.3 or 1.4 L+SD average this season wouldn’t have broken their hearts, even though “remote free” is gone and so Dollhouse won’t have relatively better viewing of ads for DVR viewers in the C+3 numbers, lessening the importance of the DVR viewing versus last year.”
Okay. Thanks for the additional insight.
@Dan: Am I supposed to get riled up over that? I live in Europe and download it, and so do many of my friends. We have no say in it, and that’s what it is. I can’t make Americans watch it.
And sadly, though the excuses seem endless at times, I think Holly got 80% of them in her comment. I’m not sure there’s enough to fill up one card, let alone randomize it across multiple cards.
Yeah, I didn’t think there would be enough for bingo since there are only 6 or 7 regular excuses….unless each box had an excuse attached to a low-rated show, (box 1 has Dollhouse–Everyone DRVs/watches online, box 2 has Heroes–too much competition, etc.). It would take all week to fill out, but you could get enough to fill the squares.
Dollhouse was only renewed to shut up its fans like Jericho’s. The networks never had any faith in either of them. Watch it get cancelled quickly … right after Brothers that is!
I already had a feeling that this could be Numbers’ last season – it’s going to get too costly to continue especially on a night like Fridays. But if these premiere numbers are any indication it is its final year for sure. I think CBS is eyeing that timeslot for The Good Wife once it establishes its audience on Tuesdays.
NBC should move SVU to Fridays where it all began and pair it up with L&O. Maybe it’s too expensive now to place on such a poor viewing night but I used to like SVU better on Fridays than Tuesdays.
Julia – i’d thnk it would be more likely that FOX would burn all of the episodes off now and save something else for when Midseason starts. Or its possible the show will be pulled after maybe its 7th ep and then returned in the summer. FOX seems to have invested so much in bringing the series back for a second year that it would seem that they would leave it. But in terms of sweeps, it seems that only series from Mon-Thurs would be pulled during sweeps (the way FOX has done things in the past). If other series do badly they are usually moved to fridays.
^If they’re just burning it off, they could air the episodes when everyone else is on hiatus in December and January or during the Olympics.
Dan, previously FOX could’ve rightfully assumed that just about anything it put on Fridays would pull at least a 1.3 or 1.4. But if airing House and Lie to Me reruns can average a 1.3, you’ve improved your Fridays by 30% (assuming the #s don’t change much in the finals, and that they are similar in the coming weeks).
I think for November sweeps, even increasing Fridays by 20 percent to 30 percent might be considered worthwhile. We’ll see!
I think CBS is eyeing that timeslot for The Good Wife once it establishes its audience on Tuesdays.
Why The Good Wife? If it establishes itself on Tuesdays, it seems like CBS would want to leave it where it is, since they haven’t had much luck with the timeslot.
Dan, I thought the whole point was that Fox didn’t invest very much in this second season for Dollhouse. I mean, you could make the argument that every network invests so much into each of its series that why would they pull any of them. And yet, how many get pulled without airing all their episodes?
Dollhouse is a great freakin quality show why the heck isnt it catching on, are people freakin DUMB? I just cannot understand why this show isnt doing better. are peoples brains really that small, they cant open up to a new show, that has great potential. PEOPLE SUCK, I bet if dollhouse were about cops or doctors the show would be a monster hit. People make me freakin sick, I hate them all, plain small minded useless retards.
and how the heck can the lowest rated show have the highest comment numbers ever? Makes no sense.
tvmegafan; it’s an “inverse square” sort of thing, and though it is perhaps a bit counter intuitive it makes perfect sense to me, It makes sense in the same ways that fans of Supernatural (from Brazil no less!) want to see the half hourly 18-34 numbers almost every week, while I don’t ever remember seeing a request for half hourly detail for NCIS’ 18-34 numbers.
One thing I don’t understand: why should a channel consider the DVR numbers?
Afterall, they don’t produce any profits for them and these numbers don’t help them(ok, the studios) to produce the show or (the channel) pay for it.
So why they should be relevant? Also because they don’t seem to be reflected on any other form of revenues(ex.DVD sales).
Anon, other than PR value, I am with you — though SOME people will see the ads on DVR, it typically seems to be a pretty small percentage. Last year, however, the percentage with Dollhouse was much greater relative to other shows, because like Fringe, it had the “Remote Free” limited commercial interruptions and apparently people really didn’t fast-forward as much.
But remote-free is gone, so I don’t see much direct revenue value of DVR viewers. Some argue that DVR viewing is an indicator of potential for DVD success, but given Dollhouse’s S1 DVD sales, it doesn’t seem to be a great indicator there.
Robert Seidman says at September 26, 2009 at 5:44 pm:
“tvmegafan; it’s an “inverse square” sort of thing, and though it is perhaps a bit counter intuitive it makes perfect sense to me, It makes sense in the same ways that fans of Supernatural (from Brazil no less!) want to see the half hourly 18-34 numbers almost every week, while I don’t ever remember seeing a request for half hourly detail for NCIS’ 18-34 numbers.”
It’s a quest for rationalization as opposed to explanation and a desire to communicate those rationalizations. More data provides more rationalization.
When a debatable call/play occurs and it benefits my team, I’m not interested in the replay. If the question is whether he was in or out and I benefit from the call, I’m satisfied. The unsatisfied must continuously review and provide analysis through the prism of their particular bias or weirdness – like 9/11 conspiracy theorists.
Here, the unsatisfied demand more data only to offer the same rationalizations from it regardless of the amount or content – e.g., no promotion, Americans are stupid, Nielsen is biased for/against, network intentionally wants show to fail, et al.
Basically we are witnessing the death of live broadcast TV on Fridays nights. If you idiots still think Nielsen live numbers having any meanings on a Friday or Saturday night, FOX could put up repeats of House and generate better numbers than they are getting with there current line-up. With NBC/Leno killing scripted shows past 10pm, in 2 years time most of the networks will be putting their best shows on “Repeat Friday” if they are still using Live Nielsen data to predict a shows profitability. There is just to many other forms of entertainment now days for the networks to survive in the current form.
“and how the heck can the lowest rated show have the highest comment numbers ever? Makes no sense.”
It makes perfect sense. Most people want their entertainment to be a passive experience, not an active, devotional one–in whatever form it might take. I’m not sure it has much to do with intelligence, or even taste for that matter, than how a recreational activity–like watching television, or going to the theater–fits into their lives, and what function it serves. Those that populate the internet generally tend to value pop culture, and entertainment in general in an active, devotional way.
Actually, I don’t believe any of that. You’re right. People are morons, the time slot sucks, two seconds of commercials during during Fringe doesn’t exactly constitute a marketing blitz, and most network television viewers would rather watch a mutated homunculi like Jay Leno cater to their festering, inbred sense flyover country inadequacy than tune into something worth watching.
back in 2005 the cw or old station I think it was uw cancelled star trek Enterprise and it had better numbers than that on a friday night. what does that say about friday tv.
I think the one lesson/rule to take away from this is if your show premieres lower than Leno your going to be disappointed. If a show can’t rise above his minimal numbers week after week than how can it make money and survive, facts of life I guess. I won’t really miss it.
considering what ugly betty is going up against, it has very favorable odds to survive. it could become abc’s friday hit this season and survive for a last season. even if it gets fairly average ratings i can see it going for a last season.
IMO it would have to tank pretty hard for abc to cancel it this season, its already going into syndication on two cable networks.
i had no interst to watch Brothers or Dollhouse as in dollhouse i know three people who wached and gave it up
Julia – The difference here is that FOX renewed Dollhouse for a second year, after already establishing itself as one of the networks lowest rated shows. The invested a good amount of money but expected the series to improve. I do expect the show to be axed soon.
Red – Theres no way that CBS is gonna mess with their Friday nights, its doing fine so they’ll leave it alone. As for The Good Wife, I eexpect the series to get a full season or atleast 18 episodes. The show will likely do what Eleventh Hour did last year. Air all of its episodes in the slot and then be replaced by a midseason replacement (The Bridge or Miami Trauma)
Robert – I agree that it would be better to replace Dollhouse with House repeats. It would seem though that FOX may try to give the series some time. Id say 50/50 that it gets pulled before November.
Dan, Dollhouse is reportedly extremely cheap. How did Fox invest a good amount of money there?
Julia – I thought that Dollhouse was really expensive. Though FOX did have to make budget cuts to actually make the series affordable. But while it was probably a stupid decision to renew the series, FOX axing it now would just confirm what everyone had originally thought, when the series was renewed.
For Dollhouse, Joss both made cuts in the budget and the Fox Studios agreed to pay more of the cost of the show.
I love this site, I visit every day.
However, it would be nice if the creators of this site actually focused more of their knowledge on The CW (specifically SV and SN) so that some of us fans could have an idea how are favorite shows are doing.
No offense.
Friday night is just not good for shows lol. Dollhouse is a pretty good show it’s just not a good time. I mean, half the time I go out at that time and just DVR it.
“I propose a game. It’s the “why my show is getting bad ratings” excuse checklist.”
I appreciate the function of this site, but I really don’t get the general attitude sometimes.
The fact is there are a lot of great shows that get bad ratings. There are bad shows that get great ratings. I can’t see how anyone disputes that. IMO, Grey’s Anatomy is melodramatic, cliched tripe. But people seem to like it. Two and a Half Men is a lousy show no matter how you slice it.
I don’t get why the Nielsen’s aren’t deserving of criticism. Would anyone suggest that the Billboard charts represent the best of the music industry? It’s the best option, but it has serious flaws. It’s the king because advertisers believe it’s the best option. Mad Men gets terrible ratings relative to network shows, but it’s a great successful show. We’re on a slow march to where these network numbers cease to matter.
Finally – sure it’s repetitive, and comes off as desperate at times but it’s pretty natural to try and find reasons why ratings are low for a show you enjoy. I realize people take the factual reports here too personally, but that doesn’t mean some of the “excuses” aren’t valid.
*our favorite shows, sorry for the typo.
Supposedly the cuts for Dollhouse drove it all the way down into the super affordable range. Rumor was under $1 mil per episode. There’s no way to verify that this is actually true, unless someone wants to start publishing that sort of information, but it certainly makes sense when you consider that Fox did pick it up.
Here’s what Robert said in May:
“Plus, they apparently got the costs for Dollhouse down to something extremely (rivaling cable production costs, and in some cases cheaper from what I hear) low.”
And here’s another quote from Televisionary:
“It’s believed that the renewal was secured after the studio agreed to drastically reduce the series’ budget and accept a significantly lower license fee. Just what that decision will mean for the writing staff and cast of Dollhouse remains to be seen.”
Of course Friday is a terrible night to be on the schedule. But if they put Dollhouse on after House or American Idol (or any other successful show), you can bet that it would lose at least 75% of its lead in, and it would still be considered a failure based on that metric. I do watch and enjoy the show but it is hard to see any scenario where Dollhouse would be considered a successful broadcast network show.
God, I wish those TSCC nuts would shut up. The show was canceled because it wasn’t making them enough money! It had NOTHING to do with Dollhouse. And no amount of moaning on your part is ever going to bring it back ( all the actors have scattered a long time ago) – IF you can raise 10 million you might get a TV movie made, but that’s it. Now get a life please.
As for Dollhouse I have no idea why they renewed it last year, I didn’t think they would then and I still don’t think they will this year.
The ratings are unlikely to go up, Joss insists on making what he considered is *art* in a medium which wants *entertainment* – and while the two can occasionally meet they almost never do. TV is primarily target at the young and the foolish because its easier to get a fool to part with his money and those who like art long since stopped watching US TV since they didn’t find anything there – a recipe for disaster which can only mean fewer and fewer viewers.
I do wonder why Whedon doesn’t just go to cable if he’s able to make a show for so little.
Having said that, (and I’m not a Doll house fan) I don’t understand a world where Firefly isn’t “entertainment.”
Hiya Billy,
I’m glowing!!!
What a DISGRACEFUL WEEK for FOX Development…
- “Fringe” bombs
- “Dollhouse” bombs
- “Brothers” bombs
- “Glee” pulls in a lousy 6.6 million viewers (after all that hype)
20TH CENTURY FOX TELEVISION…the television production arm of FOX produced “Modern Family”…but the a-holes at FOX development thought it was a loser and it ended up at ABC. Those FOX know it alls looked at “Modern Family” and “Brothers” and went with mega-loser “Brothers”. Ha Ha !!
FOX’s chief Peter Rice inherited the current development team of execs…they were in place before he came on board in March…but rest assured he’s going to be handing out pink slips very soon.
Over at ABC they dumped Mark Pedowitz who ran ABC Studios into the ground…replaced him with Barry Jossen and then merged ABC Studios with ABC Television Network…give them credit for mixing things up and though its only been one week…ABC did helluva lot better then FOX and had their best first FALL week in years!!
FOX Development put up CW numbers on Friday night:
Brothers (series premiere) 1.0/4 2.82 (HOORAY)
Dollhouse (season premiere) 1.0/3 2.56 (HOORAY)
Enjoy your development jobs at FOX while you can because you’ll be joining Peter Ligouri shortly. I’m sure Dawn Ostroff has a job for ya’s…
Love and kisses,
Emily
“I don’t get why the Nielsen’s aren’t deserving of criticism. Would anyone suggest that the Billboard charts represent the best of the music industry? It’s the best option, but it has serious flaws. It’s the king because advertisers believe it’s the best option. Mad Men gets terrible ratings relative to network shows, but it’s a great successful show. We’re on a slow march to where these network numbers cease to matter.”
As for Nielsen competition, that’s most likely a “be careful what you wish for” scenario. When sound scan madw it’s debut, it wasn’t the latest Built to Spill album that benefited, but a lot of really crappy music. Sure, they’re deserving of criticism, but they’re the only real game in town, and as much as the networks may complain, I’m not sure they’d be happy with what the competition would have to say.
As for Mad Men–I love Mad Men, and think it’s fantastic, and I love, love, love the fact that it’s managed a long and vibrant life by managing to monetize itself by upping AMC’s carriage fees through the sheer act of branding a legitimate notion of “Quality”. That’s rare and precious, and will likely go away sometime in the near future as AMC becomes more demanding of ratings to boost that notion.
But networks, monetized as they are by the aggregation viewers, fans are dependant on other viewers they have no control over, hence the obsession comes in.
THIS IS TO EVERY PERSON WHO HAS TALKED ABOUT SMALLVILLE!
LAY OFF! FRIDAY WAS ONLY THE DAM SEASON PREMIERE THERE ARE STILL 21 MORE EPISODES TO GO AND EVEN IF THE RATING WAS LOW THEY STILL HAVE A BUNCH OF EPISODES TO GO BIG! SMALLVILLE MAY HAVE GOTTEN LOW BUT IT’S THE FIRST TIME FOR A SHOW ON THE CW TO BE ON FRIDAY AND ITS PUT A BIG BOMB ON SMALLVILLE THAT IS WAITING TO TICK. NOW I WOULD WAIT FOR A LIKE ANOTHER 4 MONTHS BEFORE U DECIDE IF IT IS GONNA BE CANCELLED OR NOT. This is to Julia who wrote on September 26 about smallville, I agree that it gets harder as shows get older but everyone has thought more then once at a time (probably after 4th or 5th when the wb changed to cw) or 7th after the writers strike that smallville will be cancelled but smallville showed us all wrong its in its ninth and the eigth i got to say was pretty dam good. now like i said its only the first episode so back off and we’ll see what happens in janurary. Now for Robert Seidman and Bill Gorman, So even if u dont watch smallville do u have any comments from the past episode or anything on smallville?
eveyone is so neagtive on this site just beacuse a show doesnt click and congrats to Abc to improve on Fridays…….. and i am sure when a network sends out a press statemt that means there happy on how the show is doing
the funny…er..*cough* sad part is that the Dollhouse numbers are the best numbers you will see for the series this fall season. There is only down from here…well, as long as Fox is willing to test lows in the slot.
Christopher, The nets issue press releases no matter what. They can issue a press release praising a show for its ratings one day and cancel it the next. Press releases are about spin, not reality.
Fact: Dollhouse doesn’t have Jennifer Love Hewitt, therefore it gets lower ratings. That must be it. Right?
haha good one i watch for her j/k i like the show and enjoy it something like Dollhouse did drawn me in
dollhouse didnt draw me in
What the heck with NUMB3RS numbers? Did MEDIUM hurt as a lead in?
sluthouse blows, bring back terminator
…lol, if only. /sigh
I download new Dollhouse to university computer in Kiev. File is watched by many and is liked. Can be improved if lead girl is replaced by someone more attractive and doesn’t look so stupid when fighting. she more ugly than half ukraine girls. maybe if change made the show continue on.
IS NOT FAIR FOR SMALLVILLE, I’M LEAVING IN QUEBEC CITY AND CAN’t WATCHING SMALLVILLE FRIDY NIGHT BECAUSE IN QUEBEC WE DON’T HAVE CWTV than while we have CBS,NBC, ABC AND FOX TV. PLEASE RAITING WHIT THE SAME VIEWERS. I SHOULD WAIT FOR WATCHING SMALLVILLE AT SUNDAY ON SPACE TV
No comments on CBS being on the top 20 of 2500 companies studied for possible bankrupcy this year? I find it funny that network tv is doing so poorly that the number one from Friday nights is looking at bankrupcy.
Why haven’t you guys run an article on that? Sure CBS is saying they’re in good shape, but then, so did Enron. They didn’t last either.
Brothers looked terrible but FOX will probably keep it to put with Til Death. And Dollhouse needs to be cancelled.
Flashforward, Modern Family, and Cougar Town did great for repeats on a friday night I hope it helps their ratings this coming week. They were all great premieres.
Ive seen flashforward premiere twice, modern family premiere three times and cougar town premiere twice.
Mike, CBS thinks “Audit Integrity” (not exactly a household name when it comes to financial research!) is ironically named. Here was CBS’ official response to that.
“Any suggestion that CBS is currently at risk of bankruptcy is absurd, with no basis in either fact or reason.
The ironically-named firm Audit Integrity, uses three misleading models for its faulty calculation, two of which are wholly inappropriate for CBS and a third “proprietary” model that was developed for commercial purposes.
Based on the models they do reveal, the methodology uses out-of-date data and a host of invalid assumptions, including a point-in-time market capitalization for CBS that is $2 billion below where we are today. Contrary to Audit Integrity’s “findings,” CBS has an investment grade debt rating, low credit default risk, and a strong debt-to-equity ratio. We urge all credible media outlets and aggregators to report the issue fully, and to challenge Audit Integrity’s flawed pseudo-analysis before blindly regurgitating their misinformation.”
If you’re getting your news from sites like Associated Content that write articles that lead you to believe that CBS is at risk for bankruptcy and if they were, advertisers would avoid them and then advertising revenue would be a casualty because advertisers don’t like to do business with failing networks, I feel for you. Advertisers wouldn’t care WHAT shape CBS was in.
If NCIS is getting 20 million viewers, they’ll advertise. It’s not that there’s so much crap that gets circulated on the Internet that scares me — it’s that so many people will just assume it’s true.
To be fair, Dollhouse dipped, but at 2.56 million, it’s a slight drop from Omega last season – about equivalent to what Omega dropped from Briar Rose.
It’s not a huge ratings drop for the show, and does not change the basic math of it (whatever that math may be)
of Fox even care about dollhouse it need to be moved to a non competetive day with an acceptable lead in, for example tuesd at 9 or this could be a chance for FOX open 10pm hour
LOL @ move to a less competitive day than Friday. That only leaves Saturday, and FOX’s Saturday staple of Cops and America’s Most Wanted aren’t going anywhere.
There’s no chance FOX will be adding a 10pm hour. They don’t want to add primetime broadcast hours, and its affiliates like the 10pm news.
Rob, the lists were run by the associated press, along major distributors. Heck it was front page on Yahoo news, not some little scam sight. The breakdown was profit in against debt owed.
CBS is a debt heavy company in the medium range of its debt. Grossly simplified, if your expenses are 200k a year and you only taking in 120k total, you will fold, it doesn’t matter that 20k of that is from NCIS, it still isn’t enough in the end to keep you afloat.
The audit company did the same thing you guys do here. You have the numbers or you don’t. Right now, CBS isn’t making the money from their calculations.
Every company will argue its solvent, even when it isn’t. Simply admitting you’re in trouble spooks stockholders even when the market is good. The market hasn’t been good for a while.
CBS lying about being in trouble is as predictable as the sun coming up. I’ve never seen a company fold that didn’t, ever, not one.
Five years ago, no one would ahve believed Ford and GM would be facing bankrupcy. Times changed. Ford is doing ok so far, GM is still a coin toss.
I know it’s not the metric that really matters, but let me join Medium fans everywhere in gloating that the premiere was the most-watched TV program in America last night. Just sayin’.
Why can’t we Smallville fans get an analysis of the show’s performance last night on The CW. You might not watch it, but if you did, you might like it. You guys boast about knowing how to read the numbers. Put up or shut up. C’mon, is it good or bad?!
Ah, an “all big corporations lie” kinda guy. I’m not going to argue over that. But what I meant was that even if CBS *did* declare bankruptcy, at least in primetime it wouldn’t take an ad revenue hit as some of the stories suggested. Advertisers wouldn’t care that it was in bankruptcy as long as the eyeballs were there.
andrew, fear not, the Renew/Cancel Index returns Tuesday! Check back then and see where Smallville is!
Andrew, I’m not sure we’re interested in covering the CW shows any more than we already do. On Tuesday, there will be a renew/cancel report and it will delve into it, but it will be so early it doesn’t matter. My take as far as this season is those numbers are fine for Smallville — it’s not going to get pulled off the air or anything with those kind of numbers on Friday on the CW.
Mike, I’m not going to get into the back and forth you’re having with Robert other than to say we don’t do corporate financial analysis, even of television companies. Primarily because plenty of other sites do it, and we decided we didn’t have much to add to what was already out there. If you’re interested in TV ratings though, please stick around.
First Dollhouse was great on Friday but it is competing against more established shows, also it was not advertised that much, if I didn’t check the premier date I never would have know when it was on. Plus dollhouse is soooooo much better this season, COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THAN SEASON 1, so don’t base your opinions on last season.
Smallville is actually interesting this year but is on the WORST day, I mean come on who is home at 8pm on a friday night. Cw is just trying to kill the show off because they really don’t care for Scifi shows like Charmed(they crippled their budget to the point where the demons were all human looking, and bad CGI), Angel(left a cliff hanger on season 5 and season six was going to be amazing), Supernatural is on its like last season and has budget cuts even though it does well.
SO the CW just hates things that aren’t pretty people dramas. Put smallville on any other day and the ratings will go up.
Also Dollhouse needs a better night, come on put it on like tuesday or wednesday.
omg america start watching Dollhouse
“Brothers”…hmm…didn’t they do that show back in the eighties on Showtime?
Thats sadening for Dollhouse, its such a great show. Joss Whedon’s shows never get the popularity they deserve.
I stopped watching Smallville three years ago.
I recorded everything last night, becuase I was out all night. I spent Saturday night catching up.
Mark says:
“Thats sadening for Dollhouse, its such a great show. Joss Whedon’s shows never get the popularity they deserve.”
Perhaps they get precisely the popularity they deserve. What you’re effectively positing is that there is an underlying “true” audience that is hidden by virtue of there being only a single realization of the data.
The hypothesis is perhaps testable with Monte Carlo simulations. You’d need a model of the television audience, I suppose, and then you’d have to “replay” all permutations of the season a few million times.
Let’s all point and laugh at FOX!
TSCC fan’s , Just get over it please , it wasn’t a masterpiece it was just a good show that got cancelled , get over it
Dollhouse didn’t cancel TSCC , i know their whipes are clean , but not this much
Wow, this is a lot of comments. After I’d been scrolling down for a couple seconds I started to think my scroll button was broken, but the page actually is that long.
The episode improved on some of the things that were wrong with Dollhouse last season, but didn’t fix it nearly enough to become appointment TV for me.
Like a lot of people I predict lower and lower ratings until it’s canceled mid season. If someone like me, a huge Whedon fan, still can’t get into it after a year of trying, something really wrong.
**I’m not up to date with cable ratings, but next week will be interesting. Will Dollhouse beat the premier of Stargate Universe which airs on Syfy?**
I’m not an expert on Stargate ratings or how much it has been promoted, but I imagine if DH stays about the same total numbers they will probably beat it, but I imagine “SG:U” will give it a run for its money in demo for the premiere at least.
And for anyone saying no one watches “complicated” sci fi on Friday nights well Flash Forward’s REPEAT numbers should prove that false.
I love Whedon, and always watch Dollhouse, but there are some major flaws that are just the Achilles heel (well, more than one). i think because the basic premise really is about prostitution (ok- sophisticated scifi prostitution, and not always sexual, but still), it brings a weirdly voyeuristic touch to viewing? I don’t think it appeals to everyday Americans… Dushku can’t quite carry off solo leading lady, made worse by the fact her character has no single personality you can engage with? Maybe if she’d started as Caroline, we’d know her core character? It’s just too abstract to care about her onscreen. Plus, I feel actor Tamoh Penikett is lacking so completely in screen charisma, I haven’t met one Whedon fan who likes him, and since he’s the other ‘goodie’, it really poses a problem. He seems to have more screen time this season too. Which is a pity, some of the other characters are so interesting… I’d say I only watch it now for the writing focusing on Whiskey/Dr Saunders, Topher and Adelle.
This reminds me of something. Oh, right.
“Lanie Grace says:
“August 29th, 2009 at 9:27 p.m.
[...]
“Dollhouse will Rock the Grindhouse with Summer Glau in it and will get a renewal for a back set of episodes.
“~Lanie~”
The score appears to be Perceived World: 1; Neologistic Interior-Speech Pseudo-Idiom: 0.
I cant wait to see how CBS and FOX do next friday. Will CBS’s trio improve, can FOX’s lineup do any worse, we’ll find out next week on Friday Night Death Slot.
Wow! For a night with such low turnout, Friday sure does generate a lot of comment.
The only show on the night I have much to say about is Smallville. I recorded it and watched on Saturday morning (I hear you snickering!) because Friday is high school football night where I live. It wasn’t bad at all, and I know there are some interesting ideas and characters being introduced in upcoming episodes.
The ratings for the show strike me as respectable under the circumstances. I’m guessing they might go up slightly when not faced with Flashforward as competition. The regular competition doesn’t appeal to the same audience to the extent that might.
That said, I really think that the CW is wasting the show on Friday.
I say again that it is past time to show Lady Dawn the door and start turning that wreck of a network around.
If you will indulge me, these are the steps I would take immediately to begin that process. They would immediately enlarge and broaden the audience, and would cost next to nothing. The goal would be to stem the bleeding while a better slate could be prepared for next fall.
1. Get rid of that puke-green color scheme for promos.
2. Use the program libraries of Paramount and Warners and others to
fill gaps in the schedule while new shows are being developed.
The schedule would look something like this:
MONDAY:
8:00 – Life Unexpected
9:00 – Pepper Dennis (repeats)
TUESDAY:
8:00 – The Old Bill Cosby Show. The star shows clip of his past work.
9:00 – Gideon’s Crossing (repeats)
WEDNESDAY:
8:00 – Metropolis. Smallville gets new title, theme song, tone.
9:00 – The Flash. Reformatted to widescreen; new title sequence
THURSDAY:
8:00 – The Vampire Diaries
9:00 – Supernatural
FRIDAY:
8:00 – Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures. With new CG titles / bumpers.
8:30 – The Legend of Calamity Jane.
9:00 – Where The Action Is. Vignettes of people having fun.
FOX Brothers (series premiere) 1.0/4 2.82
FOX Dollhouse (season premiere) 1.0/3 2.56
OH. MY. GOD. Well, I guess I have to admit I was incorrect. I said this past May that FOX shouldn’t expect any more than a 2 share with this pathetic joke of a lineup. But they got more. So much more. They got a 3 share. Way to go, FOX! You’ve exceeded my expectations and then some! You keep on tearin’ down them walls that separate you and The CW, ya hear now!
Thank heavens the super smash Brad Garrett hit, “Til Death,” will be making its much-anticipated rearrival next week to save FOX Fridays. It’s funny when you realize that this show taped 15 episodes over the past 2 seasons that lobotomy-survivor Kevin Reilly still hasn’t bothered to air — ones featuring such promotable guest stars as Valerie Harper and Nathan Lane. (What does a programming wunderkind like Reilly do when he’s got a show that has a ridiculous 15 episodes on the shelf? He runs repeats of previously-aired episodes for 2 months over the summer, that’s what.) And if the 15 episodes weren’t enough to fill the one entire month “Til Death” is likely to run this fall before, much like last fall, it is pulled again, he bought 22 more on top of it!! I hope Brad Garrett’s incriminating photos stipulate that all 22 of those have to be produced, and all 37 of them have to air, because I know the 3 or 4 businesses out there that, for some unknown reason, actually still want to buy ad time in “Til Death” would be very grateful for the opportunity to get an entire year’s worth of makegoods in something on FOX that people actually, you know, watch. (Which, granted, is not very much at the moment.)
Note to Peter Rice: hasn’t Kevin wasted enough of FOX’s money renewing crap that nobody wants to see?
If Friday Night Smackdown was still with The CW, I bet it had a realistic chance on beating FOX and NBC.
Smallville should have stayed on Thursday nights. They did so much better on that day. With TBL being canceled I really hope The CW moves Smallville to that night. I love Smallville and thought the Premiere was awesome!
Hey Rob,
Since I’m a *all big corporations lie kind of guy* here’s the article run by Yahoo finance: http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/article/336235/Ten-Big-Companies-That-Are-Veering-Toward-Bankruptcy?tickers=AMD,LVS,S,M,GT,MYL,HTZ
Notice, it isn’t listed on a chump site. Regardless of source, it was national news, not the Onion.
For reference, here’s a GM denies backruptcy article from 10 October 2008: http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/10/news/companies/gm_no_backruptcy/index.htm?postversion=2008101010
Here’s one for Chrysler June 27, 2008: http://www.manufacturing.net/article.aspx?id=162622
I can come up with about 30 examples if you want. You can also take the *kind of guy* to mean investor, thanks. We keep up with this kind of crap, because it is OUR money.
If you are willing to let people just tell you how their company is doing and not monitor it, you won’t have a nest egg for long. You can take that advice to the bank.
*links may not post for anyone other than Rob and Bill*
why everybody hate fox?
Mike says:
“Notice, it isn’t listed on a chump site. Regardless of source, it was national news, not the Onion.”
Goddamned bell curve.
Mike, CNN Money and Yahoo Finance are two good examples of sites that focus on financial reporting and analysis. Unlike ours.
Riff, Fox rejected my brilliant idea of a ‘Til Death Independence Day Marathon. They are now dead to me.
I think it is rather SAD that we do not have a cable channel that specializes in Science fiction, because if we did all these shows now on Friday night could be at a better time during the week and what is a failure now with two million viewers would be a GOOD number for a cable show. Two million viewer average would put the channel in a top tier for cable. Now the numbers needed to pay bloated broadcaster network costs are so high that the narrow audience for most Science Fiction – Drama -Action will not support a show for long. The very demanding audience does not help muck either. For now shows like Dollhouse, TSCC , Smallville, Supernatural, plus Reaper and several para-normal shows. etc etc will just be cancelled. Likely Fringe will follow as well as Fast Forward and the up coming “V”. Defying Gravity The Listener and Marlin all failed but would have been successful on a well supported cable channel.
Please do not tell me Syfy is for this programing because it is for Wrestling and Ghost Hunters.
@ Mark, Boris
Really — you get a monte carlo simulation from that? Rather than try something unnecessarily complex and impossible to execute without a better knowledge of the underlying distribution, the facts (as Jim Dale would say) are these:
– popularity and show quality are not the same
– popularity and show quality are *neither* inversely *nor* perfectly correlated
– ratings are a better measure of popularity than quality
– muenster is a good cheese for grilled cheese w/tomato
I know fans of a show will always complain that a show they like should get better ratings because it is a good show — or that the Nielsen ratings are flawed, because they don’t measure the true value of the show. On the first point, that might be desirable but certainly isn’t descriptively true (how popular is Tom Pynchon vs. Tom Clancy?). On the second point, the Nielsens aren’t intended to measure show quality, so complaining that they don’t capture the worth of a show (as measured by “greatness”) is besides the point.
The degree to which networks use Nielsens (versus DVD sales, critical acclaim, budgetary costs, etc.) to decide which shows air or don’t is a valid question (i.e., how important not how comprehensive are the Nielsens). Fox’s renewal of Dollhouse (and several of the surprise renewals from last season), suggest that they are not the end all and be all of show renewals — although are highly correlated.
Holly Crap! The least watched night of TV gets the most comments!
Look like the ABC repeast did well!
I agree with gene on Dollhouse. “Sophisticated scifi prostitution” isn’t for everyone.
Tamoh Penikett is a good actor. Loved him as Helo in BSG. I blame the writing in this case.
chaos amoeba, check your sarcasm detector (vis, Boris), you may need new batteries.
And “quality” is not the same as “deservedness.” I don’t think I brought up the former.
Bill Gorman says:
“chaos amoeba, check your sarcasm detector (vis, Boris), you may need new batteries.”
No, I was entirely serious.
Smallville’s numbers aren’t good. The CW is probably happy with the 1.0 rating, but… IF they aren’t there is only one place to put the show in: Wed. 8PM. But I think if we see any major “move” or “talk” from the CW, it will be next week if Smallville’s numbers decline.
Also, can’t they repeate Melrose Place on Friday instead of Top Model? MP is way more sutable to SV fans.
Would the CW do a mid-season change? I don’t recall them ever doing it, but why not? One thing is for sure: Thursday night for the CW = Win.
And I am still huge on the idea that The CW needs to look into Kyle XY for the Friday night at 8PM and move SV to 9PM. It would be a great move for The CW and it will please SV fans and KXY fans alike.
Hmm. Should’ve kept TSCC.
Why is a lead in so important to Dollhouse? I could understand it if people didn’t have remote controls for their televisions, but people do have remote controls and just have to press a button to change the channel. I think the lead in argument is just an excuse for a show that IMO, just isn’t very good.
I have watched all the seasons of Buffy, Angel, and the first season of Dollhouse. I would rather have a root canal than watch a second season of that Dollhouse dreck.
Dollhouse is not about prostitution. Prostitution is defined as the act of engaging in sexual intercourse or performing other sex acts in exchange for money. Someone saying the show is basically “sophisticated sci-fi prostitution” is outright retarded and not being forthright.
It’s also funny to see all these bitter TSCC fans harping against Dollhouse simply because the former was cancelled and the latter renewed.
Also, the Dollhouse season premiere was great. It’s too bad a lot of people missed this treat, but hopefully the ratings will improve as the season progresses. It’s also a shame that the final episode of the first season, “Epitaph One,” was not broadcast in the States.
Moose – well, it’s not specific to Dollhouse. I’m not sure why lead-ins matter so much, but it’s certainly difficult to miss two shows you’re interested in if they’re shown together (and thus watching one means you are immediately aware that the other one is on.)
Dollhouse saw a small decrease in audience when T:SCC ended, which suggests that T:SCC had a minor, but measurable, boosting affect to the Dollhouse audience. The two shows had broadly comparable audiences, and it seems likely a lot of people tuned in to watch both, but would have forgotten (or just not bothered) to watch one if the other hadn’t been on.
I think it’s the DVR, not the remote control, that’s making the concept of lead-ins less relevant. A remote doesn’t remind you that a show you want to watch is on, nor does it create a night of interesting TV for you. A DVR, on the other hand…
BTW I just returned from a parallel universe where T:SCC was renewed and Dollhouse was canceled. The figures are:
8:00 CBS Ghost Whiperer (season premiere) 2.2/8 8.58
ABC FlashForward (R) 0.0/0 0.00
NBC Leno 1.5/5 8.00
FOX Firefly (repeat) 4.0/4 Eleventy-Billion
CW Smallville (season premiere) 1.0/4 2.50
9:00 CBS Interview with President McCain 3.0/12 8.78
NBC Leno 1.5/5 5.82
ABC Mickey Mouse Club 1.5/5 4.28
FOX Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (season premiere) 0/0 0.01*
CW Untitled Teen Vampire Show 0.5/2 1.17
* Rounded up. Approximately 29 people watched.
Sorry it’s not a direct comparison, this one was the only universe I could find with T:SCC renewed.
As a huge fan of Whedon’s other projects I have to say I’m not watching Dollhouse either. It’s not prostitution at all, it’s rape. I do understand that it’s intended to be exactly that dark but watching characters be raped in every possible way each week with it often being played for laughs is not my idea of entertainment.
forg – Now that wouldnt have been good because WWE smackdown doesnt fit the demo. (being ironic) The shows ratings would have beaten anything normally on fridays but if it doesnt fit the demo, it has to go.
Riff Rafferty – FOX really should have burned off the remaining Season 3 episodes this summer. Sundays at 7:30 would have been perfect, instead of repeats. Just to freshen everyone up and mak the people remembeer the series. With 2 new episodes from Season 4, who knows if the remaining 10 Season 3 episodes would even see the light of day before syndication. ABC burned off Better Off Ted’s remaining Season 1 episodes in the summer, and FOX should have aired some of Season 3. Unless they plan on airing it this season, then FOX will have 32 episodes of Til Death.
“Dollhouse is not about prostitution. Prostitution is defined as the act of engaging in sexual intercourse or performing other sex acts in exchange for money. Someone saying the show is basically “sophisticated sci-fi prostitution” is outright retarded and not being forthright.”
On Friday’s episode, Echo had sex with the evil guy. Echo is really Caroline, but she doesn’t know it. The Dollhouse, who Echo/Caroline works for, gets paid for its work. Is this not prostitution then?
“It’s also funny to see all these bitter TSCC fans harping against Dollhouse simply because the former was cancelled and the latter renewed.”
I watch Dollhouse, but not on FOX, but I was even surprised the show was renewed.
I was very surprised, it was the biggest surprise renewal, besides Gary Unmarried and Better Off Ted to some extent.
I would never say Dollhouse was sophisticated science fiction of any kind. It’s clumsy, cliched, and naive.
But also oddly misogynistic, and this isn’t the first time I’ve noted a streak of passive-aggressive hostility towards women in Whedon’s writing, even while he insists he’s all about empowering them.
Was it REALLY necessary for Echo to be savagely beaten by a man we’re supposed to admire, in order for her to save the day? Well, sure–as circumstances have been arranged. But who arranged those circumstances? Who made the rules? Who decided to break them so that we could see Eliza Duskhu get repeatedly struck in the face?
What does this mean? I guess it’s between Mr. Whedon and his analyst.
BYE DULLHOUSE
WASTE MANAGEMENT
I THINK APPROXIMATELY 25 PEOPLE MUST HAVE WATCHED IT FRIDAY. LMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Actually on Friday’s show, Echo thought she was an FBI agent, and she slept with the bad guy to break the case. Slightly different. But other times, yeah, she has been made into someone whose purpose was basically to have sex with someone.
THE CW JUST NEEDS TO SHOW REPEATS ON FRIDAYS! SMALLVILLE COULD GO TO ANOTHER NIGHT AND FRIDAYS COULD BE THE NIGHT TO SHOW REPEATS OF SHOWS THEY HAVE MONDAY – THURSDAY. IF YOU LOOK BACK AT THE SMALLVILLE REPEATS THE VIEWERS ARE NOT THAT DIFFERENT. I JUST HOPE THEY DONT KILL SMALLVILLE I LOVE THAT SHOW!
I don’t have a problem with the premise of Dollhouse–I have a problem with Whedon seesawing back and forth between admitting the dolls are basically slaves (or at least in a state of indentured servitude, which has been illegal for a long time now), and prostitutes if called upon to be–and that this is wrong, and the people who control them are monsters–and finding some way to justify it. Because on some level, he is drawing a parallel between the dolls and the pretty but often vapid actors who mouth his words, and do whatever he tells them, and take on whatever persona he requires to tell stories to amuse the privileged–us–and make money.
So now and again they get to rebel against their destinies, but most of the time the premise requires them to submit, and they can only be truly freed by one thing–cancellation.
So free the dolls, FOX.
And free Joss Whedon from trying to fix something that can’t be fixed.
I would like to see the Saturday ratings if possible
Thanks!!
G, the Saturday ratings have been up for hours.
Bill, Robert, Julia u didnt awnser my question……..
I’m disappointed in Dollhouse’s numbers. I’ll admit I’m not surprised, but I’m still disappointed. I enjoyed Season 1B, as I call it, and Epitaph One was great. For a season opener, this episode was actually pretty damn good, and for those standalone-haters, this episode still hung onto the overall theme of the show…moved it forward, even. I’m saddened that Joss just can’t snag the same ratings and loyalty as he did with Buffy or even Angel.
Anyone up for a made-for-TV Dr. Horrible series? LMAO
I think we can safely eliminate the following as candidates for Joss Whedon’s analyst:
Emily24
Dawn Ostroff
pisher
Kevin Reilly
Any T:SCC fanboy
Any T:SCC fangirl
Jeff Probst
Jeff Zucker
Ty Pennington
It looks like the only ones left for Mr. Whedon to choose from are:
Lionel Hardcastle
Bob Hartley
As for Emily24, well…
…as for Modern Family, if it succeeds, FOX gets all the syndication money…
…sort of like all the syndication money from House goes to NBC/U, not FOX, who’s airing it in first run now…
…so, sure, FOX doesn’t get the ratings and the ad revenue on the first run showings of Modern Family, but they’ll cop all of the syndication revenues, so they don’t care if ABC gets good ratings…
…in fact, they want it to get good ratings, for the back end cash.
“Anyone up for a made-for-TV Dr. Horrible series? LMAO”
I think Dr. Horrible would make a great half hour comedy, assuming NPH was playing the bad doctor.
–It’s got a strong main character (strong as in charismatic, not physically strong, obviously)
–Endless possibilities for plots and heroes/villains of the week; since it’s a comedy, they can basically make up whatever they want without worrying about it being plausible.
The premise is so out there that I don’t see many networks going for it, but it’d fit in great somewhere like Comedy Central.
So. TV for masses. CBS wins with … with what? I need an immediate eye transplant and cat scan. I think I might be dyslexic or something cos these number make no sense. I don’t think moving Dollhouse would make a difference. Seems the TV watching masses in the good old USA would rather veg out to “Ghost Whisperer” (I always confuse this with Dog Whisperer, no idea why) and “Medium” (though, she looks like a large to me). Excellent season opener Joss but even the gratuitous raunchy scenes weren’t enough to pull in the vapid dunderheads. Try changing the name to Dollhouse Idol. OR ….. One of the Dolls, Victor, learns how to tell when Ghosts are lying and stores them in a warehouse somewhere, with the help of Sierra (who can see the future and secretly wants to be a grumpy Doctor). While this sounds like an involved show, take the format and dumb it down like TV has never been dumbed down before. There’s a Nielson winner.
The worst thing is Dollhouse lost badly to a Modern Family/Cougar Town rerun. Lets see how the show does with new Ugly Betty and Southland.
Arquette is NOT a large…she is 5 ft 2 for god’s sake….
Medium did a great job in the numbers FRiday, easily creamed the competition, and will do so for the rest of the season. Dollhouse will be cancelled, and Ugly Betty and Southland cannot compete and have very different audiences (and will both also be cancelled before next season, fall 2010).
Well Ugly Betty is only here for syndication purposes (90 eps by the end of the year) and Southland (as well as Parks and Recreation) is only back to salvage that 2008-2009 wasnt a total waste of a season for NBC. I expect Southland to do better than Ugly Betty, though they target different demos. Also Southland is likely to hold more of its lead in (Law & Order) than Ugly Betty (Supernanny).
Ho could pairing a Joss Whedon sci-fi/action/drama with a slapstick stupid comedy fail. FOX programming certainly knows how to launch new shows. Look at their excellent track record.
Also must say glad to see more fans supporting SMallville and less making excuses for Dollhouse. As a Joss Whedon fan it’s just not a great show and it failed to grab viewers. Oh well. Let’s move on and maybe Joss can find something that works.
Bill writes, “Riff, Fox rejected my brilliant idea of a ‘Til Death Independence Day Marathon. They are now dead to me.”
Bill, they plan to make it up to you with the ‘Til Death Blackmail Burnoff Bonanza. 30 episodes in one night. Actually, in one 30-minute time slot. Yeah, they’re going to show the highlights of all the unbroadcast episodes. Of course, since they will only be showing the highlights, the remaining 25 minutes in the half hour will be filled with extended commercials for “House” and “Glee.”
Two things:
I hope Brothers can pick up the numbers. Very impressive cast.
Smallville is one of my favorites. It looks like the CW is “putting it to pasture” on Fridays. I miss Michael Rosenbaum (Lex Luthor) not being on the show. He is a very underrated actor. Smallville has had a good run, this needs to be the last season anyway.
Joss Whedon would never hire me as his analyst.
I’d tell him the truth.
He’ll just go post on Whedonesque, so he can be lied to some more.
FOX really should of ran new Til Death in the summer. They didnt even bother to return the series last spring (they could of aired it at 7:00 or 7:30). The numbers will be historically low, the only good thing about Brothers is that the drop at 8:30 when Til Death premeires will give it the highest ratings of the night. FOX axed Jezebel James for getting 3.11 million on fridays at 8, what will happen with FOX’s trio.
The Smallville numbers are pretty darn good considering I am getting pms on assorted forums that it was pre-empted in a number of areas across the country for sports as was Supernatural this week…..I am betting their DVR numbers will be mighty! We should get our first SN DVR numbers in a week or so- should be interesting to see what those are.
Smallville should never have been moved to Fridays. Pairing it up with Supernatural was perfect. Switch it back and have Vampire Diaries go up against Jennifer Love Hewitt. BTW, I knew Dollhouse would tank and I give it no more than half a season before it mercifully gets canceled.
William, I agree Michael Rosenbaum at the time felt like if he were to leave the show would be good but the producers have done good with the show so far without him. They created Doomsday, brought back Brainiac and Zod, Metallo, Toy Man, and many others. I think they will go a season 10 because The CW wont want to lose its best show and + smallville is already prepared for a season 10 they said. Also, considering Tom Welling is now exectutive producer on the show too I think Tom wont give up without a fight and he wants a season 10 since he signed on for it. BTW Callum Blue (ZOD) has signed on for a season 10 also so a 2 year story arc if the show is renewed again.
CP, I think the CW and the producers want to see how good the next couple of episodes will do before they change anything, I mean common people Smallville has only had 1 episode for the season so far they still have a better chance then everyone is saying.
I expect Dollhouse to get lower ratings (maybe substantially lower ratings) this coming Friday. On the SYFY channel, Stargate Universe will be having its 2 hour premiere from 9-11pm EDT. I expect that SG-Universe will get better ratings than Dollhouse even on a cable channel.
If they were going to keep Terminator or Dollhouse, they should have kept Terminator in my opinion. Its ratings were better.
Chaz,
I agree with you about Kyle XY but it’s a male oriented show and Dawn just doesn’t go for those.
Carol – I agree about Dollhouse’s ratings only going down. The thing about Terminator is after a modest first season, numbers went down considerably in the fall monday slot. (NBC even beat FOX that night), but FOX was low on dramas and gave Terminator a full year. Numbers continued to go down, and for several other reasons (TSCC being owned by WB) Terminator was axed, while Dollhouse was given a second chance. The question is how much longer will Dollhouse last.
Wow – I thought Smallville would have done a little better than that…they are really getting deep into the Mythology back ground of Superman and Action Comics…a lot of classic DC Comic villians and Planet history of Kal-El… the show is top notch and is off to a great story arc…I hope CW is well pleased – but if they consider cancelling it b/c of ratings before moving it to Wed’s then they’re dumber than I thought…
and as a fan of Dollhouse – that was the lamest premier – not even a re-cap of what was going on for any possible new viewers to understand what was happening…I think some of us are waking up ourselves of the Dollhouse Dreams…I may not stick with this show much longer…
I like Smallville as much as the next gal, and I think it’s been a much better show than people have given it credit for, but it’s been on for what–eight or nine seasons already? Might be time to shuffle on off before Tom Welling has to wear Depends under his tights.
As for Dollhouse, I can’t fathom how The Whedon could turn out something so incredibly “meh.” With a few notable exceptions, most due to the performances of the actors and not through any merits of the writing, I can’t see the mark of the guy who brought us BtVS, Angel and Firefly anywhere in Dollhouse. If the audience hasn’t caught on yet, it’s not going to.
Ouch on Dollhouse. My friends and I all watch it, but we watch it either on DVR or Hulu. Always hard to figure the impact of time-shifted viewing on overnights for different sub-groups of viewers. TSCC also suffered and was another show my friends and I watched.
No body is home on Friday nights in the fall.
High School Football…..
Brothers was not all that bad at all.
IE is better than all other browers imo and SMALLVILLE RULEZ!!!! They’re gonna make a season 10….
They moved today’s episode (of Smallville) because of baseball?? WTF!?!? Now it’s gonna come on tomorrow (on Saturday @ 8pm). They can’t keep moving my show around like this….Just leave it on Friday, CW. Fridayz my only off weekday and i dedicate it SMALLVILLE, THE BEST NON-CABLE TV SHOW EVER!!!!….I miss Lana Lang (the beautiful, babyfaced Kristin Kreuk)….
I think FOX will be lenient with Brothers, as they dont want to have a cancel Brothers and pull Til Death situation. Its likely that Brothers will have the highest ratings of the three FOX shows do it can only help.