BSG's Ratings Continue to Slide [Article]

ixoy

Just saw this on Zap2It:

Battlestar Galactica" has moved to Sunday, but the shift couldn't stop its downward-trending ratings.

The critically adored Sci Fi Channel series did a 1.4 household rating and brought in 1.8 million viewers for its Sunday (Jan. 21) midseason premiere. That's down from the 2.2 million viewers who tuned in for the show's October premiere in its original Friday home. Those numbers were down from the 3.1 million who watched the show's second season premiere in July of 2005.

Although "Battlestar Galactica" was clobbered by CBS' extraordinarily popular AFC championship football game, Sci Fi was able to find plenty of positives. The Peabody-winning drama was basic cable's top program for the day among adults 18-49 and was up 60 percent in that demo from the totals for the Dec. 15 midseason finale. The show may have become football counterprogramming, as viewership was particular strong among female viewers, up 68 percent among women 18-49 from the December finale.

Sci Fi got similar numbers from the series premiere of "The Dresden Files," which pulled in 1.7 million viewers, though the freshman drama's 882,000 viewers among adults 18-49 was far below the 1.3 million in the demo for "Battlestar."

Not good. The Sunday slot was designed to increase viewership but, at least in the first week, that hasn't transpired. Yes it was up against football but that doesn't translate well into bottom line advertising revenue.

Really hope its ratings pick up - they'll surely need to if there's to be a Season 4.

aidan_walsh

Yeah, Sunday nights worked out really well for The West Wing too...

Hopefully they won't do an SG-1 to it.

MisterAnarchy

The ratings for the NFL matches were the highest ever for the semi final stage,48m so that had a big impact.
The ratings on Sky are very healthy,with an average of 386,000 viewers across the first two episodes from 9pm.
Rapture is #4 on the iTunes Top Downloaded TV list.
Every other show in the top 10 is a major network show bar BSG.
The DVD sales are very high too.
The show will get a fourth and no doubt fifth series as syndication is where the big money is.
When it hits syndication it will be the huge hit it deserves to be.

AnCapaillMor

Sundays killed alot of shows. hope it does'nt do this one.

User45701

i don't see it happening i mean they wanted to cancel enterprise after season 3, the way i see it if BSG gets canceled the fan response in the way of donations and origination will be massive and even rival or be larger than the response to firefly.

Idd happily donate 1/2 my wages if i thought it would help.
Also bsg could just take the way of TOS and do a series of around 6 or more movies.

robnubis

yeah i dont see what happened to sg1 happening to battlestar tbh...if scifi dropped it, i'm sure there's a multitude of stations to pick it up.

Also as far as fan response, it doesnt really do anything...the only thing that can help is primarily dvd sales. IF Bsg was cancelled, as with other shows, an increase in dvd sales would prompt the studio's into action.

But as MGM have show what with making 2 stargate movies after it was dropped, cash cows such as these are never truly cancelled, and i dont see Universal letting bsg die.

Overheal

Oh, Rob. Thats the thing. What happened to Stargate won't happen to BSG. No Spinoff. No 10 seasons. No sh*s and giggles, for that matter.

They won't let it die if they can help it; but the story can go on that long, can it? They'd have to unleash some unholy kind of "prophecy" thingamajig when they got to Earth...or something.

they need to rely less on TV broadcasting methinks. Internet is a wonderful device. Exploit it a bit. The eps are already on iTunes: go show your support. Me? I buy DVDs.

Fenster

I think that to a point BSG is a victim of it's own success as the amount of people who torrent it weekly is prodigious.

mcgarnicle

Fenster wrote:

I think that to a point BSG is a victim of it's own success as the amount of people who torrent it weekly is prodigious.

The amount of people torrenting it is irrelevent since the Nielsen Ratings only factor in U.S. viewers.