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It looks like the May 20th Tripping the Rift Marathon failed to show an improvement over the previous weeks’ ratings. TtR which premiered at a 1.8, has recently dropped off Sci Fi channels’ Top Ten rated shows. The ratings for any one episode in the marathon could not have been greater then 1.0.
But based on site hits that evening, this SadGeezer thinks that the audience was quite larger for the night then in previous weeks.
In other news, Sci Fi showed their mid-year 2004 montage of shows and movies last night. Tripping was briefly shown in the 75 second commercial. The clips showed Chode and Benito running through the halls. Most of the montage showed Science Fiction movie clips (Scorpion King, Mummy 2, Queen of the Dammed, Final Fantasy, Resident Evil, etc), and some scenes from SG-1 and Battlestar Galactica.
I don’t think Nielsen ratings accurately reflect the typical science fiction audience, personally. One positive that may come out of digital cable and TiVo information sharing is some more accurate reflections of what is being watched/recorded.
”stormsweeper” wrote:I don’t think Nielsen ratings accurately reflect the typical science fiction audience, personally. One positive that may come out of digital cable and TiVo information sharing is some more accurate reflections of what is being watched/recorded.
The rating system is a bit of a joke. It’s just a “best fit” system. Both NBC and ABC have accused them in the last year of fabricating their results based off of other (outside) research when their numbers don’t fit.
Unfortunately the suits over at the Advert firms don’t really care about much else and the price of commercials is usually directly proportionate to the ratings. 🙁
As Sci-Fi has turned from a “Mom and PoP” tv station, to a sub-division of major production companies, they will have less and less interest in shows like LEXX, TTR, et al. This has been clearly seen in the last year by their actions. Showing “Viva Rock Vegas” A Flintstone movie, and “Final Fantasy”, simply because they generate far more ad revenue than a true Science Fiction show. A prime-time movie guarentees them a 1.0+ rating
Don’t get me wrong on Final Fantasy though, while the movie sucked, it’s probably some of the best fiction out there imo, and hey you get to see Gaia, so I shouldnt complain. But none the less the point is valid.
Anywhoo, there’s several new stations just starting up, including something called Horror TV or similar, and a few more Sci-Fi outlets in the form of Spike TV, and another “21-35 oriented” un-announced channel slated for 2006.
I half expect Sci-Fi though to start showing off their Vivendi and Universal attributes in the form of the Mummy movies and the Scorpion King to compete with Horror TV, as well as their heavy lineup of Stephen King movies.
The real solution will likely be diversity of channels, but we’ll see. The end result is that while TTR isn’t the best of Sci-Fi shows, it’s far, far better at representing our demographic, than the aforementioned movies and the other crap Sci-Fi shows to bring in a more diverse audience. They outta just change their name and be done with it.
”LexxLurker” wrote:I half expect Sci-Fi though to start showing off their Vivendi and Universal attributes in the form of the Mummy movies and the Scorpion King to compete with Horror TV, as well as their heavy lineup of Stephen King movies.
The real solution will likely be diversity of channels, but we’ll see. The end result is that while TTR isn’t the best of Sci-Fi shows, it’s far, far better at representing our demographic, than the aforementioned movies and the other crap Sci-Fi shows to bring in a more diverse audience. They outta just change their name and be done with it.
I was thinking they would change formats sometime last year, concidentally to the Horror channel, as their programming for a few months straight was all occult/horror stuff, and lots of crappy Jaws-ripoff films. I guess when they got the BSG miniseries bug, they decided to remain Sci-Fi, even if they do show Flinstones movies or Braveheart from time to time.
As to Spike TV, the amount of commercials they cram into things is staggering. They show all the James Bond films in 3 hour time slots – the films themselves are all right about at the 2 hour mark. So that extra hour is just commercials, making it a 50% ratio of commercials to content, significantly more than the now standard 33% ratio, which is already too high.
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