From Paramount/CBS' perspective - was DS9 a financial success?

[bullethead]

LobsterAfternoon wrote:

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This thread makes me wonder what kinda profit margins a series should be getting for a mega corporation to be happy.

Millions to hundreds of millions, depending on the production and marketing costs.

[DS9forever]

C.E. Evans wrote:

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DS9's ratings did decline year after year--it just didn't hold onto the huge audience that TNG had. And with VOY--or rather, Jeri Ryan--kind of grabbing the spotlight, DS9 was sort of the forgotten middle child of the Trek franchise at that point in time, IMO.

Wasn't it proven that the addition of Jeri Ryan had no effect on Voyager's ratings?

[CoveTom]

The simple fact is that DS9 remained on the air for seven seasons. That is a long run for any television series, let alone a syndicated science fiction series. Paramount is not in the charity business. Had DS9 not been profitable for them, there is no way they would have kept it on the air for seven years. And since then, they have licensed the show to cable television stations, local stations in syndication, Netflix, and have released the whole thing on DVD.

There is simply no question that DS9 has been profitable -- very profitable -- for its owners. The only reason the question is ever asked is because it was never as popular in the ratings as TNG.

But there's no question it has been a moneymaker, and I have no doubt that a remastered Blu-ray release would be profitable for CBS as well. I'm sure they will do it eventually.

[C.E. Evans]

DS9forever wrote:

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Wasn't it proven that the addition of Jeri Ryan had no effect on Voyager's ratings?

The ratings had declined quite a bit prior to her arrival but she did give them a minor boost and the show's ratings were (more or less) stable until the seventh season when they dropped back to pre-Jeri Ryan levels.

"Scorpion, part 2" was the show's second highest-rated episode behind "Caretaker," though.

[Dream]

DS9forever wrote:

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Wasn't it proven that the addition of Jeri Ryan had no effect on Voyager's ratings?

While it she didn't help massively in the ratings, I'm sure she did help in her own way. At the very least Seven probably made more magazines write more articles about Voyager. Ratings were starting to fall for everything by that era.

[C.E. Evans]

If nothing else, the addition of Ryan kept the show's ratings from dropping below the 4 million viewers mark (with the curious exception of one episode, "Juggernaut," that had ENT-era ratings of just above 2 million viewers).

[DeepSpaceWine]

C.E. Evans wrote:

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If nothing else, the addition of Ryan kept the show's ratings from dropping below the 4 million viewers mark (with the curious exception of one episode, "Juggernaut," that had ENT-era ratings of just above 2 million viewers).

It's not that curious. Air it on a Monday, before the show's Wednesday timeslot and have a new episode on Wednesday was a recipe for it being missed (special timeslot on a day before the normal timeslot= low ratings). With its mirror reversal, "Investigations", one would have tuned in on Monday, noticed no Voyager, then remembered the special day/time or looked to the tv guide to find it.

In the entire run of Voyager, "Juggernaut" was the only episode to have its rerun get higher ratings than its original broadcast. 2 DS9 episodes exceeded their original ratings in a rerun with a possibility 2 others did so too (pesky gaps with some reruns). Don't have enough rerun data for TNG. No Enterprise episode exceeded its original ratings.

Star Trek was kind of on the low end. My records indicate Xena had episodes exceed their original ratings 12 times. Hercules did so at least 9 times (the series finale got a better rating in its rerun than its original broadcast). X-Files did so 13 times (all Season 1 eps though).

[dulcimer47]

Dream wrote:

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While it she didn't help massively in the ratings, I'm sure she did help in her own way. At the very least Seven probably made more magazines write more articles about Voyager. Ratings were starting to fall for everything by that era.

A very interesting graph to say the least.

The tough thing is that making a quality series does not guarantee good ratings, as evidenced by DS9's nearly equally poor ratings... As the saying goes: "There's no accounting for taste."

[DS9forever]

I've always wondered, if DS9 wasn't a Star Trek series, would it have been popular enough to have had TV movies along the lines of Babylon 5, a series I know DS9 trounced in the ratings.

[DeepSpaceWine]

DS9forever wrote:

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I've always wondered, if DS9 wasn't a Star Trek series, would it have been popular enough to have had TV movies along the lines of Babylon 5, a series I know DS9 trounced in the ratings.

Trounced is right. The ratings are hard to come by past the 96-97 season, I'd love to see them. IIRC, that season B5 averaged 50% of DS9's ratings. Now, timeslots was a factor. DS9 was given good timeslots (of course, some markets might not give a damn and toss it late night) whereas B5, in response to its ratings, many stations kept pushing it further from primetime leading to a situation where many viewers were complaining it was airing between midnight and 4AM in some markets. As for the movies, it was luck. All the movies were ordered when TNT liked Babylon 5 (97-98). Sometime later in 1998, they started to regret it, leading to the famous internal struggle at TNT between their 2 divisions over Crusade which ended up scuttling that series. TNT was a cable network trying to make a name for itself and it saw B5 had a very loyal audience, they liked the demographics, so they decided to go for it. They didn't like that the audience didn't spill over to other shows (who would have thought Babylon 5 fans wouldn't watch wrestling? ).