TSCC: Thoughts on the Ratings Decline

[Andonagio]

With the entire second season of TSCC now under our belts, it's time to look back at the show's performance over the last two years. If we follow the numbers, it's shown one of the biggest drops in ratings since the series premiere: 18 million viewers for the first episode versus 3.6 million for the season 2 finale.

Why do you think the show has experienced such a dramatic decline in ratings since it began?

One theory is the move to Friday nights. This probably didn't help, but the show had already dropped down to about 5.25 million viewers before the move. Other than that one move, FOX has treated the show with remarkable consistency, i.e. it hasn't been unexpectedly preempted or rescheduled unannounced.

Another theory is that TSCC was competing with other popular shows in either timeslot. That probably didn't help either. Nevertheless, in this era of VCRs, DVRs and internet downloads, conflictling timeslots probably doesn't make as much of a difference as it used to.

Which brings up a third theory: a number of people watch it online or copy it on their VCRs or DVRs, which aren't figured into the Nielsen ratings. Many viewers do this, but probably not 15 million of the show's original 18 million viewers.

All of this doesn't add up to an 80% decline in ratings since the series premiere. Why else do you think the show's lost so many viewers?

 

[nx1701g]

1.) Sarah Connor came on directly after the Super Bowl - one of the biggest events in the key demos. This horribly skewed its viewership for the premiere and a significant drop was to be expected.

2.) When it aired in season one it had no direct competition due to the writer's strike. When it came back it was opposite Monday Night Football, Chuck, Dancing with the Stars, TBBT & HIMYM. Friday nights have very few members of the key demos (teenagers and young adults) at home viewing television.

3.) Fox Executives - despite only airing and not producing it - issued several changes to the series in order for it to be renewed for a second season. Many of these changes fans didn't like.

4.) Many people don't like the family drama of the show.

5.) Many people expected it to be a minature movie each week with more action than drama.

6.) Too many questions and not enough answers.

7.) Some people don't like the characterizations of Sarah and John Connor.

8.) Some people don't like that John Connor has feelings for a female terminator.

9.) Not many people watch TV live anymore.

10.) Advertising was cut in favor of American Idol and 24.

Analysis of Terminator Ratings

 

[Kelso]

I think the biggest problem with the show is that it's fucking boring. Neither the meandering storyline or the insipid characters are in the least bit compelling.


There are plenty of shows out there that can put two characters in a room and create some thrilling drama... T:SCC is not one of those shows.


It's a shame, too... the first season was quite promising.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

The initial huge drop was simply due to people watching it after the Superbowl and not being interested in the subject matter. Fair enough, 18M is a big number for a genre show.

I can't tell ya why others tuned out, but here's why I did, early in S2: I didn't care about the plotline. There weren't enough "hooks" to hold my interest. A "hook" is something that makes you think, "oh dear, I wonder if X will happen. I have to watch to find out." The consequences could be good or bad, but the consequences must be clear, for the hook to work.

One X that they used was "will Cameron go squirrely and kill John" except that we know that can't happen. So X needs to be something else, and when the resolution happens, there needs to be another one. A few happening at the same time, with staggered resolutions, would be a good idea, because how much any audience member cares about any given X will vary by the person. As long as there's one that you care about, you will keep watching.

Since John's survival is a given, X's can't be built around that, but could be built around John & Sarah & co's strategy for survival or getting a leg up on the Terminators or perhaps figuring out ways of altering the future so that John never needs to become a leader.

The key here is that we needed a sense of the outlines of the fight - taking over a certain power plant accomplishes something; convincing a certain person that the Terminator threat is real accomplishes something; this is all building up to accomplish something even bigger. If that structure was there, it didn't emerge fast enough to keep me from losing interest.

That's too bad because to use the landscape of LA in some kind of underground war happening right under everyone's noses is a nifty idea. 24 has used that structure to good effect for years. People need to be able to "follow along" and form opinions whether X will happen, or happen like the characters think it will, or will have the consequences that the characters think it will, or else their attention wanders, which is just another way of saying, without engagement, viewers become bored and change the channel.

Which brings up a third theory: a number of people watch it online or copy it on their VCRs or DVRs, which aren't figured into the Nielsen ratings.

People TiVO shows that aren't compelling enough for them to watch live. If the show is compelling and they need to TiVO it, they will watch it quickly - if the viewing is within the same day as the broadcast or within three days, advertisers count it more highly than if it takes seven days for people to watch it. So even TiVO is just another way of measuring how engaged the audience is.

 

[StarTrek1701]

I think the biggest problem with the show is that it's fucking boring. Neither the meandering storyline or the insipid characters are in the least bit compelling.


There are plenty of shows out there that can put two characters in a room and create some thrilling drama... T:SCC is not one of those shows.


It's a shame, too... the first season was quite promising.

Same thing about NuBSG, too. These networks never learn.

 

[Trent Roman]

I think the biggest problem with the show is that it's fucking boring. Neither the meandering storyline or the insipid characters are in the least bit compelling.

Having finally caught the finale, I'm forced to agree that this is, overall, a fair assesment of this season's offerings. I hate to be 'that guy' on the Internet who says things like "this was crap and the first season was so much better"... but this was crap and the first season was so much better. It operated at a clip pace, there was a sense of tenseness from the heavy serialization and a relatively fast-moving plotline. The second season, after a few good shows at the beginning, become bogged down in irrelevancies, spinning its wheels for episode on episode about whether something was even a piece of evidence, let alone something that could be acted upon to further the storyline. I couldn't help but notice how, proportionally, the finale called back to the season premiere more than it did the bulk of the season, and not without cause: most of what the Connor clan did this season has, quite frankly, yielded no impact. The Weaver/Ellison/John Henry arc was the only meaningful one (and, not coincidently, the most interesting, both to watch and in terms of potential developments). When an entire season feels like it could be reduced to a three-hour compilation of extracts and still bridge the premiere and finale without trouble, there's a problem. I've seen some people calling it a family drama; I wish! One of my complaints was the way the characters were always apart; there was a stretch there, mid-season, where it seemed like the four main characters hadn't been onscreen together in several episodes. Can't have character dynamics if your characters aren't even interacting (particularly Cameron, who has to play off others). As for 'talky-talky', yes, to an extent; this is supposed to be a show in the action-adventure mold, after all, although most of it has to do with the spectacularly poor nature of that 'talky-talky' (compare any given John Henry/Ellison conversation vs. any of Sarah's meandering babble this season, for instance). Conversely, I often wish they would talk some more: a lot of the cock-ups this season seemed to come from a basic lack of communication amongst the characters, and I'm so incredibly done with the 'significant stare' this show seems to favour; X-Files ran that into the ground, and it's no more interesting now than then.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[DWF]

They should never have moved the show out of it's original time slot.

 

[Uncle Tobias]

I think a major problem for the show was having to do 20 episodes when they had 10 episodes worth of(very good, imo) serial story. It was too spread out for alot of viewers. BSG s4 seemed similiar in that way.

 

[Chess Piece Face]

I seem to be the only person on the internet who doesn't mind the slower pace of the show. But I will say there have been some eps that could have been completely cut because pretty much zilch was happening. I can see this, and I think the accusation that it is boring is a valid reason for the ratings decline.

That and of course, airing after the superbowl.

 

[Uncle Tobias]

I seem to be the only person on the internet who doesn't mind the slower pace of the show. But I will say there have been some eps that could have been completely cut because pretty much zilch was happening. I can see this, and I think the accusation that it is boring is a valid reason for the ratings decline.

That and of course, airing after the superbowl.

You aren't alone, I enjoyed every minute of the show too, I just think it's objectively one of the reasons for ratings decline Mostly going by other people's comments.

 

[hyzmarca]

The slow pace wasn't the problem. The problem, in a word, was NEE. Not Enough Explosions.

Character episodes suck. Character moments are great. Character arcs are great. But character episodes suck, unless those character episodes have some action that contributes to the plot.

Now, the only contribution necessary is stretching things out, so the pacing can remain the same, but it is necessary for all episodes to have an impact on the story and it is helpful for all episodes to have explosions.

If they reshuffled the Connor arcs this season so that the character moments were more spread out, and the gaps were filled with domestic terrorism and explosions, without actually making things move faster, the show would have been more popular.

The key would be making Sarah's Kaliba discovery arc come sooner in the season, so that conflict between the Connors and Kaliba could punctuate the entire season. It would give them an excuse to thrown in explosions every now and then without resorting to Terminator of the Week.

Also, more payoff would be better. Things like Cameron telling them about the Terminator she found in the hotel walls and everyone sitting around planning strategy would be nice. These are people engaging in a long-term guerilla war, you'd expect them to act like it. This means sharring intelligence and strategizing. The events of one episode should flow into the next cleanly, rather than being purely self-contained. And I think that Fox meddling was a problem with that, they wanted self-contained to attract casual viewers. It just happened to turn off hardcore viewers.

 

[Terrorfex]

Quite simply? Three dots, waking dreams and Jesse killed TSCC. When the Chronicles get it right (Most of Season I, Season II premiere, Allison from Palmdale, Cameron's secret coming and goings, The last four episodes) it gets it FANTASTICALLY right. When it gets it wrong, (Three dots, waking dreams, Sleep Clinics and Jesse/Riley) it makes you want to turn it off.

FOX should be praised for giving TSCC 22 episodes where most thought cancellation was the likeliest outcome. Some of TSCC's producers should be given a cuff around the ear for admitting in interviews, that they wrote episodes which the network had strongly suggested wouldn't do well, because they could.

I think TSCC ultimately went wrong because it tried to get away with concepts that an established Sci-Fi in its third or fourth season could escape with. I'd compare it to trying some of the things that BSG did in its later run that didn't quite come off; problem is TSCC isn't the be-all and end-all for FOX, and it wasn't in its third or fourth season.

It did fantastically as an action programme. When they took away the action and gave us WEEKS of characterisation and minimal well ... Terminators and J-Day, they took a massive risk. It didn't pay off, in my opinion.

Also, I get it was an HK prototype. I didn't need three or four episodes.

I really don't think FOX can be blamed here gents. I think the people who wrote the middle of Season 2 should be the ones holding their hands up.

 

[hyzmarca]

Looking at the numbers, it looks like the break and the day change hurt it most.

Before switching to Fridays, it was holding steady around 5 and a half, with some fluctuation. It dropped like a rock when it came back on Firdays.

 

[Captain Craig]

I only watched S1 and a few episodes in the fall.
Found it dull and repetitive.
Sure there are lots of shows on TV where characters are "safe"(ie death seems improbable) but on this show the two main leads fates were very spoken for(alternate reality or not from the cinema verse).
When you fight a Terminator every episode(like in S1) and nearly as frequently in S2 then the boogeyman looses its ability as a threat.

What is sad is knowing how many people were gaga over TSCC booth at Comic Con last summer. The show seemed poised to have a good S2, then it aired.

I'll catch up on DVD with S2 and think really despite the movie I see no scenario where FOX renews a show with a season finale of 3m+ viewers. Was it a cliffhanger?

 

[nx1701g]

I'll catch up on DVD with S2 and think really despite the movie I see no scenario where FOX renews a show with a season finale of 3m+ viewers. Was it a cliffhanger?

Oh yeah. Big one.

Spoiler: What was it?

Weaver was revealed to be a member of a faction of terminators that had rebelled against Skynet. Skynet itself has been active in the past. Cameron has been deactivated and her chip stolen by a new AI designed to oppose Skynet. John Connor has jumped forward in time with Weaver to recover Cameron, but found himself in a new timeline where John Connor never led the Resistance.

 

[nx1701g]

It did fantastically as an action programme.

I just wanted to say I always enjoy seeing these types of posts. From the beginning the producers have said - even when doing promotions for the show - that this is meant to be a family drama - not a straight action adventure. The focus was always meant to be on the relationships between John and Sarah and how it evolved, not the terminators and not - well not entirely - trying to stop Judgment Day.

 

[Arrqh]

The slow pace wasn't the problem. The problem, in a word, was NEE. Not Enough Explosions.

I think that's probably it for most people.

Personally, I have no problem with what the show was (is?). Ever since about midway through the first season I decided that it was excellent and my opinion has not changed since. But the franchise that this is based on is essentially an action series... and I don't think they delivered enough compared to what most people's expectations were. Hence, people lost interest.

I just happened to not be one of those people

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I sampled the show and found it unwatchable.

 

[Mr Light]

It's Terminator the TV Series. Which means people expect it to have, y'know, Terminators and action. Instead we got the Sarah Connor Chronciles, ie nobody fights each other and Sarah goes through five consecutive episodes whacked out of her gourd.

 

[Tim]

Sorry in advance that I enjoy(ed) the show and therefore won't join in on the bash-party, but I think ratings were definitely hurt by the move to Fridays and the six-week hiatus over the holidays. Combined those seem like an excellent way to drop viewers.

I agree that S2 was draggy a bit, but I have yet to watch a TV series that didn't have draggy episodes now and then.