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TV Ratings (18th February) FRINGE FIGHTS BACK

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TV Ratings (Friday 18th February) FRINGE FIGHTS BACK

Fringe Friday this time bring slightly better results...

-Total Viewers:
CBS: 10.08 million, NBC: 6.51, ABC: 4.14, Fox: 4.00, CW: 2.23

-Adults 18-49:
CBS and Fox: 1.6 rating/5 share each, NBC: 1.5/5, ABC: 1.3/4, CW: 1.0/3

CBS

The Defenders - 8.54 million & 1.4/5
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CSI: NY - 10.62 million & 1.8/6
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Blue Bloods - 11.11 million & 1.5/5
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NBC

Who Do You Think You Are? - 5.88 million & 1.3/4
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Dateline (2 hour) - 6.82 million & 1.6/5
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ABC

Supernanny - 3.71 million & 1.0/3
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Primetime: What Would You Do? - 4.66 million & 1.6/5
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20/20 - 4.06 million & 1.2/4
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FOX

Kitchen Nightmares - 3.94 million & 1.7/6
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Fringe - 4.06 million & 1.5/5
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CW

Smallville - 2.22 million & 1.0/3
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Supernatural - 2.25 million & 1.0/3
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Fringe is at the border once again of the so called safe zone from the 80% threshold "Kevin Reilly" hinted at but I don't believe him. Fringe stays in my Likely to be cancelled section for now but the bump is always welcome. I can't help but feel the ratings are not the key to a 4th season but the deal WB/Bad Robot seem to be preparing for FOX but if I was WB & willing to make big movement in the fee FOX pays...

Why not replace Smallville with Fringe for 1 season, next fall ?

CSI NY is making a serious case to not be cancelled now, which might be bad news for potential friday bound "The Good Wife". However I still say CSI NY should be the CSI show dying on sunday night and not CSI Miami.

oh one last thing...

I see on other boards Supernatural fans showing glee at the death of Fringe, saying there show is winning despite the fact Fringe beats it all the time in the ratings and I have only this to say on the subject...

Theres nothing to glee about the fact your show has really no limits on failure because its on THE CW. Supernatural has only lived so long for that very fact --- THE CW is an awful network that will die sooner rather than later.
 
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I see on other boards Supernatural fans showing glee at the death of Fringe, saying there show is winning despite the fact Fringe beats it all the time in the ratings and I have only this to say on the subject...
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It's all relative. Supernatural is winning because its chances of cancellation are a hell of a lot lower than Fringe's. Does the CW's total viewer base suck compared to Fox's? Abso-fraggin'-lutely, but that doesn't change the facts.

Fringe has more viewers and a bigger 18-49 because it's not on a low-rated network. The CW might as well be a cable network, seriously.
 
I still think on The CW, Fringe would probably get similar results as it gets now...I've tried watching Supernatural and while the mythology stuff looks alright the acting/writing puts me off...Supernatural getting 6 or 7 years, while Fringe gets 3 or 4

IS a universal joke.

Personally I would like to see Fringe on a 8pm not 9pm just to see if it does better as I think it would.
 
I don't think similar results are possible. I applaud the optimism but in my book that's what it is -- optimism.

For one thing, I don't think the show would be quite the same on The CW. The network would want it to target its audience so it can fit in with the rest of the lineup. The cast would be younger, the Walter angle might be significantly altered... I just don't see it surviving in its current form.

Also, way more people are willing to stick around and check out a new show on Fox than bother to try tuning into The CW again. That's why no CW premiere is ever nearly as high in the numbers as even current Fringe. So it's kind of a moot point because for all the good advertising on The CW might do, not too many people would bother to check it out.
 
Fringe on THE CW would be a one season only thing because WB wants a 4th season because thats 1 more season to put on DVD and make revenue through I Tunes, worldwide networks airing it and other formats plus Sydnication...So you wouldn't need to make it hit your target demo too much especially on friday nights as a stop gap replacement for Smallville.

Also Fringe does has a small but dedicated fanbase typical for SCI FI shows. If you promise to resolve the story in a final season, I bet fans would follow enough to beat the ratings of what Supernatural and Smallville currently get.

The question is how bad does The WB really want it.

I know its a long shot and odds are any 4th season would appear on FOX not The CW but if WB are going to make serious concenssions to FOX over the License Fee, why not air it your self ?
 
I'm a Supernatural fan and I'm not cackling with glee at the thought of Fringe getting cancelled. Give me a break. I do giggle at FOX's stupidity of putting it on Fridays and expecting it to survive. What did the scheduling geniuses think would happen? Fringe is an okay show. I've seen season one on DVD. I don't begrudge its survival even though I groaned that SPN would have genre competition even on f'ing Fridays after having survived the Thursday death slot for so many years. It was frustrating.

However, I must levy the same complaint about Fringe--the plot seems okay, but outside of Walter the acting is very....uncharismatic. Especially Pacey. I'll have to respectfully disagree with the acting complaints about SPN. If you've seen season one, I can understand that complaint, but both leads really picked up their game in season two. I don't know if Padalecki went to acting school, but something really changed for the positive in him. There was a marked improvement. Those two are genuine actors. If you've only seen Ackles in Smallville, you've seen nothing of what he's capable of.

Of course SPN costs less to make. It's on CW. It has to make do with a budget of $37 per episode.
 
Supernatural's on bonus time, it's already really told its story, now it's just in overtime.

That being said, before it concluded the original five year arc, Supernatural vs Fringe, I'd take Supernatural any day of the week. I like Fringe, but Supernatural's a better balanced show. Comedy, horror, mythology all nicely interwoven. Supernatural is very good at what it does. Fringe simply is not. Don't get me wrong, that's not me saying that Fringe is a bad show, just that it's not the kind of show to thrive in the environment, and the circumstances it finds itself in.

Supernatural will get a seventh season. No question. Is that the first time it's ever beaten Smallville in total viewers when they've both aired on the same night?

Fringe, is on the fence, but I agree, without another upswing would be on my cancellation list as well, which would be a shame.
 
Now that is something to be gleeful about. :lol: I love that SPN beat them in a first run last night. SV has always had it easier being in the 7pm slot, and the way Nielsen works, its last half hour always get an uptick from SPN viewers tuning in the last few minutes. There are plenty of SPN fans who aren't SV fans.

Actually, I've been very pleasantly surprised with the quality of season six. I was on the record as being very much against it. They took a real chance with what they did to Sam. Some of the I have a crush on him teenaged fans are mad as hell, but I liked it. When he lost his soul, he frigging killed people, or caused them to get killed by using them as bait and now he has to live with it. Was he responsible? Yes, I think so and so does the character. I like that. Very "un-Clark Kent." Next week is Ben Edlund's most bizarre meta episode yet. I can't wait. :D

I'll have to get Fringe season 2 if I can ever afford it. Money is tight as hell these days with all my dental bills.
 
Yeah Supernatural will get 7 seasons, Smallville got 10 and Fringe will get three, there is really something wrong with that.
 
Smallville gets as many seasons as the other two put together. :rolleyes:

Still, L&O got 4 times as many seasons as The Wire, so perhaps we shouldn't be that surprised......
 
Angel4576 said:
Smallville gets as many seasons as the other two put together. :rolleyes:

Still, L&O got 4 times as many seasons as The Wire, so perhaps we shouldn't be that surprised......
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L&O is in it's own group, when it got canceled it was actually really good. Plus it's really about 10 shows in one with the huge amount of cast changes.

But Smallville was 5-6 seasons of Clark in high school drooling over Lana when the much hotter, smarter, fun, much better friend Chloe liked Clark and Clark didn't care.

Really Smallville should have been a show that only ran 3 seasons and Fringe can go 5-6 (How many do they really need?) and Farscape could go 7-8. :)
 
bigdaddy said:
L&O is in it's own group, when it got canceled it was actually really good. Plus it's really about 10 shows in one with the huge amount of cast changes.

But Smallville was 5-6 seasons of Clark in high school drooling over Lana when the much hotter, smarter, fun, much better friend Chloe liked Clark and Clark didn't care.

Really Smallville should have been a show that only ran 3 seasons and Fringe can go 5-6 (How many do they really need?) and Farscape could go 7-8. :)
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You missed Firefly's ten-season saga..... ;)
 
If you're really concerned about Fringe's renewal, ratings are only part of the story. Unless the ratings become truly tragic, its fate will be decided when FOX sees how well its pilots have turned out. SF/F pilots are especially competitive with Fringe, since each network tries to achieve a balance in genres (except CBS with its cop shows).

Here are FOX's pilot orders so far.

The good news is that there's only one and maybe two genre pilots in competition. The bad news (for Fringe, good news for genre fans in general) is that Lock & Key is shaping up to have a fine cast, and Touch (which sounds borderline genre) has Keifer Sutherland in the lead. If both get ordered to series, that might leave no room for Fringe.
 
^ There is already no room for Fringe.

Fox has ordered pilots to like 10-15 different shows when they have room for maybe 3.

I enjoy Firefly, but I think it's probably the most over rated show ever. :lol:

Plus at 13 episodes it's hard to miss when they hardly had time to go anywhere. Same with Wonderfalls, great show, but it ended well after 13 episodes so I'm happy. Some shows are just meant to run 13 episodes, like Glee. Really wish it got canceled after 13, because there has been maybe 1-2 good episodes after the first 13. :lol:
 
Frankly both Fringe and SN need to go. SN had a nice long run and now is just sticking around because the CW needs a semi successful show like it on its schedule. Has anything we have sen this season really been all that interesting or necessary? Not in my opinion--the plots have been boring(I mean a day in the life of Bobby episode and last night's episode just scream "we are running out of ideas") and the character work is just another iteration of the brothers dynamic we have seen many times before. The mythology about Mother and monsters has truly been underwhelming.

The Fringe writers say there is years worth of story to tell but watching the series you couldn't tell that. They focus on a boring romance and detour far too often into standalone plots of the week that no one really care about--standalones worked for shows like TNG and X-Files but not Fringe. There has been no urgency to their narrative--we pick up a little steam one week then the momentum is halted. The characters have never been the show's strong point. Anna Torv and Joshua Jackson are just weak actors--I can't take them seriously and I could care less about them or their characters' personal lives/histories. The only thing that has been the least compelling element about the series and the only thing that has stopped me from quitting the show altogether has been the mythology but for whatever reason they don't focus on it as much as they should(it needs to be mytharc all the time in my opinion) and then when they have recently the writers look to be botching it and making it all come down to, in the words of Huey Lewis-- The Power of Love.

Honestly though I think short tv runs is a good idea. Most shows decades ago couldn't sustain good quality for more than 5 years--and these days based on my own experience is that they can barely do it for a year or two. So writers should go in with that mindset instead of just dragging stuff out the way the Fringe writers are doing. 3 years is a good run.
 
bigdaddy said:
startrekwatcher said:
The Fringe writers say there is years worth of story to tell but watching the series you couldn't tell that. They focus on a boring romance and detour far too often into standalone plots of the week that no one really care about
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I and many others care.
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Fine--I guess then there are those like you who do enjoy the romance and the standalone stories but I think most people don't care about Olivia/Peter/Fauxlivia and most people think the standalone episodes are the series' worst. Sure there are always going to be rabid 'shippers but I think the average viewer and the average sff viewer don't care for it. And do episodes like "Dream Logic", "Snakehead", "Brown Betty", "Northwest Passage", the worm in the cornfield episode, "Concentrate and Ask Again" really ever end up on the best of lists the way "August", "Grey Matters", "The Box", "The Arrival" etc do
 
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