Fans, why did the ratings slide?

[Warped9]

This is something of a companion thread to "Fans, why do you like..." I just don't want to derail that thread and risk it getting too far afield because I'm finding it informative.

But as devoted fans: why do you think the ratings slide continued downward and never reversed?

After TNG's peak in the early '90s why couldn't DS9 reverse the slipping ratings?

Was the mainstream audience turning its back and why?

 

[Warped9]

Not to seek to derail this thread...

But I presume you are planning to start a thread on why The Original Series was never a big success, during those original NBC broadcasts?

I recognise how you hold Star Trek to a higher standard than any of its spin-offs, but this latest round of topics per series does seem to carry more of a bias.

Fair enough. I was just trying to think how to reword the question there.

As I mentioned I'm writing up something of a retrospective for the franchise. I have my own thoughts on all this stuff, but thats only my perspective. As in many things I suspect there's always more than one or two reasons why something is popular or conversely unsuccessful. In fairness I want to offer up other views. It isn't sufficient to simply say, "It tanked because it sucked." You have to at least try to be more articulate and specific as to why something worked or not.

 

[Sykonee]

One possible reason -as I've discovered in that little 'Versus' project- is that DS9's S1 was airing right along side TNG's S6. Now, while DS9:S1 has its share of strong episodes, the unfortunate trend seemed to be that, in direct contrast as episodes were airing, TNG:S6 was just overall better -which is totally understandable as TNG was a well-oiled machine at that point, whereas DS9 still had to take a few stumbles to find its feet. This probably led to quite the bleed-off for DS9. "Oh, this new show is alright, but TNG is still the better show, so I'll catch the new one whenever -it ain't as critical to follow DS9 since it's set way off yonder." -or something like that. Possibly.

 

[happydave]

Well there's the obvious reason we can all see that serialised shows do lose audience naturally throughout the progression of time. LOST/Prison Break/etc all have slowly declining ratings since it's difficult for new fans to join a continuous story arc.

 

[Michael]

Well there's the obvious reason we can all see that serialised shows do lose audience naturally throughout the progression of time. LOST/Prison Break/etc all have slowly declining ratings since it's difficult for new fans to join a continuous story arc.

I, as well, believe this to be the answer. Losing viewers is a phenomenon almost every television show faces.

 

[Too Much Fun]

There are so many threads that already answer this question. A new one is not necessary. The general consensus seems two things above all else:

1) Constantly being stuck in different (and often inconvenient) time slots by a neglectful network.

2) Being overshadowed by all the hype lavished upon Voyager, which made its debut only two years after DS9's start and was given promotion up the wazoo as the "flagship" show of a new network (UPN).

Basically, it was the neglected middle child between TNG and Voyager. TNG did season 6 and 7 while DS9 did its first two seasons. Then Voyager started in 1995. DS9 was never allowed to stand alone and get all the attention for itself. TNG had movies going and Voyager got all the network support and promotion from Paramount while DS9 was left to toil in relative obscurity, the overlooked gem of the franchise.

 

[TheGodBen]

I think that for some people Star Trek is about a ship boldly going, and no matter how good DS9 was they just couldn't relate to the fact that it was a space station show. To make matters worse, the first season didn't utilise the setting well and it felt like a poor copy of TNG, so some of the audience went away. As the show went on it became more serialised and started to tell darker stories such as the war with the Dominion, and I imagine some people who bought into Gene's "perfect" 24th century vision were put off by that.

I think one of the biggest problems is that the show failed to attract new viewers because Star Trek stopped being a TV show and became an impenetrable genre of its own with four separate series. It had such a large backstory and previously developed universe that new viewers would have had to do a lot of watching in order to understand what the hell is going on in the universe. Combine that with the stigma of being a Trekker and what you get is a dwindling audience who is not being replaced by new viewers like a normal TV show would.

Those are my excuses.

 

[Warped9]

Do you think it might have helped if TPTB had not begun VOY right after TNG ended, but rather started VOY near or at the end of DS9's run? Might it have helped to let DS9 stand on its own for a time?

 

[Jaespol]

Do you think it might have helped if TPTB had not begun VOY right after TNG ended, but rather started VOY near or at the end of DS9's run? Might it have helped to let DS9 stand on its own for a time?

Definitely they tried to shove far too much trek down everyone's throats at the same time and in the case of Voyager, the quality suffered because of it I believe.

 

[MrPointy]

DS9 was a syndicated show, and the syndication market was pretty much overcrowded (Hercules, Xena, Babylon 5, and probably a few others I'm forgetting) with other genre shows by the time the show hit its stride (season 3, more or less). Also, the advent of stations like UPN and the WB killed off a large portion of the syndication market by the end of DS9's run, and the show was getting preempted and shifted around like crazy.

I think DS9 still was out-rating Voyager throughout its entire run.

 

[Bosch571]

I think DS9 still was out-rating Voyager throughout its entire run.

True but voyager was on UPN, an unpopular network with only partial coverage. Not everything has (and can) be TNG level of successful, they both ware popular enough to get the full 7 seasons, Voyager was even UPNs top show (not that that’s saying much).

A bigger point is that they were losing viewers every season where TNG gained viewers for most of its run. Quite a feat considering it had great ratings from the start. But in the end most series lose viewers over the years. TNGs success doesn’t make DS9/Voyager an automatic failure, lots of liked sci-fi shows did a lot worse (looking at you Babylon 5).

 

[Disillusioned]

When I watched it, i actually had to record it because it was on at midnight where I was at, so that didn't help any. Otherwise, I think a lot of fans were wrongly turned off by the fact the show wasn't on a ship and never really gave it the chance it deserved. As Voltaire mentioned, the impression was that the show "boldly go no where", which was the wrong attitude to have about DS9 since that wasn't what it was really about. I wouldn't have wanted it to, anyway, since just doing the same thing over and over gets boring after a while.

 

[Navaros]

The main reason for the ratings slide was that Season 1 was for the most part, a mediocre rehash of TNG; as were some Season 2 episodes as well. This is by far the largest contributing factor to why DS9 lost millions of viewers IMO. By the time DS9 got better, consistently, those millions of viewers were already gone for good, and never noticed.

Other factors include DS9 being too complex for many viewers (dumb sells because everyone can understand it, but DS9 is the opposite of dumb); Bajorans being for the most part inherently annoying & extremely boring/uninteresting, and hence turning many viewers off (another thing the viewers who tuned out because of that didn't realize got fixed later in the series and tune back in) and over-saturation of Trek by Voyager airing at the same time.

 

[flemm]

I think DS9 still was out-rating Voyager throughout its entire run.

I think this is an important point to remember. Despite some of the good arguments made above, DS9 did quite well for itself.

I agree it probably could have done better if those in charge of Trek had avoided going to the well so often and force-feeding Trek to an ever more saturated market.

I do think a couple of the points made above are phantom arguments, however, that probably had little to do with dwindling ratings. The fact that this is a space station and not a starship, for example. If anything, this is part of what allowed the show to avoid the feeling of being diluted TNG that plagued Voyager throughout its run.

One thing we need to consider is that the show's strengths were what allowed it to retain respactable ratings despite the relative neglect cited earlier in this thread. A less interesting show would have tanked a lot harder in those circumstances.

 

[toughlittleship]

Honestly, what competition did TNG have for its first five seasons? Shows nobody remembers anymore.

 

[TheGodBen]

I do think a couple of the points made above are phantom arguments, however, that probably had little to do with dwindling ratings. The fact that this is a space station and not a starship, for example. If anything, this is part of what allowed the show to avoid the feeling of being diluted TNG that plagued Voyager throughout its run.

This is true for the later seasons, but for a lot of the episodes in the first two seasons it did feel like TNG but the alien/anomaly/virus came to the station rather than the other way around. It was only in late season 2 that the show began to define itself properly rather than be the show which "boldly went nowhere", but by that point it might have been too late to attract viewers who had already abandoned the show.

 

[flemm]

I do think a couple of the points made above are phantom arguments, however, that probably had little to do with dwindling ratings. The fact that this is a space station and not a starship, for example. If anything, this is part of what allowed the show to avoid the feeling of being diluted TNG that plagued Voyager throughout its run.

This is true for the later seasons, but for a lot of the episodes in the first two seasons it did feel like TNG but the alien/anomaly/virus came to the station rather than the other way around. It was only in late season 2 that the show began to define itself properly rather than be the show which "boldly went nowhere", but by that point it might have been too late to attract viewers who had already abandoned the show.

You're right about the early seasons having quite a few inverted TNG episodes. That said, I think the most plausible reasons for the steady decline of DS9's ratings are large-scale reasons like market saturation (competition from a second Trek show throughout + the cosmetically similar Babylon 5 as I recall) and a general increase in the amount of good quality shows on television, as compared to the peak TNG years.

As for DS9 itself, it was very good, well-acted, with relevant themes and a lot of depth... These are the reasons why it remained a popular show despite brand mismanagement, relative neglect when compared to Voyager, and increased competition across the board. What is generally wrong-headed, in my view, is to attribute the drop in ratings to the show's obvious strengths (i.e. it was interesting and presented a lot of challenging and compelling ideas).

 

[One of None]

The whole Bajoran prophet thing turned me off. I though it was just plain silly. Also the ferengi episodes and any episode that featured Vic were my least favorites. And Worf, you would have never known that he spent all that time in a relationship with a counsellor from the way he acts. The fight scenes with any of the women were just terrible. I am surprised the Klingon empire could defeat the tribbles, because their bravest warriors could not defeat a skinny woman in high heals. The war was hard to believe at times also. The federation at one time could turn out hundreds of Reliants and Excelsiors, but in the future can't make more than a handful of Defiants. On the other hand I loved Garak episodes.

I've found that DS9 just did not feel like Star Trek. There are still some episodes that I won't watch if the come on. I don't find myself doing that for any of the other series.

 

[Nightdiamond]

The main reason for the ratings slide was that Season 1 was for the most part, a mediocre rehash of TNG; as were some Season 2 episodes as well. This is by far the largest contributing factor to why DS9 lost millions of viewers IMO

.

Yes, from the hairstyles to dialogue, the early DS9 resembled TNG. The Bajoran women's hairstyles resembled ensign Ro's in T.N.G. There were lots of 'techno-babble', all the behaviors and dialogue seemed TNG ish.

By the later seasons, they became more individual- Kira's hairstyle seemed more individualistic, less emphasis on techno babble and more on political social themes, more risky interesting sounding dialogue.

And the different looking space battles!

After that DS9 seemed to comein on its own..

 

[Disillusioned]

I can't say I agree with the market saturation theory. After all, how many spin-offs of CSI are there in addition to Law & Order and its two spin-offs? And really all of those shows tend to be too formulaic for my tastes, but people seem to like them anyway.