Canada is the only market where Discovery was actually broadcast, I believe, so its ratings there are relatively public -- and thus a potentially rich source of insight into how the show performed over the course of the season. I've collected here all the ratings information I've been able to find:
Week 1 ("The Vulcan Hello / Battle at the Binary"): Discovery airs simultaneously on broadcast CTV and specialty Space. If I understand this ratings chart correctly, it pulled in roughly 4.7 million viewers and finished both 1st and 4th in the weekly ratings chart -- a Star Trek ratings triumph unheard of since "Broken Bow's" amazing pilot-episode ratings (which are now mostly forgotten, but stunned the community at the time).
Week 2 ("Context is for Kings"): Discovery finishes 16th for the week, with 1.4 million viewers. This is not a surprising fall, since the show moved from broadcast to (basically) cable, and pilot-to-second-episode viewer drops are always brutal anyway. This is still great performance for the show (do you remember the last time Star Trek beat Saturday Night Live in the U.S.? 'cause I don't), and, if I'm not mistaken, Discovery is the only "cable" program to make the Canadian Top 30.
Week 3 ("The Butcher Cares Not"): Discovery drops out of the Top 30. (The lowest-watched show in the Top 30 was NCIS: New Orleans, with 974,000 viewers, so Discovery clearly scored under that.) Again, not necessarily awful news for a show that was performing incredibly well.
Week 4 ("Choose Your Pain"): Discovery returns to the top 30, posting 1.2 million viewers and taking 20th place.
Week 5 ("Lethe"): 15th place, 1.3 million viewers. Still the only "cable" show in the standings.
Week 6 ("Magic to Make the Sanest Man"): 15th place, 1.2 million viewers
Week 7 ("Si Vis Pacem"): 17th place, 1.2 million viewers
Week 8 ("Into the Forest"): 21st place, 1.1 million viewers
Week 9 ("Despite Yourself"): 17th place, 1.2 million viewers
Week 10 ("The Wolf Inside"): 28th place, 1.0 million viewers (still beat SNL)
Week 11 ("Vaulting Ambition"): not in Top 30 (<907,000 viewers)
Week 12 ("What's Past is Prologue"): 25th place, 1.0 million viewers
Week 13 ("The War Within, the War Without"): 27th place, 0.9 million viewers
Week 14 ("Will You Take My Hand?"): not in Top 30 (<927,000 viewers)
It's late, and I just got surprised by Daylight Savings, so I'm not going to analyze this at all right now, but I thought the forum would find the data interesting. I know I was always obsessed with ratings-related posts back when I was an ENTERPRISE diehard.
One thing that jumps out at me from this data: almost all shows steadily lose viewers after their premiere, but Discovery's viewership is really very stable. Ignoring the pilot, Disco lost only 25% of its audience between episode 3 (the first ordinary broadcast week) and episode 13 (the last week for which we have data). This despite a month-long hiatus in the middle, which appears to have only slightly affected ratings.
By contrast, Enterprise went from 9.2 million viewers (in the United States) for its first week after the pilot ("Fight or Flight") to just 6.1 million viewers on Week 13 ("Silent Enemy," which came right after a six-week hiatus), and had tumbled to 5.3 million viewers by the end of the season -- a decay rate of 43%, nearly twice as much loss as Discovery. Obviously, Enterprise had way more viewers by this measure, but we're comparing American and Canadian audiences, so that doesn't tell us anything. (There are way fewer Canadians.)
If this relative stability in the audience translates to the streaming services, it suggests that Discovery's domestic audience, while tiny (CBS AA has only a couple million total subscribers), may be resilient, and that's absolutely key to streaming services trying to build their business.
Week 1 ("The Vulcan Hello / Battle at the Binary"): Discovery airs simultaneously on broadcast CTV and specialty Space. If I understand this ratings chart correctly, it pulled in roughly 4.7 million viewers and finished both 1st and 4th in the weekly ratings chart -- a Star Trek ratings triumph unheard of since "Broken Bow's" amazing pilot-episode ratings (which are now mostly forgotten, but stunned the community at the time).
Week 2 ("Context is for Kings"): Discovery finishes 16th for the week, with 1.4 million viewers. This is not a surprising fall, since the show moved from broadcast to (basically) cable, and pilot-to-second-episode viewer drops are always brutal anyway. This is still great performance for the show (do you remember the last time Star Trek beat Saturday Night Live in the U.S.? 'cause I don't), and, if I'm not mistaken, Discovery is the only "cable" program to make the Canadian Top 30.
Week 3 ("The Butcher Cares Not"): Discovery drops out of the Top 30. (The lowest-watched show in the Top 30 was NCIS: New Orleans, with 974,000 viewers, so Discovery clearly scored under that.) Again, not necessarily awful news for a show that was performing incredibly well.
Week 4 ("Choose Your Pain"): Discovery returns to the top 30, posting 1.2 million viewers and taking 20th place.
Week 5 ("Lethe"): 15th place, 1.3 million viewers. Still the only "cable" show in the standings.
Week 6 ("Magic to Make the Sanest Man"): 15th place, 1.2 million viewers
Week 7 ("Si Vis Pacem"): 17th place, 1.2 million viewers
Week 8 ("Into the Forest"): 21st place, 1.1 million viewers
Week 9 ("Despite Yourself"): 17th place, 1.2 million viewers
Week 10 ("The Wolf Inside"): 28th place, 1.0 million viewers (still beat SNL)
Week 11 ("Vaulting Ambition"): not in Top 30 (<907,000 viewers)
Week 12 ("What's Past is Prologue"): 25th place, 1.0 million viewers
Week 13 ("The War Within, the War Without"): 27th place, 0.9 million viewers
Week 14 ("Will You Take My Hand?"): not in Top 30 (<927,000 viewers)
It's late, and I just got surprised by Daylight Savings, so I'm not going to analyze this at all right now, but I thought the forum would find the data interesting. I know I was always obsessed with ratings-related posts back when I was an ENTERPRISE diehard.
One thing that jumps out at me from this data: almost all shows steadily lose viewers after their premiere, but Discovery's viewership is really very stable. Ignoring the pilot, Disco lost only 25% of its audience between episode 3 (the first ordinary broadcast week) and episode 13 (the last week for which we have data). This despite a month-long hiatus in the middle, which appears to have only slightly affected ratings.
By contrast, Enterprise went from 9.2 million viewers (in the United States) for its first week after the pilot ("Fight or Flight") to just 6.1 million viewers on Week 13 ("Silent Enemy," which came right after a six-week hiatus), and had tumbled to 5.3 million viewers by the end of the season -- a decay rate of 43%, nearly twice as much loss as Discovery. Obviously, Enterprise had way more viewers by this measure, but we're comparing American and Canadian audiences, so that doesn't tell us anything. (There are way fewer Canadians.)
If this relative stability in the audience translates to the streaming services, it suggests that Discovery's domestic audience, while tiny (CBS AA has only a couple million total subscribers), may be resilient, and that's absolutely key to streaming services trying to build their business.
