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Trial and Error ratings are in! yes or no, will SGU be cancelled?

^ For your best bet at having VOD viewership counted, I'd suggest watching within no more than 3 days (same day + 2 more days). Check out the article I posted here for a good overview of how DVR, online, and VOD viewership is currently considered, and how the networks are pressuring Nielsen Media Research to change their data gathering. As one example from the article, FX's Justified (a fantastic series starring Timothy Olyphant) likely would not have gotten a second series if FX hadn't considered live+seven and same-week encores.
 
Anyone know how TNG did as the lead in? :P

Supposedly, 0.6 million according to someone over at the SyFy forum http://forums.syfy.com/index.php?showtopic=2350908&st=120

Though I think that was the ST:TNG ep after SGU (Caprica's old spot) and not the one before it.

It's exceedingly difficult to track down ratings for non-first run cable shows, it seems, but if the 10pm showing got 0.6 mil I assume the 8pm one got at least a little more since live tv viewership in general tends to drop off somewhat after 10pm.

Now when you consider these Trek episodes are 20 years old and have been shown countless times, including BBC America running these exact episodes over and over a lot for the past several months, that's really not THAT far off from SGUs numbers. And SGU is a modern, relatively expensive show while TNG costs them next to nothing to air.

That's pretty sad.

Wait a minute, there are what about 310 million Americans and considering some have no TV or are under age along with a lot more then 310 (and growing) options to watch at any given time. So people will just have to accept their market share will be a lot lower then the big 3 era.
 
Wait a minute, there are what about 310 million Americans and considering some have no TV or are under age along with a lot more then 310 (and growing) options to watch at any given time. So people will just have to accept their market share will be a lot lower then the big 3 era.

Everyone knows people have more options now and ratings aren't what they used to be, however that doesn't change the fact that reruns of a 20 year old show that have been aired countless times is getting ratings that aren't that far off from new programming that is being aired on the same network and same night.

Furthermore, both Caprica and SGU had been regularly getting about half the numbers the lowest rated episodes of the shows they were spun off from. What's worse, Caprica and SGU both have been had been trending declining ratings overall even from their own prior episodes. Caprica's drop was more pronounced, hence it got the axe first, but for SGU to go under 1 million during the important November sweeps period is not a good sign.

It's not just more options, people are tuning out.

From the networks point of view, which makes more sense, spend a lot for shows that get .7, .8, .9 million views or spend next to nothing for a show that will get .6 million views?

Syfy has original shows that are doing moderately well like Warehouse 13 and Sanctuary so clearly it's not impossible for SyFy to get numbers higher than what SGU and Caprica have been getting. They even moved them to Tuesday which is a traditionally higher ratings night than their old Friday slot and the shows still faltered in the ratings.

The problem is the shows themselves.
 
Wait a minute, there are what about 310 million Americans and considering some have no TV or are under age along with a lot more then 310 (and growing) options to watch at any given time. So people will just have to accept their market share will be a lot lower then the big 3 era.

Everyone knows people have more options now and ratings aren't what they used to be, however that doesn't change the fact that reruns of a 20 year old show that have been aired countless times is getting ratings that aren't that far off from new programming that is being aired on the same network and same night.

Furthermore, both Caprica and SGU had been regularly getting about half the numbers the lowest rated episodes of the shows they were spun off from. What's worse, Caprica and SGU both have been had been trending declining ratings overall even from their own prior episodes. Caprica's drop was more pronounced, hence it got the axe first, but for SGU to go under 1 million during the important November sweeps period is not a good sign.

It's not just more options, people are tuning out.

From the networks point of view, which makes more sense, spend a lot for shows that get .7, .8, .9 million views or spend next to nothing for a show that will get .6 million views?

Syfy has original shows that are doing moderately well like Warehouse 13 and Sanctuary so clearly it's not impossible for SyFy to get numbers higher than what SGU and Caprica have been getting. They even moved them to Tuesday which is a traditionally higher ratings night than their old Friday slot and the shows still faltered in the ratings.

The problem is the shows themselves.
not bad for an ensign
 
They even moved them to Tuesday which is a traditionally higher ratings night than their old Friday slot and the shows still faltered in the ratings.
Friday is only an arguable "death slot" for network shows, not necessarily for cable channels. Sci-Fi/Syfy has had shows survive just fine on Friday nights in the past. The move to Tuesday night for SGU and Caprica was a bad idea. Just look at what the networks are showing on Tuesday night during the SGU and Caprica timeslots of 9pm and 10pm.

9pm: Dancing with the Stars Results on ABC, pretty much a ratings guarantee; NCIS: Los Angeles on CBS, again pretty much a ratings guarantee based on the franchise; second hour of Biggest Loser on NBC, which would be unlikely to lose too many viewers from its first hour; and Raising Hope and Running Wilde on FOX, both of which were new and untested in any way. When you add in other cable channels, you get shows like HBO's In Treatment.

10pm: Detroit 1-8-7 on ABC, a new show but cop dramas on networks that fit the traditional mold generally get good ratings; The Good Wife on CBS, a returning show that was earning 12-13 million viewers in its first season; Parenthood on NBC, a returning show that was earning 5-6 million viewers in its first season; and local programming on FOX. When you add in other cable channels, you get shows like FX's Sons of Anarchy.

That is quite a lot of strong competition in both timeslots, and most of those shows are generally more accessible than either SGU or Caprica. I quite liked Caprica, but, if I were watching television live on Tuesday night, I'd watch Sons of Anarchy and DVR Caprica instead.
 
They need to move it back to Friday for the latter half of season 2 to see if ratings improve. If not they'll probably cancel it though maybe they'll order a final season of just 10 episodes.
 
They need to move it back to Friday for the latter half of season 2 to see if ratings improve. If not they'll probably cancel it though maybe they'll order a final season of just 10 episodes.


I agree, they should atleast try. I honestly feel since ive had time to think and how Joe Mallozzi is talking, we will get a 3rd season. Plus with the New MGM i feel they should give it a shot. And if not work out then maybe do another Stargate show with new writers, maybe the guys from Farscape but still in the Stargate universe, well not the show stargate universe but the stargate universe, owell u no what im saying. Hmm Was it stupid to name the show stargate universe ?
 
Im thinking that SGU was only supposed to last 4 seasons anyway due to the serialisation of the story just like BSG was.
Lets just hope it gets the 3rd season then take it from there. The next few episodes sound really interesting now we have got those chloe/scott/stones episodes out of the way.
 
Im thinking that SGU was only supposed to last 4 seasons anyway due to the serialisation of the story just like BSG was.
Lets just hope it gets the 3rd season then take it from there. The next few episodes sound really interesting now we have got those chloe/scott/stones episodes out of the way.


Ah your going to be really upset then with the next few episodes. Sorry!
 
Wait a minute, there are what about 310 million Americans and considering some have no TV or are under age along with a lot more then 310 (and growing) options to watch at any given time. So people will just have to accept their market share will be a lot lower then the big 3 era.

Everyone knows people have more options now and ratings aren't what they used to be, however that doesn't change the fact that reruns of a 20 year old show that have been aired countless times is getting ratings that aren't that far off from new programming that is being aired on the same network and same night.

Okay I know I didn't say that.

Furthermore, both Caprica and SGU had been regularly getting about half the numbers the lowest rated episodes of the shows they were spun off from. What's worse, Caprica and SGU both have been had been trending declining ratings overall even from their own prior episodes. Caprica's drop was more pronounced, hence it got the axe first, but for SGU to go under 1 million during the important November sweeps period is not a good sign.

It's not just more options, people are tuning out.

From the networks point of view, which makes more sense, spend a lot for shows that get .7, .8, .9 million views or spend next to nothing for a show that will get .6 million views?

Syfy has original shows that are doing moderately well like Warehouse 13 and Sanctuary so clearly it's not impossible for SyFy to get numbers higher than what SGU and Caprica have been getting. They even moved them to Tuesday which is a traditionally higher ratings night than their old Friday slot and the shows still faltered in the ratings.

The problem is the shows themselves.
 
Caprica and SGU are both darker shows with more 'realistic' unlikable characters, I don't think people are into this type of show anymore.
 
So if I watch this show does my tv count in the ratings?

Nope. Only a random selection.

I don't know how you can properly gauge a show's success this way. I know the numbers still wouldn't be great, but if you're only getting a slice of whose watching by random selection, you really have no idea what size the audience is.

I agree. If one guy quits watching, supposedly hundreds or thousands do.
 
I don't know how you can properly gauge a show's success this way. I know the numbers still wouldn't be great, but if you're only getting a slice of whose watching by random selection, you really have no idea what size the audience is.

I could be misinterpreting your statement, but using a small random sample to determine the number (or at least the proportion) of people watching a television show is a common application of statistical theory. You can read about the mathematics behind this in some course notes I found at [1] (specifically, chapter 4 on "Confidence intervals")

One could modify the political poll example given in section 4.2 "Opinion polls" to imagine how one could estimate SGU viewers. One could ask, "What is the percentage p of people watching SGU out of all people watching television?" As per the example, if one surveyed only 1,068 people, one could determine the percentage p with an error of +/- 3%, 19 times out of 20 (a.k.a. with 95% confidence).

Knowing the number of people watching TV at a given time (which I imagine is in the millions), and surveying only 1,068 people, one could determine with high (95%) confidence how many of the total number of TV viewers are watching SGU.

[1] http://www.statslab.cam.ac.uk/~rrw1/stats/Sa4.pdf
 
I am going out on a limb and fuck it...SGU will get a 3rd season because SYFY will move the back 10 to fridays and give it 2 episodes to prove itself...SGU will get closer to 1.5 million and SYFY will keep it on fridays to share the slot with Sanctuary over the course of a year.

:p

And then you woke up ;-)

No way they are going to move it back to Fridays, their wrestling is doing hugely better than SGU did in that slot.
 
I am going out on a limb and fuck it...SGU will get a 3rd season because SYFY will move the back 10 to fridays and give it 2 episodes to prove itself...SGU will get closer to 1.5 million and SYFY will keep it on fridays to share the slot with Sanctuary over the course of a year.

:p

And then you woke up ;-)

No way they are going to move it back to Fridays, their wrestling is doing hugely better than SGU did in that slot.

Wrestling would get good ratings no matter what time-slot it was placed in. They should put wrestling on Tuesdays and move Stargate back to Fridays.
 
I am going out on a limb and fuck it...SGU will get a 3rd season because SYFY will move the back 10 to fridays and give it 2 episodes to prove itself...SGU will get closer to 1.5 million and SYFY will keep it on fridays to share the slot with Sanctuary over the course of a year.

:p

And then you woke up ;-)

No way they are going to move it back to Fridays, their wrestling is doing hugely better than SGU did in that slot.

Wrestling would get good ratings no matter what time-slot it was placed in. They should put wrestling on Tuesdays and move Stargate back to Fridays.
I'm not sure Mr McMahon would agree to that his other franchise runs on Monday, he may want some distance from his own show and take on the competition which runs on Thursday
 
If SyFy moves it to Friday and tells the showrunners to focus on the action/adventures aspects, it'll get a 3rd season. If they're not willing to do that, it's not salvageable as it is. If you focus on characters that just aren't interesting, that's disaster.

So, it comes down to their willingness to make changes to fix it. There are some obvious avenues, so it's possible. Although historically, they just drop underperforming programs.

Mr Awe
 
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