If you want a peek at what the real ratings are for a show with a massively tech-savvy fandom like BATTLESTAR's, take a read:
'BATTLESTAR GALACTICA' SCORES BEST PERFORMANCE SINCE SEASON 2 PREMIERE WITH NEW LIVE + 7 DATA
SCIFI.COM HAS BEST MONTH EVER WITH RECORD BATTLESTAR GALACTICA TRAFFIC AND TRIPLE-DIGIT GROWTH
New York, NY February 4, 2009 Battlestar Galactica added to its stellar premiere numbers with the release of new Live +7 data. Overall, the January 16 episode, the first of the series' highly-anticipated final installment, averaged a 2.0 HH rating, 1.8 million Adults 18-49 (up +38% over the Live +Same Day ratings), 1.9 million Adults 25-54 (+35%), and 2.8 million total viewers (+32%). This was the best performance for Battlestar Galactica in total viewers since the season 2 premiere in July 2005.
Fans also visited SCIFI.COM in droves during the month of January to get their Battlestar fix online. With its robust slate of original content offerings, including the 10-part webisode series, "The Face of the Enemy," the Battlestar section of SCIFI.COM was #1 section of the site in January in page views (8.9 million, best month since April '08) and video streams (4.7 million, best month since October '06). Since debuting in December, "The Face of the Enemy" has served up 2.5 million streams.
Combine that info with the fact that BSG is constantly tracking as one of the most torrented shows in the stream, and come to your own conclusions about just how many folks are really watching our show. Nielsens be damned.
Now for something completely different: there's a new videoblog on SciFi.com, "Gone Gaeta Gone," starring Alessandro Juliani and one of his biggest fans. For some reason, this one kinda hurts to watch.
15 comments:
The guy isn't a fan - it winds up he's a crew member pretending to be a fan. If you google his name, his website pops up.
Aside from the clear anticipation of the post "THIS is Earth?!?" episodes, I wonder if them not doing the scifi.com noon webcasts of the eps helped shore things up.
OTOH, I can't help thinking only diehards like us would watch online at noon and NOT watch again at home, so...
Still, if anyone out there still thinks this show doesn't have hordes of people following it, they're nuts.
Though maybe that's just because of all the BK happy meal and Doritos tie-in's Dirk Benedict talked about.
Yeah well. I never *really* thought he was a fan. This is Eick's videoblog, after all. Fans are a source of endless humor. Right? ;)
Reports like these may make BSG fans feel all warm and fuzzy inside, but they simply don't change the brutal reality that the real ratings, the ratings that count because they translate into real ad revenues, are frakking low. It's not like SciFi.com makes good money off torrents or people who watch the ep a week later and ffw the ads.
True, BSG sells DVDs, and the shows raises the profile of a silly network. Still, reports like these are very misleading.
@Pedda_CC - it's all relative I'd say. It's not like SCIFI can compete at the level of FOX for example, but relative to what SCIFI is [i]used[/i] to, I'd say they should be reasonably happy. Given the niche BSG finds itself in, that's all you can expect really.
Dang it. Used the wrong brackets again; this ain't HTML. :)
Besides, who's freaking out about ratings at this point? It's not like the show's gonna get cancelled before we find out what happens.
GFree, of course BSG/Sci Fi can't compete with Fox. But the last ep had a Live+same day rating of 1.3 - this isn't it a good rating, even though the people writing Sci Fi's press releases do a good job at abusinh statistics and language to always find a excuse for a headline that screams "stellar", "double-digit gains" or "best XXX since YYY".
It's important to recognize that Nielsen does not claim to measure something like the "overall popularity" of a show, or its potential when it comes to off-network revenues. One cannot prove Nielsen wrong by triumphantly presenting the latest torrent numbers.
Yes, the rating don't matter anymore at this point. But that doesn't mean we should allow press releases or misleading analyses to obscure the ratings reality.
Nielsens are already becoming meaningless. The SciFi.com numbers are proving that to be true. As ad revenue from online streaming grows, I hope, as a viewer, that the power of the share numbers for first-broadcast, live, viewing, become less and less important.
I hope.
How much money does SciFi make off of downloaded torrents? Yeah, I don't think network executives are popping boners over these numbers. The ratings that matter are not good for BSG, which doesn't matter cause the show is about to end. But whatever makes you feel better I guess.
This isn't about what makes us "feel better." This isn't about whether torrents make money for the nets. If the nets want to, they can figure out a way to embed ads on their shows and give them out to the torrentstream or any other download mechanism they like.
This is about what is happening to how people watch content. I think it's an interesting, and evolving, topic. A lot of fans do. If you don't care, then move along, and don't give me a frakkin' hard time on my frakkin' blog, buddy.
Geez...I'm frakkin' sorry.
Just how awesome *is* your rack?
Pretty damn awesome. But I'm the rack, silly. Juliet's to be exact.
For 2 seasons of BSG (excluding this one) I had to buy it from Amazon or Itunes. And when I decided to start watching "Lost" (last Sept if you can believe that!) I watched it all online at ABC. Now, I'm in school when it airs will continue to watch on ABC.
There's a growing army of people like me out there.
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