Yes, but the fact that several shows had lower ratings that night indicates that other general factors may have contributed more than or in addition to something SV-specific. At best (or worst, depending on one's pov), the low SV ratings indicate that Lois/Clois (or insert anything Stiletto and/or SV-specific here) is not a huge ratings draw.

Did any of the other shows post record low ratings? Otherwise, I think it's fair to say ED/Nois is a primary factor, especially when Nois was also featured in the previous series record low ratings for Smallville. Massena mentions a core audience & the numbers for "Stiletto" seem to indicate a significant amount of those viewers are not Nois fans, IMO. Nor is Nois bringing in new viewers. I also have to ask how many Chloe fans are becoming weary of her character being crapped on, & no payoff - after 8 years.

I know I am. Low ratings might force PTB to get rid of Nois. I agree that Nois probably didn't have much to do with the low ratings (although I am surprised that Nois wearing pleather and strutting around all sexied-up did not draw in higher ratings), given the dip in all other shows, but this makes me a little happy. I don't know what's worse, the crapping on Chloe (which has reached new heights, IMHO), the using of Chloe to prop up Nois, or the Nois-pimping/Cnois pimping been done by every other character. Whichever the case, I'm glad a pleather-wearing episode brought in low ratings... Maybe the writers/PTB will refrain from another supershoe episode. First Lana gets superskin, then nois gets supershoe, next we'll get Super!hat.

Supernatural had a season low too. It wasn't just Smallville.

Supernatural hasn't been that low since post-strike.

I don't know what explains the drop. Many factors could have led to the decline. It will be up to media buyers and network honchos to analyze the cause and I'm sure they will.

To me, it's spilled milk. The issue is whether the CW and the Smallville publicist is going to get Smallville some more publicity for the 3 remaining episodes of the season. I really think they should try to get some print media to cover TW/AM/SW for the Chlarkoom stuff coming up. Most of their actors do a really good job making the story sound good and they take pretty, PRETTY pictures for those people who don't watch for the plot. ;)

I don't pretend to know ratings or anything like that, but I think Stiletto had "stinker" written all over it, just as Sleeper did last season. Why other shows were down, I don't know, but ads for Stiletto popped up a few times over the last week and everytime, people in my house said "Wow, that looks like a bad one." And they like Lois!

It's a combination of both. Obviously, ratings were down across the board for everyone. So, that has to be factored into the decrease. But, the ads for this episode were nothing but Lois looking ridiculous. My wife couldn't believe how bad it looked. When my wife says,"Why would you put an episode like this in the last few episodes of the season?" then you know it's a legitimate question. She NEVER notices stuff like that.

I'm not one to say that any one character will automatically draw lower or higher ratings, I think there are always other factors involved, but the dreadful trailer that only Nois fans seemed to enjoy was a real turn off.

The drop in Supernatural's ratings leads me to believe that a fair sized of the general viewing audience just forgot it was on though I guess they might have been avoiding Supernatural too since the episode was titled Jump the Shark...maybe they took it as a warning.

Or its lead in was so damn dreadful. There's that too!

I agree, but I actually thought the CW's official ep description for "Doomsday" hinted more at an Oliver/Chloe/Clark triangle (not necessarily in a shippy manner). I was a little surprised at that, but I suppose it makes sense being that the whole season pretty much set up a showdown between Clark, the ethically upright (whatev) and Oliver, the ethically ambiguous. Chloe has been sort of floating back and forth between the two poles. Maybe they're setting up for a S9 arc.

Overnights from pifeedback.com

Better than last week's ratings for Stiletto, but the demos need help. Maybe they'll go up some in the finals. I get that this is a busy time for students which can hurt demos, but it'd be nice if the demos were better.

True. The demos could stand to be better. I don't think it's just finals. I think people in general are just tired of SV's crap.

Eh. Not bad considering that Ugly Betty was back new last night.

It also helps that Betty isn't the show it used to be.

Half hour breakdowns:

Net Show 18-49 18-34 Total

CW Smallville 1.4/4 1.4/5 3.131
CW Smallville 1.5/4 1.5/5 3.380

I still contend that Bones is what's been hurting us this spring. That show also added like 1.5 million at the half, thus hindering any sort of growth.

Smallville (3.26 mil) saw a 260K gain.

Finals are out! SV essentially stayed the same. I wonder if it'll be able to come close to last year's finale, which had 3.85?

Smallville
- 3.234 million viewers
- 2.0/3 HH
- 1.4/4 A18-49
- 1.5/5 A18-34

Random Nation - Thanks for posting the finals. They went up just enough to be fine and not disappointing.

Stiletto finals:
- 3.103 million viewers
- 2.0/3 HH
- 1.3/4 A18-49
- 1.3/5 A18-34

Beast finals:
- 3.234 million viewers
- 2.0/3 HH
- 1.4/4 A18-49
- 1.5/5 A18-34

In 18-34, Beast went up 200,000 viewers which is good improvement in the demo week-to-week. Moreover, the episode skewed young, which is what the CW wants and lastly, the 1.5 in 18-34 (the CW's key demo) is equivalent to the demo ratings for several S7 Spring episodes so it's not down year-to-year which is good. Sure, it'd be nice if the demos for Eternal were as good as the Fall demos, but the show always goes down in the Spring so that is difficult to achieve.

Hey Everyone-
Hoping someone can steer me in the correct direction. My wife planned something after work and forgot to DVR Smallville despite me asking =). Can anyone point me to the best place to catch the episode?

CW will have it up by Saturday otherwise you could find it on Itunes tomorrow morning.

Well I expect injustice to have somewhere near the 3.8,3.9 ratio considering there was an NBA game on last night also at 8.

From pifeedback:



But still on an upward trend from the low of "Stiletto," I believe.

Finals are out and it stayed the same:

Smallville
- 3.392 million viewers
- 2.1/4 HH
- 1.5/5 A18-49
- 1.5/6 A18-34

Judging from the rate the past 2 episodes have grown, I think the finale will hit somewhere around the 3.5/3.7 million range. Not too bad, but still short of last years 3.8 million.

From Boston Herald:

"CW is dropping Sunday prime-time from its programming schedule.

The network will instead concentrate on beefing up its Monday-Friday bloc."

From Paste Magazine:

"The CW is in advanced conversations to give back its perennially low-rated block of Sunday programming to the affiliate stations, paring down its schedule from six to five nights."


Tennison, feel free to move or edit my post. I wasn't sure if this was completely relevant, but given that there seems to be a heavily discussed topic surrounding the events that transpire in the finale that lead into next year's season opener. This might give us an insight as to how the finale may leave off given the apparent lack of funds the network is struggling to maintain.

Well, considering how bad the finale sucked, I'm not too beat up about this:

CW’s veteran Smallville (Viewers: #5, 3.15 million; A18-49: #5, 1.4/ 4)

Wow, I'm surprised. Those are pathetically bad numbers for a finale, aren't they? No one expected it to suck quite as spectacuarly as it did, so I would have guessed it would get back up to the 3.5 range. But maybe they'd just kicked the viewers in the teeth one too many times in advance of the finale. Or maybe it was Souders shooting off her big mouth and letting Chlarkers know that there wasn't any chance of Nois dying that did it. That's pretty much why *I* didn't watch-- "Clark and Lois forever!"

ETA: I did some Googling, and it looks like Arctic got 3.76 mil in the overnights. So that's a BIG drop year to year. And I think Arctic was the lowest-rated finale ever up to that time.

I wonder if the people in later time zones didn't bother to watch because they heard from the earlier time zones how bad the episode was.

Souders is a definite idiot for taking away the hope of so many people who have been committed to watching the show. She and BP don't get it. They flung shit at the fans all season and expected us to gobble it down because we're fans. The problem is they've driven off almost all their casual viewers and they pretty much just have the fans left. Now they're determined to cater to only one section of people who ship a certain pairing. They should probably, instead, cater to the people who like good storytelling. I would expect that to be a larger group.

I too thought they'd be in the 3.5 range, but being that low? WTF?

I guess Smallville fans are more perceptive than I thought. LOL.

Add to that the great moment Clois was supposed to share and the idea that Chloe's dark arc won't end in the bright side for her, that would surely turn off a lot of people, YMMV.

And just think, this was with people expecting, as Matt snarkily puts it on TVGuide.com, a "(cough) epic clash." If viewers had realized in advance there would be no real battle, and no "death of Superman," just think what the ratings would have been like.

They'd better roll out something truly spectacular for the premiere, or they might as well just take the old gray mare off the air now, before they have to shoot it midseason.

In less then a week before the finale airs, they revealed that ED was signed on for a S9, They had the DC show the fight, and a web clip that has the show blaming everything on Chloe, interviews saying the fan favorite character hasn't hit rock bottom yet

It gets to a point, it wasn't worth watching anymore. E!Online and Souder's interviews with them took all the excitement out of seeing the finale.

The premier and the finales are the only real episodes that get pimped in the media, when the death spoilers came out, you have people left and right saying that Smallville needs to do something fresh, they copped out and killed Jimmy. And not even have a huge showdown to begin with.

If the CW had any better shows, I doubt SV will survive any longer. With such low ratings for an episode that was actually hyped, I've got to say, S10 is looking bleaker unless the CW is desperate.

Not sure if this is the right place to reply about this but they are playing a dangerous game if they think that they are gonna win people back for the premiere. 21 pages in the Doomsday thread and maybe 10 people enjoyed that epidsode. If they are thinking that they are gonna win back viewers four months from now because of some great events that will happen at the beginning of Season 9, they are probably going to have egg on their face because they pissed off ALOT of the longtime viewers last night that have just had it, have turned their backs and are not going to bother tuning in next season.

Plus they didn't just tick off one group, but pretty much every fangroup there is. I don't know why they thought that was a good idea, but I can't imagine it's going to do good things for the premiere's ratings.

A this point I'm fanwanking that this either:

A) Their way to really kill the show once and for all, if they know what numbers Dawn needs to kill it, maybe they are trying to piss all the fanbases to get a date to end this so they can move on to other projects before their reputation as writers and producers gets even more trashed, or


B) A sick experiment to see how much abuse a fanbase can get before actually tuning out/stop caring/moving on. I would guess the results alone will be worth gold for a network...or both.

"Promise" > S6 finale 2.0.

I wonder, not for the first time, if the "creative team" is made up of a bunch of psychopaths that get kicks out of abusing their fans AND characters. I've never seen anything like the myriad horrors this show has delivered to its audience. Too bad, because it started out to be--not a GREAT show, but a good one, with appealing characters, themes, and storylines. SV was enjoyable, way back when. Then they went a little too dark (S3), overcompensated by going wacky (s4), and from S5 on, well, the crack addiction had kicked in.

Here we go! The last finals of the season:

Smallville
- 3.128 million viewers
- 2.0/3 HH
- 1.4/4 A18-49
- 1.4/5 A18-34

Wow. I don't know if I should be shocked or proud of the exodus.

For me, considering they hyped this episode with Clois moments, and all of that, and how they spoiled the death, I'm happy.

Damn.

Isn't that amazingly bad for a normal episode, forget a finale? It's closer to Stiletto's number than other recent episodes; does this put it in the top five or ten worst-rated SV episodes ever?

Damn. Exactly what it deserves, but I'm still kind of amazed.

I think it's the second lowest rated episode of the series, definitely the worst finale ever of the series. I think the worst three episodes were, Stiletto, Doomsday, and Prototype.

I can say that Dawn is itching for this show to go below even that number, so she can finally ditch the show.

And it's sad. SV could have ended with great numbers and instead it's going to go out with a whimper.

I think if Dawn really wanted it gone we wouldn't have S9.

She was close this cancelling it this year when she told the writers to start prepping that last episode as a series finale. She only turned around because SV was producing decent numbers for her network that she would have looked stupid doing otherwise.

And it still is, isn't it? This may be one of the lowest rated episodes of the series, but it's still better than anything else the CW currently has, no? I don't think that's going to change in S9, even if ratings dip below 3mil. If Dawn had that much of a personal vendetta against the show, which doesn't fit her desired demographic or usually meet those specific ratings, it would be gone already, imo. Why is she keeping it? I really have no clue, but I don't think general ratings is enough of a reason.

Oh God if only this will come accompanied by a formal announcement by CW that next season is the last finally, or maybe that they will wrap this up with a TV movie...

It hit a record high in the target demo for "Power." That was right before they made the early pickup calls. I do believe that she hates the show, but canceling something that just hit a record demo high would be ridiculously stupid. If they'd left the pickup decision up to the last minute, I can't imagine it would have come back with the numbers it's been getting since hiatus.

She is really bad at making renewal calls in general, though. Renewing the already-canceled Seventh Heaven over Everwood. Having Gilmore Girls limp on without ASP. One Tree Hill renewed this year despite its leads having left the show. Smallville S9. The CW: where once-good shows go to die without dignity.

I think one of the reasons for the ratings decline over the course of the season was because it was presumably the last and people want to see Clark become Superman. When the show got picked up again it was obvious Clark wasn't putting on tights anytime this year so they lost interest. Now with the news that there's probably two more seasons left I doubt the show ratings will pick up next season. They should go into 9 saying it's the last (and meaning it).

I just wish Smallville wouldn't drag Supernatural down with it. The SPN finale deserved way higher numbers than it got, and I blame at least part of that on the shitfest that was Failsday.

I'm not worried about what Smallville does to Supernatural's numbers. That show, which I love love love by the way, is already renewed and will most likely end next year if Kripke has his way.

I REALLY want them to announce that next year is the last year for Smallville. Set an endgame NOW. It did wonders for LOST and Battlestar Galactica.