I don't know if that speaks well of Smallville or poorly of the CW and the former WB. I think more the latter than the former at this point.

For all the good that has done. We still get Herman pasting heads on bodies and almost no promotion.

Right, when it was up against Friends, TV's number 1 show at the time.

I said it was typically 2nd or 3rd and yeah, I didn't count the first season, mostly since I didn't watch until the reruns started kicking in and even during any given year, the week's ranking would vary during the season. (Why do you hate it with the power of firery suns anyway?)

Anyway, my point was that the WB must have seen something in the Gilmore Girls/Smallville pairing even though Smallville's demo's skewed male since when they moved Smallville to Wednesday (where the ratings went down 28%) the network then put another show (SPN) that from the get go they must have known would also skew male. The only other reason could possibly be that just because Jarad Padalecki (sp?) used to play a character on GG, but I doubt that could be the sole reason why a network would schedule two shows together.

I think think enough viewers of GG must have kept watching Smallville Tuesday nights (and the suits hoped they would do the same for Supernatural) to help boost it's ratings even if Smallville was also drawing in a seperate male demographic. When the show moved to Wed, perhaps those GG viewers are some of the large chunk that did not make the transition. Either that or Clark being such a red hot idiot turned off the TV's.

I don't know if it was the pairing with GG or that maybe Tuesdays at 9:00 was a less competitive time slot than Wednesdays at 8:00, but I don't think it was Clark's actions that lead to the declining ratings in Season 3.

Exile drew 6.8 million viewers, whereas Exodus got 7.5. That's the only time in the history of the series that a season premiere has gotten less viewers than the season finale before it. It suggests to me that, rather than being turned off by the plot of the season, 2 million viewers didn't tune in at all. They didn't follow Smallville when it switched nights.

If there's a similar percentage (29%) drop next fall when the show switches to Fridays we could see the premiere come in at 3.12 mil and the average for the season at 2.73 mil. I don't know if that's enough to get the show canceled, but I hope, for the CW's sake, it won't still be the network's highest rated scripted show.

Wow. SV lost on average about 600,000 viewers or nearly 15% from season 6 to season 8 and still managed to move up from #3 to #2 on the CW. This vampire show better pay off for them.

The new millennium has not been good for NBC. They way they're crashed and burned almost makes Dawn and the CW look like a bunch of programming geniuses.

What do you say those with Neilson boxes start having that on in the background - just to drive the ratings up :-)

Yes, that is how tired I am, with Smallville.

According to Variety, much of the CW's schedule will roll out on the week of September 8 (SPN on September 10), but Smallville won't start up till September 25. Until it starts, they'll be airing reruns of their dramas in its slot.

This is HILARIOUS.

In '07, SPN was a week later than everyone else.

In '08, SV was the flagship show and highest rated in the best slot.

In '09, they'd rather air reruns over it in Friday night death slot :)

SunTV here in Ontario has announced their fall schedule and they will be continuing to simulcast SV, so we'll be getting the switch to Friday nights.

Taken from the SPN forum, on August 7th, SV reruns move to Friday nights and SPN doubles up on Thursday night.

http://www.thefutoncritic.com/news.aspx?id=8201

Man, they got rid of the Privileged reruns (one good show on the CW that's,of course, canceled because the CW sucks) and replaced them with Smallville ones. Blech, I can't even watch S8 again. Ever.

From Zap2it.com

Ratings for (reruns) on 7/23/09
Smallville - 1.4 million
Supernatural - 1.1 million

Ratings for (reruns) on 7/30/09
Smallville - 1.3 million
Supernatural - 1.3 million

I'm quite curious to see what the double slot ratings for Supernatural will be next Thursday as well as the ratings for Smallville moving to Friday nights. I'm not sure if you can really extrapolate the change on a first run episode by switching time slots based off the reruns but it'll be fun to try.

Does anyone know if Futon Critic does the Friday ratings? For some reason Zap2it seems to skip the Friday night lineup.

TVbytheNumbers might have what you're looking for.

Futon Critic reports that SV got had 1.04 Million viewers for their first Friday night. Not sure if that's indicative of a ratings drop b/c of the new time slot or if people just didn't know the show moved.

It is slightly higher than the shows that it replaced, I believe they got averaged .90 million for the 8-9 PM slot.

Smallville is almost guaranteed to do better than the shows it's replacing. But it's also much more expensive than the sitcoms that were on Friday night. It comes down to the bottom line. I have no idea what the bottom line is, but SV needs higher ratings than those sitcoms in order to turn a profit.

Aren't you talking about reruns starting to be shown in the new slot the new shows will be at in Sept/Oct? Reruns on a Friday 8-9p is zombie loser ratings right there and don't indicate what the reboot will garner. They're probably hoping for DVR and season DVD sales than adverts.

I don't think there's anything wrong with comparing reruns to reruns to determine if a change in timeslot might lead to a change in ratings. I'm not trying to say that SV will only get 1.04 Million in the Friday night slight. All I was looking at was the drop from 1.3 to 1.04 and trying to determine if it was due to the move or the fact that no one knew it moved.

This article talks, among other things, about how the CW falls "off the radar during the off-season."

I guess we'll know more in the coming weeks if the drop was because viewers couldn't find the show or because they had something better to do on Friday nights.

I assume that the people watching the reruns over the summer are not those who were completely turned off by Failsday. Whether or they're watching Smallville out of habit or because they actually enjoy it, I think they're more likely to follow the show to Friday nights.

And just for comparison, I went back and checked our discussion in this thread last summer to see what the rerun ratings were. Only once did someone post the ratings and it was from the first week of June, so it's not the best comparison, but Smallville got 1.7 mil viewers.

Totally, you can't use one week to make a judgment I was just curious plus it gives us something to compare it to. I don't know if it holds true but someone mentioned in the SPN ratings thread that the ratings get better in Aug/Sept b/c people start tuning back in for the fall premiere.


Oh, I'm sure there's a core fan group that will follow and watch religiously, which is about 1.2 - 1.3 million viewers for both SV and SPN. However that doesn't really give you an idea as to who will tune in on Sept. 25th. Sadly, the only way to know that is to wait and see, wish I had more patience. :-)

I'm sure that's true for some of them. But if some of those 1.3-1.4 million viewers are like me, they watch reruns of a show b/c they missed the episodes the first time around. And once they see Failsday, who knows if they'll stick around?



Each time someone mentions a "core" group of fans for SV, it seems to me that the number of "core" viewers goes down. When S8 began, I remember people saying that the "core" audience was probably around 3 million or so. (Of course, that was for first-run episodes, but then Failsday, as a season finale, should have gotten a boost up from that number, and it didn't.) Whatever the "core" number used to be, my point is that it isn't, necessarily, set in stone. IMO, rebooting SV into "LnC lite" and switching it to a Friday night slot essentially makes it a whole new show, and longer-term "core" viewers, who expected payoffs that never came, may or may not be back.

Rebooting the series certainly lost me as one of the core group that watches SV.

I can understand why they did it; losing MR and KK pretty much made it impossible for them to continue the series that was on the air for seven years. But I don't understand why they had to change Chloe's character or start Clois off at full steam without building up to it. That seems to me to be geared more towards alienating their core group as opposed to keeping them.

Rebooting lost me too.

And I *don't* understand why they did it. They had the Clark and Chloe relationship organically set up since the Pilot. Chlark are best friends and partners. They've had Clark admit that they are more than friends and have had Clark show a more than friends interest in Chloe many times ("Obscura", "Bound", "Tempest", "Red", "Sneeze", "Vessel", "Zod", "Odyssey", "Beast", etc). Chloe's a talented journalist with a dream of working under the Tiffany lamps who was fired from the DP by the Lex while protecting Clark. The setup is there. The anvils are there. No lightswitches needed. There was absolutely no need to reboot the series. It should have continued as it started - with Clark, Chloe, and Lex - the obvious Core Three (well Core Two since, sadly, MR left) that should've stayed together till the end.

SV had an established audience that was invested in the characters for 7-8 years. They didn't need to alienate established fans to try to recruit new ones. JMHO.

Sadly, I don't think this past Friday's numbers are accurate. According to The Futon Critic, SV pulled in 1.49 Million (a bit higher that its Thursday night reruns) and Everybody Hates Chris pulled in 1.4 Million viewers, way higher than it's normal 0.9 million and The Game got 1.54 million (usually the same as "Chris").

Posters on the Supernatural forum mentioned that Thursday and Friday night's lineups were preempted in some markets for Pre-Season Football (Go Giants!). That would explain why the numbers remained the same for a solid 2 hour block.

On Nielsen's official sight, both the ratings for CBS and the CW may not be correct because of football on Friday night. Nielsen believes that may be incorrect. Take it for what it is worth. 1.49 seems way off, at least to me.

Yeah the 1.49 million seems off, but the 1.54 million for The Game and 1.4 Million for "Chris" should clue everyone in to the ratings being screwy.

I've read in a couple of places that the Colts game pre-empted SV in Indy and apparently the 9ers/Broncos game aired on CBS while the CBS shows were aired on The CW (in those markets)...not sure how that worked.

I think the numbers are just plain off and we'll have to wait another week for more accurate numbers.

I got the finals from someone on the SPN forum for last week.
SV - 1.15
Chris - 1.17
The Game - 1.24 second highest show of the week.

So SV got lower ratings than Everybody Hates Chris and The Game?

I know that's totally crazy but SV came in 5th for the week.

Were Chris and Game canceled or just moved to new timeslots?

I think they were canceled.

Huh, now that is interesting, especially since they cost much less to produce. Guess we'll have to wait and see if it was the right move.

Looking at past ratings, The Game and Everybody Hates Chris usually fell in the 1.5-2M range in the first run of the episodes. I don't think repeats are that telling how first run episodes will go. It should be pointed out that repeats of both shows averaged under 1M viewers before Smallville moved to Fridays, so having SV open up before both shows seemed to give both a small spike of 250k viewers.

The CW might be smart to use that timeslot in the fall for something better then ATMN repeats(I may suggest if they going to show repeats do the Vampire Diaries for 4-5 weeks which might draw a similar type audience, and also might get a few viewers to swing over to watch it Thursday nights)



It seems other then Supernatural, everything on the CW seems to be getting lower ratings then Everybody Hates Chris and The Game the past few weeks.

I agree. The CW does very little to draw in viewers over the summer and pretty much falls off the ratings radar.


Maybe word that the show's have been canceled has gotten out to those fans and they want to catch them again before they're gone for good.

Typically speaking, comedies repeat a lot better than dramas.

Last night's numbers:

Smallville: 1.21 million, 0.5 A18-49 [1.15 million 1st half-hour, 1.27 million 2nd half-hour]
Everybody Hates Chris: 0.96 million, 0.3 A18-49
The Game: 1.20 million, 0.5 A18-49

I presume these are overnight numbers? This may or may not be relevant, but I noticed these final numbers for SPN (posted to the SPN boards by Stupid Colt): 8pm 1.68 million viewers, 9pm 1.64 million viewers. At least in the reruns, SV is apparently getting its tail kicked by SPN, which I think has never happened before. I imagine at least some of this can be attributed to the shift to Friday night. However, I guess SV might come up in the finals. SPN actually went down due to preemptions; I don't know if SV was preempted in any markets or not.

They were fast nationals, since finals had not yet come out when I posted. (Overnights is a different term, referring to metered market ratings, not national viewer numbers.)

Thanks, Scrappy. I get all that stuff confused. Probably can't compare fast nationals to finals. It'll be interesting to see if SV winds up lower than SPN. SPN had a pretty major preemption (in New York, I believe), so if it does better than SV when comparing apples to apples, that may give us some indication of how the shows will perform, relatively speaking, when the new season starts up. Then again, it may not.

I think it's a fools errand to try and compare how Smallville is doing compared to SPN. Smallville will be on the death night for television, while SPN will be on during the most watched night of the week. It's not quite fair. SPN is going to have some more competition this year as well, with FRINGE moving to 9pm on Thursday's. Thank God I have 2 DVR's.

In fact, I would argue that if the show stay's in the low 3's then it could be considered more successful then SPN since it is on a bad night. I'm also very curious to see what SPN will do with Vampire Diaries as a lead instead of Smallville.

It should be interesting to see how SV performs on Friday night, while there is less people watching compared to Thrusdays, I also think there is less competition. Bones, Survivor, Flashforward and NBC comedy Block are much tougher comepeition then Ghost Whisperer, Supernanny, Law & Order, WWE Smackdown and Fox comedy block. Of the shows they up against I might argue that the lowly rated Smackdown might have the most crossover potential for similar typs of fanbase(ie males who want to see action based programming), although highly rated Ghost Whisperer also will present a decent challenge.

Bones last season really seemed to eat a chunk out of the SV fanbase(just look at Lana episodes when it was and wasn't up against Bones) and Flashforward might pose a challenge for the scifi fans, whereas Survivor always has alot of people watch and while I don't think it's a huge challenge for SV it like Ghost Whisperer has strength in numbers(on a personal note I PVR'ed Survivor and watched Smallville myself most of the time with the exception of a few episodes that I didn't care for the spoilers where I figure better off watching Survivor and PVR'ing SV and watch it commercial free in 40 minutes right after Survivor).

Another positive note for Fridays is it seems like all stations are putting more effort into there Friday night lineup. For fans of shows at 9, SV might be the best option to hold them over till there show comes on(Dollhouse on Fox would be the best example SV potentially picking up casual viewers who have nothing better to do for an hour and I could see the 2 shows having fans piggyback off eachother)

As for Thursday nights, I honestly don't get Dawn's logic not putting SPN at 8 and VD diaries at 9. I think that would be more beneficial for both shows(SPN gets a better slot, while VD can hopefully piggyback off of SPN a little)

Vampire Diaries would get killed at 9(it will get killed at 8 as well) and have no shot of finding an audience. They would be going up against Grey's Anatomy, a show that will take almost all of VD's targeted audience.

As for Smallville, yes the competition is no where near as brutal as Thursday at 8, but there just isn't as many available eyes to watch the show on Friday's so it will even out. That's why I think that if they stay close to what they averaged on Thursday then it's a win for the CW and they renew for a 10th season.

ITA. I seriously doubt the CW is looking for SV to improve their ratings on Fridays. They're simply looking to break even while trying to find a replacement show for Thursday's lead in to SPN for the future.

I also think it's pretty much an exercise in futility trying to gauge how SV might do on Friday night first run S9 episodes based on S8 repeats. Repeats, imo, are a whole different ballgame and aren't really indicative of who is or isn't aware of the move to Fridays, or who might tune in for S9. Personally, I'll be watching every single episode of S9, but I haven't been watching S8 repeats. I rarely do for any show I follow. I'm sure there are many people in the same boat, or who have different reasons they're not watching reruns but will be tuning in for new episodes in the same timeslot. Not that my Canadian viewership counts for anything, sadly.

That said, the fact that Friday night repeats are averaging over a million viewers is a good sign, imo. People are aware the show's moved and I expect that once S9 episodes start airing, those numbers will go up significantly.

.

SPN's numbers last week were insane. I'm hoping that's a good sign for the show and that it's going to draw in a larger audience this fall but it could just mean that more of the normal viewers are tuning back in since the season starts in 2 weeks.

I'm still waiting on the Final numbers to be posted. It was very odd that The Futon Critic didn't post the numbers for this Friday night's ratings, at first I thought there was an issue with the ratings, now I'm wondering if they just went on strike.

ETA: Finals came in
SMALLVILLE - 1.07 Million
EVERYBODY HATES CHRIS - 0.88 Million
THE GAME - 1.09 Million

I really have to question the scheduling of the premiere. Surely Smallville needs as much help as it can get. But instead of premiering it a week before, on the 18th, when nothing else is premiering, they're holding it over for the 25th when ALL the Friday night shows are back.

Seriously, on that night it's the season premieres of: Ghost Whisperer, Brothers, Law & Order, Medium, Dollhouse, Southland and Numbers.

If it started the week before Smallville might be able to capture some viewers while there is no competition, and then those people might keep watching. But buried under this mountain of other premieres? I assume only the hardcore fans are even going to remember it is on.

My guess is that none of those shows, with the possible exception of Dollhouse actually compete for the same audience as SV and I think Dollhouse airs at 9PM on Friday. SV should be going up against Brothers which I'm going to watch, when I'm home on Friday nights because it has former Giants Defensive Leader Michael Strahan! Yay!

The thing I find interesting is that I just found out the reason The CW got rid of "Chris" and "Game" wasn't because of ratings but because they wanted to get out of half hour comedies. That makes DO comments about the 2 Million mark for a SV S10 interesting to me. I assumed at that the time that she just wanted a show with better ratings on Friday night's but that doesn't appear to be the case. Also, giving her illogical comments about the reason for switching around Gossip Girl and OTH I'm wondering what the heck she's doing.

I guess my point was more that if someone was at home on the 18th and wanted something to watch, Smallville is pretty much their only non-rerun option.

Whereas on the night it premieres people will have a lot more choice.

But I guess at this point only the diehards are tuning in anyway hey?

Oh, I get what you're saying now and you're right it's easier to grab people's attention when you're the only new thing on. Even if they're not directly competing for ratings you'll get the obligatory morning radio announcement about the premiere. If SV premiered all on it's own it would be more air time...but on 9/25, I'm sure people are going to be talking about Dollhouse in general and here in NY/NJ Brothers will get talking time just b/c of The Giants.

I really do think that S10 doesn't depend so much on SV's ratings but on how well Vampire Diaries does, if VP can become the new flagship SV will get canned; if not The CW will try to hold on to its lost glory with one more year of SV.

I'm only really excited about "V" but I plan on giving VP a shot b/c I'll be in Vampire withdrawal after True Blood ends and it airs right before SPN which I watch obsessively.

If anyone is interested, The Vampire Diaries did a 4.8 in SV old slot on Thurs. night, the highest rated premiere in the CW's history. SPN did a 3.4 in its same old slot, which I think is the average, or just above average from last season.

Half of last season's producers on SV went on to be the producers for MP, and it did a 2.27 million, which according to Zap2it was bad even by CW standards. What is worse is that it did those numbers with reruns as its competition. The network dumped alot into the premiere and the show, and it did Veronica Mars type numbers. Zap2it says if it has viewer losses it may not make it through the season.

I don't feel bad for the producers at all, but where are TW and ED going to go once SV is cancelled. They don't really have the talent to be on a real network, I always assumed they would go to MP.

TVD (hehe, I just realized if we call it VD it takes on a whole other connotation...lol) did very well for the CW. Here's the press release, snagged from the SPN board.



I think the last line is the most telling, the young female demo is The CW's bread and butter. I'm also very pleased that SPN benefited a bit from TVD, in that it increased 6% over last year in the key female demo and had it's best score with women ever.

Someone on the SPN board did a whole break down of the key demo and while SV comes in #1 in overall ratings it's actually #4 in The CW's key demo (as of last season) with SPN coming in at #5. It will be interesting to see what SV does on Friday night as far as overall ratings and key demos.

As far as MP goes, I wouldn't write that show off just yet, the show had a low premiere but it's gotten really good buzz and there's the potential that if it doesn't suffer a massive 2nd week drop off the show could sustain an audience. Sadly I have not seen MP's key demo information so I don't know how it did, but given the premise of the show I imagine it did well enough.

I've heard that TPTB are in talks to bring Heather Locklear on board to reprise her role as Amanda. If that's the case I can see the ratings getting a nice boost.

I'm getting burned out on SV but am very ready to see Tom in a new role - I admire both his acting and directing. I'd love to see him on the big screen again. And I'd also give Erica a chance in a new show as well. I wasn't a fan of Lana, but I'm keen to check out KK on "Chuck." Looking forward to MR's two new movies and to see where AM's career takes her (I'd love to see her turn up on Mad Men!)

I do think it's better for all the actors if S9 is the last. Time to leave the nest, little birds.

I wonder if Vampire Diaries will be able to sustain its audience, and what it means for SV if it does?

I don't know Tom has disappointed me a lot so I'm not sure I will watch him on anything else. ED might go and do soft core porn for all I care, not interested on her as an actress at all. I liked KK (hated Lana but no her) so I will check her on Chuck and some other series she might act and I will probably follow MR's career now AM definitely is on my "must watch". I would like her to be the mother on HIMYM I think she would be great doing some comedy and opposite AH and NPH!!!

Very good question and I have no idea on the answer. I'm sure it will lose some viewers this week but the question is how much?

I don't think it means anything for SV short term. Unless TVD tanks they're not going to pull the show mid-season, so there's no way SV will end up back on Thursday night.

However, long term if TVD does tank and doesn't get a S2 (which I think is highly unlikely) SV might get a S10, although I doubt it.

That's what I was wondering about...if TVD is a success, would the CW look for similar programming & decide to cut their losses with SV?