Combat should do just swimmingly in the ratings. I'm sure a strong contention of viewers from the wrestling show will be turning in. Plus Lois in skin tight leather won't hurt either.

To be blunt though, people can find MORE skin elsewhere and why should wrestling fans watch when they already have a show completely devoted to wrestling?

Thank you, RichardAK.

SasukeUchiha, on my local station they were running trailers constantly, plus the entire cast gave interviews to promote the episode which hasn't happened since "Zod". As you point out, the ratings weren't bad but with all the money the CW put into promotion, they were clearly hoping that this would be an event show, like "Reckoning" and match or exceed its ratings; "Promise" didn't even come close.

The difference is, a lot of people tuned into "Reckoning" because it was advertised as having Jor-El, big actions sequences and a character death. Whereas, the adverts for "Promise" clearly showed it was going to be a soapy wedding episode. So there wasn't much there to excite the non 'shippers who prefer action over soap. The casual viewers who tuned into "Justice" weren't lured back. (And SV's ratings always rise in the second half hour - this has been attributed to people switching over from Fox.)

Many people skip the last half hour of Supernatural, that means they have no interest in knowing how it's gonna end at all, that's much worse.



http://www.variety.com/article/VR111796128...d=1275&cs=1

CW was above average with original episodes of "Smallville" (2.0/6 in 18-49, 4.6 million viewers overall) and "Supernatural" (1.4/4 in 18-49, 3.5 million viewers overall).

Always welcome, mobiusklein. The guest stars might help, but "Static" had a wrestler guest star as well, and that episode was only about average for the season with 4.7 million viewers, so if it helps, it's not likely to help a whole lot.

Alright, SasukeUchiha, we can quibble. Variety wsa providing a rough estimate; pi-continuum is more precise. In any case, average of what? I still don't see how being one of the lower-rated episodes of the season is anything but bad, especially given the already-mentioned heavy promotion.

Thanks Scry. I think that demonstrates that "Promise" had to break 5 million viewers just to avoid failure.

It just did OK, not great as pointed out. Oh, I remember they had JG, AOT, KK, etc. say stuff and well, meh. And frankly they sacrificed a LOT for that one episode in terms of characterization, fandom goodwill, etc.

Gee, let me think about that one. Perhaps the wrestling fans would get a kick out of watching their heroes in a different venue, such as, in a Sci-fi show. Of course they have shows showing more skin, but that really isn't the point. The point I'm trying to make is that, fans of Lois will tune in to see her in skin tight leather.

I actually have that for you, RichardAK. I'm kind of an OCD freak, and my TV is always on The CW every night except for Saturday. I keep a piece of paper with me while I'm working on stuff around the house, and every time an SV trailer comes on, I mark a tally.

Now, between Subterranean and the week after Hydro, any trailer featuring scenes from Justice were shown 38 times. This includes the long trailer that started airing after Subterranean. Justice only had four trailers. Promise had six. The Promise trailers? Were shown 52 times. 52.

Haha.

"Combat" might do well, purely on the strength of all the wrestlers involved. The CW hasn't promoted it nearly as much as "Promise" but the wrestlers have been stumping for it. It depends how annoyed people were by Battista's tiny cameo in "Static" (when they were expecting him to play a major role.)

DeKnight has mentioned on his podcast that the favourable response and high ratings for "Justice" might cause a change of direction for S7. If they want to bring in new viewers (especially the covetted young male viewers) action eps are clearly a better route than wedding/'shipper episodes.


Whoa! So the network spent a truck-load of money promoting this ep, only to see it fail to come close to the ratings for "Fall-out"? What a belly-flop! Viewers evidently like Bow-Wow better than Clana. (Thanks for the stats, Scry.)

Did The Rock's appearance help boost Star Trek Voyeger's ratings?

Did he wear a hot leather jumpsuit that's so totally hot?

Maybe there is a tralier I didn't watch but so far (only the epsidoe stills) there are no promotion of Erica on red leather. She doesn't appear on the trailers (so far) nor on the Director's cuts (well she does appear but you have to pay really attention)

So saying they are promoting Lois on red letaher is not true, cause not everybody have seen the stills

It's been a while since I've watched WWE wrestling religiously. So I wonder how popular Kane and Ashley are in the WWE now. Are they both main event type wrestlers? It would be interesting to see if their respective appearance on SV will result in a spike in would be wWE fans tuning in? Did the wrestler dude in "Static" result in a bump in ratings from the last episode too?

I stand corrected, then, gobatara. I hadn't even seen the director's cuts yet; I was really referring to the picture they had up for "Combat" on the CW's Smallville page.

Yeah I saw it, but do the people really go there to watch that page?? I personally almost never enter to that part of the CW Smallville page.

Let's see what happens when the extended trailer comes out, but I am still thinking they are promoting more Kane Ashley and Clark (the way it should always have been) than Lois and her outfit.

Maybe that will change this week but so far that's the situation

The first director's cut for "Combat" definitely makes it look like they are doing quite a bit of T&A promotion, albeit using a guest star, rather than ED. The second director's cut, on the other hand, does look like it's pretty, well, combat focused.

For comparison:

Freak's overnight breakdowns from pifeedback.com



Promise's overnight breakdowns from pifeedback.com





SasukeUchiha - If you are going to be arrogant, at least do some research first so you don't look foolish. The 5 million mark is not that special. In fact, it was lower than the last new episode. And the ratings always go up at the half hour mark for SV as people start turning on their tv for the night. That is common to all 8 pm shows.

Justice for another example:

As a rule total viewing numbers tend to go down with daylight saving, especially for 8pm shows.

Thank you, Massena1.

My attitude is that if you become THAT dependent on gimmicks like wrestling, weddings and skin to help the bottom line, the show just isn't good.

The spoilers and most of the squee about Heroes is glee about what the MAIN CAST is doing and it's not all about shipping and who's going to bang who and skin. It's more like "Is Pete going to scar from Sylar's haircut? Is Mohinder alive? Is Claire going to meet her bio-dad? How are they going to save New York?" It's not "Is Clark going to bang Lana? Is Lana going to cheat on Lex? Is Lana going to be stalked? Is Martha going to bang Lana?" Now if you happen to LIKE the Lanaverse like UchihaSasuke seems to then you're in heaven, everybody else is out in the cold.

Things are getting way too personal here. Why is that everything has to become a popularity contest between fans' favorites? (It's a rhetorical question. I don't really care enough). But still? Amuses me to no end.

Topic?

From Zap2it.com


And TheFutonCritic.com's take.

Scry said:



"Promise" is the true secret of 52!?!?!!

(If that is nonsense, ignore me.)

I think the thing to keep in mind with an episode like this is that they were attempting - whether successful or not - to create an episode that would appeal to the mass audience, not just the internet fans. It's all experimentation, for better or for worse.

Next week is the "geriatric T&A with WWE" experiment.

I've done my research, and I never said that hitting the 5 million mark was anything special. Some people were expecting a much bigger drop because of the wedding/clana, and well, it didn't happen, it remained pretty consistent.

I actually find ratings interesting as a subject from a sociological standpoint on their own. I think the commerce of social patterns is fascinating, but people are interested in this thread for different reasons. I see fans from *all* the different fan groups making assertions on what the ratings mean. And very few people admitting we have pretty limited info. to make any big assertions on. All we can do is look for patterns and see if any emerge. The one that seems most clear is that DC superheroes bring in higher ratings than anything else in the demos. To me, all the other patterns are debatable.



Scry - I can't believe you knew all that info off the top of your head. Wow.

geriatric T&A?? I don't get it.

edit

Again, "Promise" was one of the least-watched episodes of the season. Moreover, unlike the least-watched, "Subterranean," which they barely bothered to promote at all, they really bet the mortgage on this episode. Scry has already documented for us how heavily they promoted this episode, but they bet heavily on this in a more subjective but no less important way as well: they really spit in the eye of every other group of fans besides Lana/Clana fans. Lex/Lexana fans got the joy of , Chloë/Claroë fans, just plain Clark fans, et cetera, all got massively betrayed by this episode. And my guess is that some significant number of fans of these characters/'ships will leave as a result. So they were really gambling heavily that Lana/Clana fans, all the evidence to the contrary, were the overwhelming majority of fans, and would make this episode a hit. So again, that this episode was one of the least-watched of the season makes it a huge failure by any standard.


That's an interesting point, hc_8, but what's the average loss?


Six seasons into the show's run, they should perhaps have moved beyond the experimentation phase. They should perhaps have a better idea of what the fans like and dislike. I think they know what works and what doesn't; they're just ignoring it. Gough and Millar said back in season four that Clana was like "beating a dead horse." Why would they think the horse has come back to life?

I can't believe it, either. :( Well, it's not like I just know off the top of my head. I have a tally sheet with marks under each episode title.

My friends make fun of me because they think I'm counting the number of times I use my "word of the week".

"You used the word 'crimson' 19 times that week?"

I'm too ashamed to tell them I'm counting Smallville trailers.

I'm sure you're right, Craig and I hope what they learned from it is that the mass audience prefers action and DC guest stars over soap and 'ships.

Honestly though they shouldn't be experimenting 6 seasons in and if people DID leave because of this episode, I don't blame them. It wasn't just a sucktastic episode; it was basically a middle finger to everybody else who won't drink the Kool-Aid. Let's not paper over the fact that Lois Lane (either version) is going to be sloppy seconds so if you REALLY don't want to see Lana triumph as the one twu wuv of Clark and Clark remaining ball-less forever as he mourns her loss, stop watching now. There's nothing worth watching for in terms of payoff no matter how many bones they hand out.

Richard - I have to disagree. Promise wasn't a huge failure. It fell in total viewers which is never good, but the demos were average. It was neither a failure nor a success ratings-wise. The only thing that possibly could be called a failure was the campaign/resources expended promoting this episode because it didn't improve the ratings. They were very average. Again, look at the demos. That number counts much more than the total viewers number.



Scry - Why have you never shared this info before? Much like BadToad's onscreen time tally, I'm sure people would be interested to know the number of times trailers were shown for different episodes. I know I would like to know out of curiosity. Would you consider sharing the totals?

Massena1, I understand what you mean about the demos, but I suspect that poor viewership overall will lead to poor demos in the long term. I admit I'm just speculating about that, and if I turn out to be wrong, so be it. But I still maintain that given how heavily they were betting on this episode, even average demos aren't good enough.

I guess I didn't want to seem obsessive. It's kind of embarrassing. :P I've always been interested to see the correlation between promotion and ratings, so that's why I keep track.

Hydro
23 times

Justice (counting since Subterranean)
38 times

Labyrinth
23 times

Crimson
19 times

Trespass
18 times

Freak
24 times

Promise
52 times

That's not obsessive at all.

[call the poliiiiice!]

See!? It's like high school all over again! AHHHH!

*runs away crying*

That it's all experimentation on the part of TPTB is the feeling I had with "Freak". The trailers gave away the "twist". Now either the CW doesn't know what they're doing or they are experimenting to see what brings in viewers. A few more experiments like this one and, well, they won't need to experiment anymore. ;)

It's been the most-promoted episode this season, correct? (The promotion for "Zod" was combined with the launch of the new season so it's a special case.)

They spent a lot of money on advertising and got the same (or less) viewer response as episodes that weren't advertised at all. (ie "Rage" or "Wither.") They tried to make "Promise" a tentpole episode but it turned out to be a toothpick. It's annoying because all that squandered cash could have been put to better use to beef up the budgets of the last few episodes.

I'm also curious to know if viewership fell off in the first two minutes. Snow Patrol + Wedding Dress + MopeyClark = Males 18-34 switching the channel?

Whoa, Promise had SIX different trailers? Lucky me, I never saw any of them.

Aren't the ratings always screwed up for episodes that come back after hiatus? Something about people not knowing it was on. (That happened to me with "Subterranean," but I'm not exactly crying about missing that one.)



"Does promotions come out of your budget, or the CW's marketing budget?" would be a good question to ask the Goughlar. You know, if they ever let us have a convention or whatever.

Scry - Don't be embarrassed. Everyone has their thing that makes them quirky. That's part of being human. Anyway, thanks for sharing. So they promoted Promise over 2 times more than anything else except Justice. Huh. They must have had big expectations. I mean Justice screamed ratings potential to me and they didn't do nearly as much for it. I don't get what they were thinking.

Awww, come sit next to me....as I'm attempting to dowload this monstrosity so I can do screentime minutes. We can have OCD together :)

Good point - even if it doesn't come directly out of the same budget, I wonder if Goughlar gets to determine the amount of marketing assigned to each episode?


Scry, you're amazing!


I can't figure out why "Justice" wasn't a sweeps episode. And "Freak" could definitely have been given a boost if Clark using every single one of his powers had been played up in the marketing.

F**k! It's worse than I thought. Maybe World War III will end with Black Adam marrying Lana.


Ren & Stimpy?

Dear Al and Miles:

Based on my research here at TWoP University, I have reached the following conclusions:

1) Episodes with classic DC heroes draw in new / returning viewers and higher ratings.
2) Episodes that focus on romance, weddings, or plotlines stolen from soap operas do not.

I also offer the follwing theories:
1) Episodes that piss off every portion of the fan base except those of a particular character or relationship will not lead to a long term increase in ratings.
2) Ms. Kruek will be taking out a restraining order against both of you the moment the wrap party for the final episode ends.

Thank you,
RepairmanBob, PhD.

During prime time the CW decides which shows get the big promotional pushes, out of prime time I think it's down to the affiliates. I doubt Gough or Millar have any say in the matter beyond trying to persuade the CW to give them more promos.

Just adding in yet another]"Thank you!!" to Scry for that fascinating info on the SV trailers. That's the type of info that the network execs hope we don't notice--although you can bet that *they* do! Did you record this information for Season 5 at all? Because I'd love to compare your "Promise" trailer count to the one in "Reckoning."

Most of all, I loved that the "Promise" trailers outnumbered "Justice" by a huge margin, and yet "Justice" trumped both the total audience and the demos. Maybe in the future, TPTB will take the same notes that you have. :)

Thank you *very* much, Scry! :)

...you're going to watch it again? You are a brave, brave woman. I pray for your sanity. :)

(Pssst. I'll bet you anything Lana has the most screentime. ;))

I have a question. Even though I've been keeping count of trailers, does every station in the country show the same trailers at the same time? Or does it differ from place to place? Because if that's the case, it might mean that they thought pimping Promise would be a good idea in my area.


You're welcome. :)

I didn't watch most of season 5 live (Mortal through Fragile). You can thank the Clana for that. :(

Yes! Good catch.

Depends on what you mean by "trailers." You can generally tell when a tv station has switched to a "local" break, because instead of commercials for big companies like McDonald's or any car company ever, there will be an ad for something limited to just your area, like a law firm or a furniture store. Sometimes local stations will slip in promos for their own shows (like, my CW station shows "Scrubs" promos because they air the syndicated version after the news.) But if you're talking about the "next week on Smallville" promo, that's tied to the end of the episode, so everyone sees the same one.

Oh, I know. :) Everyone sees that trailer at the end of the episode.

I'm talking about the various Smallville trailers shown throughout the week during CW programming.