"Kansas" Ratings are in

[cofax]

Courtesy of a reliable source, we have the national ratings in for last week's Friday night lineup on The Sci-Fi Channel.

8PM Farscape 1.34
9PM Stargate 1.75
10PM Tracker 1.45
11PM Stargate 0.89
12PM Farscape 0.78
1AM X-Files 0.60


Before you respond, we have a few things we would like to say.

Yes, they're not as high as we would have liked.

But they're higher than anything aired in Season 4 so far except for 401 and 411. The first half of Season 4 averaged 1.25, so we're moving in the right direction. If you compare "Kansas" to earlier seasons, you'll see that the average for all of Season 3 was 1.34. And last summer, Farscape only averaged a 1.2 rating.

We HAVE made a difference.

We also want to emphasize that "Kansas" was the first in a run of 11 new episodes. This is up against new network television, not summer reruns, in yet another new timeslot, with minimal network promotion or support, and coming off a five-month hiatus with no regular reruns.

Keep in mind as well that ratings reflect a percentage of the audience, and that the potential audience for Farscape is always growing as Sci-Fi moves into new households. As a result even this apparently small bump in ratings registers as a significant absolute increase in numbers of viewers.

If you look at it that way, we've done very well indeed.

Lots of projects are still upcoming, including Benbrowder.net's USA Today ad (which should run this coming Friday), the Guerrilla Radio Network, and many other efforts at the grassroots and national levels. The campaign is gaining both momentum and press attention as the show returns to the airwaves.

Keep watching, keep talking, keep placing ads and wearing buttons and putting bumper-stickers on your cars. Spread around the primer flyers and the address of the Farscape online Primer (http://fsprimer.shriftweb.org/index.shtml).

Despair not. We're not done yet.


SaveFarscape.com

[buggabboo]

Thanks, chica.

buggs

[Shipscat]

Thanks. Glad we have a reliable source.

[TenDeuChen]

And let's not forget...Tracker sucked...I even fell asleep after the first 15 mins...but i did wake up and watch kansas again when it repeated!

[Vampgrrl]

I dont understand how Tracker got that rating..now I used to watch Highlander: TS and liked Adrian Paul well enough but Tracker has been in syndication for a while and I've seen it before. It's terrible.
I was not expecting a 2, I was however expecting 1.6+
I'd be lying to say I wasn't disappointed.

[Deanna T]

I feel better when looking at the ratings for S3 & the first half of S4.

What would be really, really great is if the ratings rose consistently through the season for a grand finale of 2.0 on the last episode. That means bumping up the ratings only 0.06 each week. I think we can handle it.

How would THAT be as an example of "expanding the core audience"

[Vampgrrl]

Well I think the message is this...if you do want this show we need to force the issue. I know many here have done more than I have, alot more. But it's time to get EVERYONE you can in gear.

I think these ratings also show that despite the Aintitcool, Slashdot, Wired, CNN coverage...newspaper coverage that many of the types of people who do watch FS do not have ratings boxes. Period. In oct, at the Chamber in Atlanta when Gigi, Lani and Paul were in Atlanta, the place was slammed full of people, I think they said it was their second busiest night ever. These people are watching...where in the frell are the boxes?

[Kerlin]

What's that saying? "When the going gets tough, the tough get going." Personally, I just sat down and wrote a few more letters. Tomorrow night I'm going to drive to bookstores and drop off more bookmarks.

cofax, thank you for the ratings perspective. And these are just the overnights, correct? Nationals should bump those ratings up a bit more.

[Deanna T]

That the Farscape repeat rating is VERY CLOSE to the Stargate Repeat rating. One of the things that SciFi keep going on about is how well Stargate does in repeats (see Bonnie Hammer TV Guide interview). If we can overtake Stargate in repeat value we will definitely be making a point. So if you know people willing to watch both viewings, remind them to tune their TV into both the first run and the repeat.

What's most looked at, the overnight ratings or the National ratings?

[Tiriel]

Oh dear! That's not the number I wanted to see, but it's not a disaster either.
cofax: Are these really national ratings, i.e. not yet normalized for market-share? That would really push the number. Not beyond 2.0, though. And thanks for the numbers cofax! I would have ruptured an artery pretty soon!

OK, y'all! Stop writing letter and start watching the show! Y'all heard what Bonnie said! No more sendig flowers! And the show y'all wanna watch is the one at 8pm, not at 9pm! Huh? Whatcha say? You know? Rats, yes, I forgot, Scapers think for themselves...
Well, I guess that means more fliers! The spring term has just started, so it's the perfect timing to leave more of them fliers all over campus! And more magnets, once daily+ reminders! And the guerilla radio action hasn't even happened yet and neither have many of the ads or the TV-commercials
We ain't done, we ain't done by a long shot!
Now let me get my book "Hacking for Dummies" if we could hijack the highway Amber alert-system once or twice...

Vampgrrl: The problem with the Nielson's is still the same, thye sample in a certain way and as soon as you have a highly skewed distribution of viewers your numbers do fall apart...

So with everything on a complete low, which necessarily means it'll only get better from here, I might as well confess the truth and clear my conscience. I know that this is going to shock many of you, but I really can't live the lie anymore.

This is what I really look like without my makeup:
http://home.attbi.com/~areinhardt/Video/TrueTiriel.mpg
(realplay or window mediaplayer required, only click when you're really ready for this)

I hope y'all can still love me somehow.

Love and Peace and Hope, Always.

Tiriel
(and I'm sorry, but I insist, even if it might take a bit more fight than anticipated

[Eve11]

I too am a bit disappointed. I'd hoped we could've kept the 1.5 from Unrealized Reality. Comparing with 4 other eps that ran in the first 2 weeks of January -- Nerve got a 1.5 (after long hiatus), Hidden Memory got a 1.0 the following week, LGM I got a 1.4 (after long hiatus) and LGM II got a 1.6 the following week.

No january eps for season 3 or the first half of 4.

Stargate only got a 1.75? That's surprising. We knew SG1 would do better than Farscape, since SciFi's been promoting it with reruns (and it also did better than Scape in the summer).

But I thought it would be higher. I thought they were pulling those rates in during their reruns. In fact, despite the Taken "halo" effect that we expected, the 1.75 is just about the average rating that Stargate got during the summer. The premiere of SG1 in June got a 1.8 on SciFi.

So, Farscape did better than its average after a long hiatus and a time change, with no outside-channel advertising and no reruns. SG1, if we're going to benchmark, did about the same. (Crichton Kicks did well in the beginning of the summer, but SciFi was also doing Farscape back to back Fridays all through May.)

At least SciFi can't use the halo effect on any upswing in Scape's ratings, unless they want to admit that SG1 did worse. 'Course, we'll have to wait and see if either show can increase in the next few weeks (crosses fingers for Farscape, wishes SG1 into a black hole).

And, these are overnights still, so they are tentative, right?

[DZ_Crasher]

Well since we knew Kansas was going to be a to be continued I know some of the advertisement was going for Terra Firma *grasping at straws* But I'm with Tiriel, hmmm it's a little early in the day but lets see what I can do.

<i>Edited it say: what I mean is we knew that Kansas was part 2 of a TBC, like I said, early in the day. </i>



WE'RE GETTING OUR SHOW BACK!!!
WE'RE GETTING OUR SHOW BACK!!!
WE'RE GETTING OUR SHOW BACK!!!

[Farsight]

Ah, the extreme "broken-ness" of the Nielsen system will never end... does anyone in their right mind believe more people watched a rerun of a dead-in-the-water syndicated program ("Tracker") than Farscape? I find that HIGHLY suspect. But then, the Nielsen ratings rarely have much to do with reality, which makes our job here twice as hard, and twice as important.

I have the same questions as many others, I guess... Do these ratings include all Nielsen homes, or is it just a partial rating right now? And, are the ratings adjusted in the same way SciFi adjusts them when posting them?

Thanks for the info...

[Paul Cousins]

A 8PM Farscape 1.34 and 12PM Farscape 0.78 is not bad, it is very good start.

Paul Cousins

[Cynicat]

Where IS this Neilson guy? I've got a few choice words for him.....
If only the ratings system was more reliable (ie: based in reality) - now those would be some interesting numbers, not these bingo-draw delusional statistics we have to defeat *bitch moan whine etc*

But hey - we're up from 1.25! Not bad at all