Firefly didn’t even do well in the premiere, though, only getting a 4.1/8, and the ratings were flat throughout the run. You can probably blame some of that on the network, but the show just wasn’t popular. Science fiction generally isn’t. Lost and the X-Files aside, what was the last science fiction big tv hit?
Most of the time, if you’re the lone voice yelling into the wind, you’re the crazy one.
Perhaps you’ve heard of a little thing called Battlestar Galactica.
Which was on Sci-Fi and got big numbers for basic cable but paltry for network TV. Firefly averaged twice the audience size of Battlestar Galactica and couldn’t be cancelled fast enough. The question is about science fiction shows succeeding on network TV which have radically different standards than cable.
ETA the question from Captain Amazing. The OP is about any programming.
Can anyone explain why this is, especially since sci-fi movies often do well? Is it that popular science fiction is better suited to the big screens, big budgets, and longer format of movies?
Who’s the wind in this metaphor?
Oh, didn’t realise that. It was on Network TV over here.
The biggest problem I see is that with the exception of shows like American Idol where people call in to vote for a person/act, the networks don’t actually know how many people are watching their shows. It’s all based upon extrapolation of number from the Neilson households.
The wind is just the wind. And he’s yelling into that Firefly sucks all by his lonesome while the rest of us are over here, together, talking about how great Firefly is.
Yeah, I think you’ve got a sampling problem there and an error in perspective.
I agree with Exapno, it was all right. It just didn’t hold my interest. I believe, though, by the time it hit the airwaves here it had already been cancelled.
I don’t know anything about Firefly (I never saw it) but the idea of all TV programming is to get the largest number of whatever demographic you are shooting for to watch the commercials. That’s all there is to it.
The easiest audience to attract is the person who doesn’t watch any particular show; he just watches whatever is on at that time. If there’s nothing on, he will just watch whatever catches his attention.
Regards,
Shodan
Right- I know that. And I also realize that in today’s DVR age, the scheduling of shows is not really as big of a deal for the viewers as in years past, but how does that affect ratings?
Some shows are juggernauts- NCIS would probably do well nowadays in whatever slot you put it in, and so would Two and a Half Men (well, pre-Sheen meltdown). Others are probably stillborn, and would have done poorly even if stuck between Friends and Seinfeld in 1999. (I seem to remember this happening). Quite a few though, are probably ones that with a little bit of nurture and luck, would do well, and the ones I’ve liked at least, have got very, very little of this nurture at all.
That’s why my question is essentially how/why do network execs make the decisions they do? Sometimes they seem very baffling- putting new shows in a timeslot where they’ll either be pre-empted or started late by football doesn’t seem like a good way to give a show a chance. Neither does putting a sci-fi type show in certain time slots where the target demographic isn’t at home, but all the blue-hairs who watch Matlock and Walker:Texas Ranger are.
You don’t know your history.
Twilight Zone – Friday (probably the reason why Friday became the day of choice for SF and Fantasy)
X Files – Friday
Dollhouse – Friday
Farscape – Friday
Stargate – Friday
Stargate Atlantis – Friday
Stargate Univers – Friday
Wonderfalls – Friday
Nightmare Cafe – Friday
Doctor Who (in the US) – Friday
Ghost Writer – Friday
Caprica – Friday
Wild Wild West – Friday
Time Tunnel – Friday
The Green Hornet (arguably Sf) – Friday
The Flying Nun – Friday
Ghost Story – Friday
The Six Million Dollar Man – Friday
The New Adventures of Wonder Woman – Friday
The Incredible Hulk – Friday
Logan’s Run – Friday
Fantasy Island – Friday (premiered here, though later moved to Saturday)
Darkroom – Friday
The Greatest American Hero – Friday
V (original series) – Friday
The New Twilight Zone – Friday
Knight Rider – Friday
Misfits of Science – Friday
Beauty and the Beast – Friday
Quantum Leap (first full season) – Friday
Dinosaurs – Friday
The Adventures of Briscoe County Jr. – Friday
M.A.N.T.I.S. – Friday
Strange Luck – Friday
Sliders – Friday
Millennium – Friday
Freaky Links – Friday
Night Visions – Friday
Other shows, like Star Trek, were moved to Friday, usually just before they died.
The tradition seems to be fading a bit, but Friday was clearly the day that TV networks traditionally scheduled SF. Note, too, that none of the series you cited ran on Sunday – because Sunday is the biggest viewership day for TV and you don’t want to ruin that.
Because the audiences didn’t have anything else to do on Friday nights. Now they can get online and chat with other people who think Firefly has some kind of redeeming value and also have nothing else to do on Friday night.
NBC moved Star Trek to Friday to kill it. That’s why Roddenberry washed his hands of the show after the move was done. NBC couldn’t resist the letter writing campaign, but they sure could take their revenge.
I basically agree, but not with this part. The 60 Minutes watching demographic might not have a DVR, but the demographic the network is looking for sure does. You might remember that one of the reasons given for moving Leno into the 10 pm slot was that no one watched the shows on then anyway, since they were watching the shows recorded earlier on their DVRs. And then there is the effort at integrating products into shows to avoid fast forwarding through commercials.
But counterprogramming isn’t going to go away, even with universal multi-channel DVR usage, since I expect that the probability of watching the second thing you recorded - within the time it counts as a viewing for the sponsors - diminishes greatly. And you don’t want to be third.
This thread is turning into why Firefly failed but to answer the original question, TV’s business is to put Eye Balls in front of ads. Entertainment Programs are a means to that end.
Also most TV execs watch very little TV.
First of all, not everyone who watches American Idol calls in to vote (and, in fact, it’s possible that people call in votes for singers without actually watching the show). All those numbers tell them is how many people are invested enough in the outcome of the show to call in (and sussing out callers versus calls is another issue, as you can vote multiple times, potentially from different phones).
Secondly, the Nielsen ratings, while not a census of every household in the U.S. (which would be impractical on many levels) are pretty damned close. If the Nielsen rating for a show is a 2.0, it’s highly, highly unlikely that that show’s actual rating (among every household in the U.S., not just the Nielsen panel) is significantly different than 2.0. It might be, in actuality, 2.2, it might be 1.9…but it’s extremely unlikely that it’s going to be a 4.0, or a 1.0.
Yeah, the voice you should be looking for is the 99.99+% of viewers who couldn’t give a damn about Firefly.
Hell, I rarely yield my SF knowledge to anyone but I do for Xap and Chuck. And I thought Firefly was boring in that ‘well, I’ve seen this before’ sort of way.
I agree with them that there was no way that Firefly was going to succeed on a network. Just no way at all.