Overnight ratings are in already for “Air” Parts 1 and 2, the series premiere of Stargate Universe! While lower than we had hoped, Syfy is touting the preliminary viewership numbers as the biggest premiere for the Stargate franchise in four years (since the debut of Atlantis‘s second season).
The two-hour premiere averaged more than 2.35 million viewers, making for a 1.7 average household rating.
1.32 million adults ages 25 to 54 tuned in, and 1.12 million adults 18 to 49. In that second demographic, that’s the best performance for a Friday night series premiere since the debut of Battlestar Galactica in January, 2005, Syfy said.
The show also beat FOX’s Dollhouse at 9 p.m. A new episode of that show drew 2.1 million viewers.
The initial ratings data includes those who watched the show live, or DVR-delayed within 3 hours of broadcast. Complete “Live + 7 days” data — accounting for those who recorded the episode on DVR and watched later in the week — will be available in about three weeks.
New episodes of Stargate Universe continue next Friday at 9 p.m. on Syfy!
uhm… that’s it?
Too many freaking commercials during the premiere SyFy! Freaking ey!
With that said: I re-watched the premiere on Hulu and it flowed sooooooooo much better without the constant interruptions.
Congratulations “Stargate: Universe”!!! Great start!!!
Yay… !
@AscendedTauri
Agreed. Watched the free iTunes download and that helped. A LOT. Still gonna watch it on Fridays, though.
That’s it? All the hoopla and it gets barely a few hundred thousands more than SGA’s regular ep? For a ~series~ premiere, especially that heavily advertised, it’s underwhelming and there’s no way to spin it.
Low ratings for a low-rate network. SyFy destroys everything it touches eventually. Ron Moore saw that and pulled BSG before it could happen. Then SyFy commissioned Battlestargate Universica to finally put an end to Stargate for good.
This show was a well-acted but otherwise thinly veiled cheap shot at replicating Battlestar Galactica complete with unnecessary gratuitous sex scene. Bad form all around.
That’s not really a good rating, especially for a series premiere. I thought it was great, but I guess it didn’t attract as many people I thought.
Also, I think Darren should have held off on the numbers till more numbers were added in. Last I heard, they weren’t done with that.
I’m a bit disappointed and the numbers will change drastically once the rest of the numbers are added in.
@orion Coran: This came to us today in a Syfy press release. We’re just passing it along.
Does it matter how many people watched the show the first time? It only tells us lots of people tuned in to see if it was any good. I liked it but the numbers won’t matter much until we see how many come back to see the next few episodes right?
It’s kind of like how they say a movie is good when it makes a ton of money in the firs week in theaters. How many people who saw it actually enjoyed what they saw?
@Darren: Alright. Last time I read stuff was earlier today so I wasn’t sure if that Syfy press release came out or not.
@Darren: Also, I just wanted to say I hope I didn’t come off as being rude and if I did, it wasn’t my intention to. While I am a bit upset, I jumped the gun before reading the article a bit more as well as around the net a bit more. :)
I think the reason they make a big deal about who watched it the first time is because they have to sit through the commercials. Revenue from commercials is what keeps the show going, and advertisers want to advertise on shows that have a lot of people that watch. People who DVR skip commercials, and hulu broadcasts dont have as many commercials.
wow – not such a great number for a premiere…
Way to go guys, you dump one show for another that gets only slightly better ratings. And the series premiere at that. Wait until next week.
Best premiere in 4 years and beat out a show on one of the 4 big networks, sounds good to me. Especially considering Stargate has been around a long time.
guys i know you think this was the best yet but if you look at the rating from the season premiere of stargate SG-1 it was way higher than this one i am not sayin that this was not good but not as good a SG-1
So SGA got cancelled for a show that only received marginally better ratings, even with the big budget and big names. So maybe the previous Stargate shows weren’t all that stale and all they needed was a bit of good writing. What have the producers actually achieved here. The SGU premier only did slightly better than the 5th year ratings of SGA. So much for appealing to a wider audience. If the Premier gets such disappointing ratings I can only imagine what the ratings will be like at the end of the season.
Stargate Atlantis was WAY better than this boring waste of time. I predict one season of SGU.
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/42600
Ain’t it cool news has the break down of the shows on the major networks, SGU was only beaten by one show(Medium 1.8), granted this is still very low for a series premier, at least its not just SGU that has lower than expected ratings.
Wow! I haven’t been around for awhile. A whole lot of people seem to be carrying some excess why’d-they-cancel-SGA-for-SGU baggage into this. SGA and SG-1 are gone. The SG producers have created a modern show for a modern viewership. I think they did a commendable job. Not the best show ever, but certainly as good as any SGA or SG-1 and yet, more modern and accessible. Bravo, Brad and Rob for staying with the times! And doing it with style!
I’m not sure how much they have spent making and advertising this new series, but you’d think they’d want better numbers than this to justify its replacing a dependable workhorse like SGA.
The return on investment can’t be that terrific; if they say that the ratings for SGA were not enough to continue that show, the demo’s (younger skew) for this one had better be great!
that’s it… goodbye stargate franchise…
concur with Jack Bauer. I think SGU will kill the franchise on T.V. The only hope is resurrection through SG-1/SGA movies.
SGU, to me, is just writer mental master***tion. Just dudes that got bored and want to psyco-analyze a bunch of seriously flawed human beings… I hated BSG… and this is just a copy. It’s too bad they didn’t follow the writing style of SG1 and SGA.
I guarantee ratings will be below 1.0 before end of season.
BTW: jmixont — you crack me up dude/dudette. “Modern style” — you mean lowering your IQ so that you can watch f**ed up characters with whom you’d want to have nothing to do with in real life? Sitting there psyco-analyzing people who wallow in their own crap? Without any fiber of honor or qualities that you admire in man-kind? I thought those were the great things about SGA/SG-1? Forget SGA-SG1? SO why not just start a totally new show instead of building on the old franchise of so many years? This is like glorified Jerry Springer… let’s see who has… Read more »
The commercials were painfully noticeable and towards the end I was missing chunks of the show while I flipped between stations… and I didn’t even really notice or miss anything, aside from crying, yelling, and panicking here and there it seems. I’m going to rewatch it via iTunes as others here have said that it flowed much better and I do want to give SGU a chance. That said, I’m really not digging this over-emphasis on personal drama, it is making me more scared that this really is shaping up to be a soap opera in space ala BSG. I… Read more »
Just wanted to add that something else that bothered me was how all 3 Ha’tak ships were still there when the planet blew; shouldn’t the Hammon with its beam weapons have been able to take 1 out (let alone all 3 within the first minutes of them showing up)? They could have still had the planet go boom after a couple shots somehow destabilized the core of the energy source. So I dunno, that just came off as a big oversight to me that I would wish they thought of instead of that out of place sex scene. Soap: 27… Read more »
Ah, welcome to how Star Trek’s jaded viewership manage to get that canceled.
You know guys, Atlantis is never coming back and all the whining in the world won’t make it happen, so driving SGU into the dirt just to spite TPTB will only hurt you all in the end.
Hmm… significantly lower than I expected. I’m very, very surprised. Thought the live numbers would be much higher than that (if only for the curiosity factor ;) ) And yes, we haven’t seen the DVR numbers but if I remember correctly when ratings discussions were going on for SGA TPTB said the DVR delayed numbers weren’t as important for advertising and all that jazz as the “live” or “same night” numbers are (whatever the official term is..) While I had reservations, (and yes, I was someone that was ticked off over the handing of SGA and it’s cancellation ;) )… Read more »
dude you need to understand it does not matter if stargate SG-1 or SGA is not going to come back we are just saying that this is taking away the flair of stargate season example of why iam disappointed about stargate u 1 why is there a fricking time limit that is stupid i understand it is on autopilot and can not be stoped but really. they used to do it so that it would somewhat be realistic but really 12 hours to explore a plant. i mean what happens when they get captured the escape with in 20 seconds… Read more »
Bad writing is bad writing if I want boerd to death and want to have Flashbacks I watch Defing Gravity.
Ah dont forget that Baltar dude hello why that Guy is he smarter than Carter ?
Great news i really enjoyed it. It was a cross between voyager and Battlestar galactica for me!!!
Let me be the first to say it out of many who are thinking it. I TOLD YOU SO.
Well, I loved it. And I live in Australia where we never get much good television, its all crime shows and reality tv and I really, really didn’t like BSG. I thought they did a fantastic job, I’m just so happy that there is another SciFi out there now that I can look forward to. When it gets here to Australia they’ll show it at some ungodly hour of the night. Which is so stupid. So…I really…really hope it goes well, I just want a good tv show. I’m so sick of all the sodden, depressing crud on tv at… Read more »
I dunno what you ppl are complaining about, I really enjoyed the show… Atlantis was a fail from the moment they introduced Wraith into the show, cmon, the enemy that the Ancients could not have defeated in 1000years but Humans did in 5… What a load of crap, i mean really…
I personally liked Universe since its better in every way than Atlantis.. It has a much darker and emotional atmosphere, the gfx are really good, and the story itself is amazing…
And im sure that the ratings will go up in the future)))
Cheers
To be honest SGU is meant to open up Stargate to a new people. So those who still can’t get over that Atlantis and SG-1 are gone can kindly leave and watch something else unless they have such a poor life that they have nothing better to do than to bash a television program.
SGU will gain more than enough fans to replace those who stop watching. And it wouldn’t surprise me if it becomes a much bigger success than BSG was.
Wrote a long comment but decided to go with this instead. To TPTB my family enjoyed SG-1 and SGA for many years together. I can’t let my kids watch this crap! You took away a perfectly good show and replaced it with an already done (multiple times) story line with mediocre actors at best. All of this to get just a little bit of a bump in ratings. I am going to be a complete negative jerk here… I hope that this show tanks before the season is up. While I don’t want to see SG1 and SGA go away… Read more »
“You know guys, Atlantis is never coming back and all the whining in the world won’t make it happen, so driving SGU into the dirt just to spite TPTB will only hurt you all in the end.”
Hurt how, exactly? You said yourself that Atlantis is done. No really, I want to see you try and explain your way out of this one, lol.
first thing, got says is people got right to complain, second and pretty happy the rating were bad as it show the fans are willing to stick together and hold out.
new people wake up out of these 2.35M I sure nearly all were stargate fans, new fans I bet make up less than 15% of the rating, and it not be bigger sucess than BSG as stargate is not that show period, how about giving the fans want they what not want they tell us we want.
I want to say that I’ve been a fan of Stargate since the first book was released that started the movie. I’ve followed the whole series from SG-1 to SGA and the SG-1 movies and I love what they did with Universe. I think of it as stages. SG-1 was the older brother who was had it all. Humor, seriousness and maturity. SGA was the middle brother, full of humor and dotted with seriousness that he learned from his brother. SGU, I look at it as the younger brother. New and confused about the world. The creators just evolved the… Read more »
I have been an SG1 fan for years and was disenfranchised with Atlantis because I felt like it lacked the intensity that made SG1 so amazing. Having said thatI greatly enjoyed Universe as a change for the better from Atlantis and am looking forward to the next episode.
I hate this trend of ‘modernised’ characters that are sterotypical, one-dimensional and at times plain boring: Angry black man with a chip on his shoulder, authoritive polly who takes his own life, the thrusted hero, the scientist with his personal agenda (ie. Baltar).
I loved Stargate for its sense of adventure, I feel none of it with SGU. Hopefully once the group start exploring, we might get some actual exposition going.
Loved it!!
@ fonzolo – Those ratings at Ain’t It Cool are for the 18-29 demographic only. SGU had 1.12 viewers in that demographic, which means most of the major network shows beat it. It actually was no higher than 8th in this demographic. However, it did manage to beat Smallville, Dollhouse, and reruns of the Forgotten and Flash Forward in this demographic. The only shows that SGU beat overall on Friday night were Dollhouse, Till Death, and America’s Top Model. It didn’t even manage to beat the reruns of Flash Forward and The Forgotten. blog.zap2it.com Just for the sake of comparison… Read more »
Okay, that’s 2hrs of my life I’ll never get back. I decided to watch the premier 2hrs Just out of my Loyalty for the previous 2 Series. And this is what replaced SGA??? I see many wrong things with the Pilot. Why was that guy screwing the chick in a closet? Why was the other Phsycopath not court martialed or shot by a firing squad? The genius gamer actually solved a puzzle, not a math problem. For some reason, they seem to equate logic with Advanced Applied Mathematics (yes, my majors were Pure and Applied Math, hallmark of a true… Read more »
Seriously if they had continued with the same premise that they did for SG-1 and Atlantis then the franchise would be ran into the ground as its been done before and would easily get old. They don’t need a 3rd show that will copy the story-lines of the 2 previous ones. They also didn’t want a show that would appeal only to Stargate fans. They wanted to create a one that newcomers to the franchise could watch and understand which SGU does well. Atlantis and SG-1 are gone and nothing will bring them back as a TV series. So please… Read more »
@Imitation Tofu How? Because if you guys get this show canceled they won’t make another one and the only stargate you’ll have will be whats already been shot. If they had put this show out and kept Atlantis going then I can only imagine that it would be a whole different forum right now and most of its actually coming from the shippers who are still freaked out that they can’t have anymore Weir/Sheppard fantasies. I know I could be accused of making this up but 90% of the complainers in here have mention how they gave up Atlantis for… Read more »
@Scott Watson, They didn’t NEED a third show to begin with. Didn’t want a show a show that didn’t appeal to Stargate Fans?? (I think you should stop pushing the Q-tips in your ears, when you feel the resistance) Then why the HECK did they call it STARGATE: “whatever”??? All what the Pilot did was jump around like a schizophrenic psychopath wih Attention Deficit Syndrome. And since this is a “FORUM” you are in no position to ask anyone to go away. so in other words.. bite me..
@DarkElfa, I think your theory is flawed. in the producers’ own words (and i paraphraze) “We are going out on a high note”. As with any Business model, when they are trouble, they have to re-visit what worked, and what didn’t. SGA worked, so after sending the firing squad after the nitwit who suggested SGU, they will have to consider breathing life back to something that had a greater following. They are not going to lose money, so that they can spite fans. (and that’s only because they don’t care about us, only their pocket books)
Sorry, I don’t buy into the hostage theory that darkelfa spouts. Watch this or you won’t get an Atlantis movie! Watch this or you won’t get any more Stargate! I’m not playing that little game and nor should any other fan. You’ve bought into the idea that if a show fails it’s the viewers’ fault for not being interested, not that it’s the producers’ fault for putting out a show that doesn’t interest viewers. Just another apologist way to absolve TPTB of any responsibility.
I don’t care how someone spins it. Those numbers are not good for a premiere that was promoted like crazy. Sanctuary and Warehouse13 both bested SGU. Atlantis ended with a 1.5 HH rating not exactly a huge difference from a 1.7 HH rating. As per the people saying SGA i never coming back and telling people to move on and get over it……….GROW UP. The SGA fans at least now have some ammunition. I bid them a great fight and hope they can at least get this movie greenlighted. syfy is doubted their decision to agree with MGM to cancel… Read more »