Stargate Universe took its final bow for 2009 to its lowest numbers of the fall season, according to TVByTheNumbers.com. Why? Some very big competition.
An estimated 1.340 million viewers tuned in for “Justice” on Friday night, down from 1.891 (29 percent) for the previous episode two weeks earlier. (No episode aired the week between “Life” and “Justice,” due to the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S.)
So … what’s up with that?
“Justice” faced some particularly stiff competition in the 9 p.m. time slot on December 4, with the USA Network airing the series finale of its highly rated, acclaimed, and Emmy Award-winning detective dramedy Monk. After eight seasons, Tony Shalhoub’s series went off the air with its most-watched episode ever: 9.4 million viewers.
That’s a story worth talking about for all fans of cable television shows. Monk‘s finale not only beat the series’ highest-rated episode by more than 2 million viewers — it set a new record as basic cable’s most-watched original drama episode ever.
The season’s previous low was about 1.626 million viewers, for “Earth.” The first half of SGU’s freshman season has averaged 1.989 million viewers on Friday nights (1.949 if the 2-hour premiere is calculated as a single telecast), adding significantly to that as viewers catch up with DVR recordings over the following week. (Those “Live + 7 Days” ratings numbers — of particular interest for “Justice,” assuming many viewers chose Monk and recorded Stargate — are not yet available.)
New episodes of SGU return to Syfy in April! In the meantime, peek ahead at what’s to come in GateWorld’s Season One episode guide … and stay tuned to GateWorld for additional coverage and analysis of what we’ve seen so far in the weeks to come.
Not really surprising considering how bad the previous episode ‘Life’ was.
Hey Darren,
It is about 1.922 Million viewers. Air part 1 and 2 are considered one Telecast. Still, 1.9 Million is a good number for SyFy. Justice was my one of my favorite eps of the series to date and I cannot wait for the 2nd half, which I think will be even better.
‘Justice’ ratings a series low for SGU… Why?
Maybe because it’s just not very good?
Well, as the show is the franchise low…
Oooops make that 1.933 Million viewers. :)
@ScoobyDoo: It was actually 1.933 million, 1.922 of which are bored viewers the remaining 110,000 people regularly enjoy the show from the comfort of their padded cells in in Mental Institutes across the US!
If you truly believed it was that bad. You’d stop watching, and you’d stop posting. The mob is fickle and its opinion does not matter to me. It does matter to advertisers, but that has nothing to do with quality. Don’t fall into the appeal to the majority fallacy. If a blurry video of a ham sandwich had good ratings, they’d shell out everything to advertise on it. @sledgehammer I wasn’t bored in the least and everyone I know (in person) liked the old Stargate, and loves SGU, especially the latest episode. On a more logical note, why doesn’t SyFy… Read more »
Whatever ones opinion about LIFE was, I thought JUSTICE was an absolutely excellent episode for any of the Stargate series.I’ll bet ratings go way up when SGU returns.
I think part of it might have been that some people thought Life was the mid-season finale because there was no episode Thanksgiving weekend. At least that is why I missed it when it first aired. I did eventually see Justice though, and I thought it was good. So far, I think the whole series has been good. I thought it kind of had a slow start at first with the first couple of episodes, but after giving it a chance, it’s grown on me quite a bit. I hope the show lasts for a while.
Like I said, Oops, I forgot to watch! You people just don’t listen. Shakey cam makes us sick.
Guess what? ‘Justice’ didn’t have a year of personal appearances, press kits and promo to build it up like ‘Air’ did.
So the 10 ep loss is 50% or so? Why? Because the show Jumped the Shark Day One. And did I read Chloe’s a lawyer now? Remember Woolsey’s credentials in a similar episode plot?
I just bought SGA S4 on DVD. That should keep me away from SGU until it dies.
I would imagine A.) a lot of people didn’t know it was on, the mid season break was coming up and they skipped a week, that hardly makes sense.
B.)Monk was the 2nd half of a 2 parter, and most likely the end of the show. but
C.) I can’t help but think that after 9 episodes there wasn’t much aside from loyalty to the original show and the promise shown in the first 4 or 5 episodes to bring people back in.
The ratings for this particular episode doesn’t really mean much: Was a week off so a lot of people may have thought that ‘Life’ was the mid season finally and ‘Life’ itself wasn’t the best episode ever.
I would bet my life that we will have a large ratings increase for ‘Space’ that airs next year.
I seriously doubt that Monk had a major impact on SGU’s ratings. I’m a fan of the new show but it does have issues. Let’s hope we get more episodes like Time and Justice and less like Life. A little more action and less stones please.
For many of us “haters” (and I think even a non-haters) Life was just a miserable hour of television to sit through. (Life was lackluster for even the average soap opera episode, must less as an episode of Stargate.) Even the most ardent Universe supporters would have to acknowledge that may have played a role in the subsequent episode’s low ratings.
Wow some of the comments here are just obviously hateful in spirit. Did you even read the article? The show was against the biggest competition imaginable. The show wouldn’t be doing well, doing well, doing well, and then suddenly drop a third of its audience because of a “bad” episode. SG-1/Atlatis had their fair share of ****. Ratings only ever drop slightly for that kind of stuff.
Monk was HUGE during that hour. Just about everyone who ever watched it at one point came back to see what happened. I was watching it over SGU, and I love SGU.
It wasn’t Monk that brought the ratings down, it was how poor SGU is and the Life episode was the main reason people are tuning out. I keep watching out of curiosity more than anything else.
It’s not even close to Atlantis. Period.
Give it half a season and it’ll do the same thing SG1 did, become a pretty good show.
And seriously people, are explosions all you live for? Please, if you live only for the adrenaline then get your bum of the the chair and play paintball or something….
The fact is that SGU’s S1 lowest rated ep (Justice – 1.34, 1.1HH – facing Monk) sunk to SGA’s S5 lowest rated ep (First Contact – 1.4, 1.1HH – facing the presidential debate of 2008). So no, SGU isn’t doing great or even good considering the fact that SGA was canceled with those ratings. Is SGU doing better on average? Sure it is, because the ~series~ three part premiere is counted in – and series premieres are usually sampled by much broader public. Will SGU get S2? Sure it will – and it’ll just prove that SGA wasn’t canceled because… Read more »
Lost will be back for season 6, in a few weeks..
yay!
katikatnik – excellent post.
I just find it amusing that SGU is getting a similar viewership to SGA (in its 5th season)and somehow that is considered good ratings but surprisedly not good enough for SGA. I didn’t see any excuses thrown into the mix when SGA went up against the Presidential Debate, but as usual there’s always some excuse for SGU’s bad ratings. Maybe the ratings are dropping purely because the show is not keeping the interest of the audience.
@Gaeth: I to be quite honest I didn’t watch the last ep, I’ve happened to stumble across 3 eps all of them dull and actually annoying watching the characters.
@altairantares: Try watching Terminator without explosions, maybe you could give the audience Paintball guns? I think you’ll find most of the Block Busters have explosions – you could watch Little House on the Prairy…
@Mentat: I completely agree about the Shakey cam, it’s there all the time. I saw one episode where 2 characters were sitting in a motionless car and the camera was still wobbling around!
Best Excuses I’ve heard so far: 1. Man, it was stiff competition from show XYZ 2. Came back after a week off, so people were “Confused”, We should blame Thanksgiving. 3. 1.9 Million viewer is great for SGU (not for SGA, Mind you), But for SGU, absolutely brilliant, Top notch, even. Next thing we know, for the second half premier: People didn’t know Season 1.5 was now on, (actually more like, they went away, and never came back.) or, they had stiff competition from the Original StarTrek series (Circa 1965) Unbelievable! blame the poor viewership on “competition” from another show,… Read more »
why is the show returning in april 2010 and not January? so are we supposed to wait all this time?
A few months ago I was becoming more and more annoyed with Terminator:Sarah Connor Chronicles fans, who bitched and whined across every sci fi forum on the web because “Dollhouse got their show cancelled”, “Joss Whedon’s the antichrist and gay love slave of the Fox execs”, “they took my toys away and I need someone to blame”. Dollhouse wasn’t a perfect show by any means (not a patch on Buffy or Firefly), but it was a provocative premise for a sci-fi show and a lot of people liked it. But Terminator fans spent ages telling anyone who would listen how… Read more »
Well … ratings are low because all the show is very poor.
That’s all …
When there’s nothing else to watch, then ratings increase a little bit.
When there is competition (sometimes with sport of here with Monk) … well you see the result.
SGU is loosing against almost everything.
Hope it will be replaced as soon as possible on the Friday evening slot.
@US06154 & Tonton Beber, Jump over to the “Review: SGU’s ‘Justice'” article, The Gateworld Poll, Gateworld Forums etc. ‘Justice’ has had more positive feedback than any other SGU episode thus far.
I agree with those of you saying the ratings are low because it is a bad show. I also agree that if SGA were canceled because of these ratings, then so should SGU. Why does SGU get excuses thrown out by TPTB and SGA got bashed?
BTW, I didn’t watch last weeks ep, probably won’t watch next year, and am even skipping the podcasts now as often their comments make me sick to my stomach. I often scream at the iPod. Never had done this before SGU and actually very much loved all the podcasts before SGU.
The show wasn’t “doing well, doing well, doing well and then dropped 1/3 of its viewership”. The pilot, Air parts 1/2/3, had roughly the same viewership as Atlantis’s final season ended, suggesting most Atlantis viewers came back to watch SGU. The ratings plummeted at that point, already dropping by 1/3 to episode 7. The next episode, Time, saw an increase, probably because the time-travel synopsis actually sounded like a sci-fi plot. Life received similar viewers to Time, which is unsurprising considering Time masqueraded as a two-parter, and most Time viewers will have tuned in to Life for the continuation only… Read more »
ok here it is… the show is not bad but if i never like BSG so i dont like this.
i think the production team destroyed the stargate name and gateworld is hiding the bad news because they want something to report on.
i know that i am done with the show (witch sucks because i love stargate) but like i said i hated BSG and i hate SGU…
Monk? That’s the excuse this week? Really? They’re completely different shows.
I thought everyone knew that gateworld polls are easy to rig and constantly spammed.
@Scott Watson: Gateworld polls means squat. let me explain. If you watch Survivor (The reality show), the last episode had an Auction. these people are hungry and starving, eating bugs, rotten fruit etc., Jeff Probst trots out a Hamburger during the Auction, and someone paid over $200 for it. What I am trying to say is, the poll is no real measure for the quality of Justice (Hamburger) when the survivors (the Fans of real SciFi) are hungry and tired for a good episode after life (the bugs and the rotten fruit). So yes, the poll did say this episode… Read more »
Humph. I haven’t actually watched any “SG”:U since E04, but I do read the reviews because, well, it’s the only new stargate. Since the show isn’t very good at all considering it’s called Stargate, I still hope that an intelligent reviewer will persuade me to watch an episode here and there. So far, I’ve seen nothing that would cause me to tune in. Time seemed cool just because everybody died, but that’s not a positive reason to watch the show.
Yep. Hopefully they’ll turn it around in season 1.5.
First and foremost, SGU, isn’t a terrible idea. However I don’t think it was the right direction to take a much-beloved franchise in. What’s the old adage “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” People tuned int to SG1 and SGA because it was light, there was overall plot arcs that we wanted to see resolved, but most importantly it didn’t take itself tooooo seriously. The light banter between the characters, good guys and bad guys alike humanized the show and made us want to watch. Were there things that could have been done better in SG1 and SGA? Yes.… Read more »
I have a request for the people who think the decline for “Justice” was solely because “Life” was bad.
Why didn’t it happen in Canada? From what I’ve heard there was only a 1% drop in the Canadian ratings between the two shows.
Please explain.
@Scott Watson “The Gateworld Poll, Gateworld Forums etc. ‘Justice’ has had more positive feedback than any other SGU episode thus far.”
That is because there is not option to vote “Did not watch”. I quit voting when I quit watching. I suspect many that don’t watch don’t vote. So the results of the polls do not tell the real story.
@Uncle Al I used the Gateworld poll as an example. Compared to every other SGU episode poll its had the highest amount of votes for 8, 9 & 10 by quite a big degree.
Ignoring the poll, look at the 2nd point: Gateworld forums. I don’t even post there because the amount of posts it gets a day it to much for me to catch up with, but by general reading of various topics it comes across as ‘Justice’ having more positive feedback than any other episode thus far.
@MediaSavant that wasn’t the only reason, it was just a contributing factor.
How many people said after “life” that’s it im done. (a large number I think) I said it. I happened to catch justice while I was at a hotel with nothing better to do. And I was pleasantly surprised. I think the next ep will tick up abit due to word getting around that “hey justice wasn’t a total waste of stargate fans intelligence” but will see
@jonnyb57: There won’t be any SG-1 or SGA movies, no matter how TPTB sweet talk it. Well, I’ll give you SG-1. Maybe, one day, with a lot of luck, if someone finds a pot of gold. But SGA? No way, no how. No matter the success or failure of SGU. Believe me, we are not that naive. The fact is that SGU’s ratings are nothing to write home about, no matter how TPTB or other parties want to spin it.
oh well poor ratings thats good news !!! well at least ill be able to see joe f on a movie he is currently working on and that will give me my joe fix.
Look on the bright side, the stones were nowhere to be found in this episode. I still think they need to be thrown out the airlock. Maybe an alien species can take over Tolbert and have him go on a shooting spree, requiring the MP’s to shoot and kill him. The show would be cheaper immediately. Tolbert needs to go and less emphasis on the Earth stuff. I still hold out hope for SGU. I don’t want the franchise to die and this is the best chance for it to keep going.
@MediaSavant: The slight drop in Canada is nice and dandy, but SyFy and the US are MGM’s primary market. And Monk cost SGU almost 30% of its audience? Monk was a rather old skewing show, SGU is targeting youths – that was the plan – so the xover should be marginal. People say it was because of Xmas time – there are still 3 weeks to Xmas, so that’s a bit lame an excuse too. And about facts: one fact stands – SGU’s S1 lowest rated ep sank lower than SGA’s S5 lowest rated ep – and no way, no… Read more »
Long time fan, that could no longer stand not commenting about universe. I have greatly enjoyed both SG1 and SGA. Universe is without question a different show from the first two installments of Stargate. I personal like it. Not as much as the other two but it is only 10 episodes into its run. It has its strengths and its weaknesses. The character building is much more in depth on universe than the other two shows. Not to say that those shows did not have episodes that explored the characters personalities or back story, they did but it was always… Read more »
An easy way to fix the communication stones problem is for them to suddenly “run out of batteries” and require huge amounts of power from the ship to use, thus only be usable in emergencies. Unfortunately this is only one of a myriad of major changes that would be required to fix this show. Oh and er, if viewers decided to watch the Monk finale instead of the SGU mid season finale, isn’t that exactly the point? People deciding to watch something else = people who aren’t hooked to SGU. Any Stargate fan would have watched an SG1 mid season… Read more »
SGU makes me think of soap operas there isnt any team effort everyone thinks their friend is out to get them. Honestly im not sure how they expect to keep this going if it were real life they wouldnt last acting like a bunch of teen age girls stabbing each other in the back. The reason it had lower ratings is because people like me would rather watch Monk at least it isnt vulgar. I think the oldest writer they have must be 16. It really is sad.
Wow, I hope the PTB focus more on the episode polls than the comments section. A show needs critiques here and there from fans if it plans to succeed, but it seems like the comments section of these articles are mostly just whining. Why are people that hate the show and claim to not watch it bothering to keep talking about how much they hate it? It’s not going to bring back SG1 or Atlantis. If SGU gets cancelled, we probably won’t even get SG1 or Atlantis movies. I don’t think they are going to spend the money to keep… Read more »
@FormulaJRay If the PTB only focus on people giving high marks to Universe in the polls, they won’t have a show for very many seasons. Even the Gateworld poll, which seems a bit biased in favor of Universe, has consistently shown that between 15 and 20 percent of people are dissatisfied with the show. (People rating it 5 or below.) People who visit this site are the diehards. We, you, I, and everyone else here are the folks that are the backbone of the Stargate franchise. We care enough to watch it, buy DVD’s, visit fansites, read reviews, worry about… Read more »
To be frank there more likely to check the Gateworld Forums themselves (In particular the pinned Fan Reviews topic in each episode section) rather than the comments on these articles.
I try to defend Stargate Universe where I can because it has potential for lots of great stories… it’s just very very DULL at the moment. Nothing much ever happens. It’s all “something happens to this character”, “something happens to another character”. There are no sort of big events taking place… Dull Dull Dull.