The move to Monday couldn’t help the show that Syfy Channel canceled last December, as Stargate Universe began its final run of episodes with a typical performance of just over 1 million viewers last night.
“Deliverance” drew an estimated 1.035 million pairs of eyes (Live + Same Day), slightly less than SGU‘s ratings average for the first half of the season, which was 1.078 million viewers (Live + Same Day) (chart). It’s also down 5 percent from the mid-season finale, which aired on Tueday, November 30 (1.094 million viewers).
The mid-season premiere earned a 0.5 rating in the all-important demographic of adults age 18 to 49.
This is the Stargate franchise’s first time airing on a Monday night, where Syfy has paired it with lead-in show Being Human. That series — an adaptation of a successful U.K. show — premiered in January to nearly 2 million viewers, and has averaged 1.55 million over eight installments.
Last night Being Human drew 1.46 million viewers.
Stargate on Mondays is trading in the Tuesday night champs of Dancing With the Stars and NCIS: Los Angeles (each of which averaged north of 16 million) for some new competition. ABC’s Castle and CBS’s Hawaii Five-0 were in repeats last night, and drew 5.6 million and 7.7 million viewers, respectively. NBC won the hour with a new episode of Harry’s Law, picking up almost 9.6 million. (FOX turns its 10 p.m. time slot over to local news.)
Not only was the show displaced from its Friday night time slot by wrestling, but it’s now up against WWE Raw on USA. That show earned more than 5.7 million viewers in the 10 p.m. slot.
Next week on SGU is “Twin Destinies,” an episode we’ve been very excited to see. Tune in Monday, March 14 at 10/9c on Syfy! You can read more about the episode in GateWorld’s Season Two episode guide.
That’s it then. No chance for revival or a season 3 and beyond.
Sci-Fi should’ve kept Stargate as a “summer show” as it used to be, or atleast leave it on Fridays. Less competition during the summer, and on Fridays. But nooo… let’s put SGU on the busiest night(s) of the week.
Shame really, since I thought this weeks episode was rather good. Thou I’m fairly certain the continued drop in viewers, may have something to do with the show ALREADY being cancelled.
I still don’t see how 1 million people is low ratings. With each episode costing about 2-3 million to make that’s only around $2 per-person watching. Then there is the DVD sales, and the world wide distribution sales.
Stargate needs to go 100% on-line distribution…all SciFi show’s for that matter since they don’t bring in the millions of mindless masses.
Also who the hell wants to live your life around what time a show is on? Either Tivo, or download is the only way to go. I “cut the cord” over 4 years ago.
Yea its a shame the viewers werent there i thought it was a really good episode. i dont understand why sgu has to spend 2 to 3 million an episode. The special effects are really sick (better then most big budget movies) but they dont have any stand out stars on the show. Cut the overhead down to 1 to 1.5 mil an episode and 1 million viewers wont be that bad. The show would turn a profit when u throw in dvd sales and online purchases. Its like living above your means, if your a 1 to 1.5 million… Read more »
drawing in 1mil views a night isn’t bad. also sgu came on twice on monday, i will be honest in that i did watch monday night raw, but recorded sgu the first time it went on. i later watched the second showing on 11/10c. 1mil viewers is fine for a sci fi show since obviously not many people watch it. so syfy should just face the facts and not expect 5mil all the time. seriously 2mil other people probably couldnt see it or much rather have watched something else, but recorded it so they could have watched it later. this… Read more »
You people seem to keep forgetting that Syfy does not profit from DVD sales and nor would they necessarily from pay per viewing and download services. Distribution and DVD sales benefit MGM. I still can’t believe that only 1 million tuned in last night after all the buzz. It’s super frustrating to know that in this age of uber connectivity and bi-direction device(DVR, SATdish) data exchange, that the individual live viewing count is still a calculated total estimate. How on earth do fans save a show when we are not truly part of the count. Very disappointing numbers, considering the… Read more »
By the might of Thor! Clearly the folks at Syfy are just doing everything they can to kill Stargate. Pretty sad after such a long, profitable run for the franchise! I do blame Syfy mostly for moving it to very active nights of television… I know I’ll opt to watch new episodes of Castle before SGU, and I actually ENJOY SGU. Not to mention the competition of Monday Night RAW (which is very active because of Wrestlemania right now). That said, it’s taken 1.5 seasons to get the plot going, which is precisely why “V” is failing on ABC as… Read more »
@asindro
yeah it is dissapointing i was at least expecting 2mil. of all the save sgu groups and campaigns made you think some type of impact would have been done. though 1 mil isn’t that bad, its dissapointing. stargate holds its name up with star trek, and star wars(imo) for god sake
@GoodThings2Life +1 on everything! I am guessing that is why Sky One is holding showing is the back 10 until at least May, probably along with Fringe and Lie To Me, after Bones/House wrap up their seasons. If I could pay for it online I would (but live in Ireland so no services). Will just wait and DVR when they do start, and I DVR because Mon-Fri I usually do not have time to sit and watch. It was a good idea, SG’s Voy, but they should have kept it at a sprint before ‘settling’ in, not the other way… Read more »
Well let’s see here: 1. news of cancellation 2. ridiculously long hiatus 3. only 10 episodes anyway 4. yet ANOTHER poorly advertised time-move Are we seriously surprised the ratings didn’t uptick. I mean, it’s not like anyone but hardcore fans had any real reason to come back to SGU. “Before we show the last 10 episodes after our 4 month long hiatus, we’d like to announce that we’re canceling the show (*whispered* and we’re moving SGU to monday nights at 10. That’s almost a polar opposite from it’s home on friday nights).” Yeah. Sounds like something I’d want to come… Read more »
SyFy has been making fraking mistakes when they moved it to Tuesday Night as well as Monday Night. They should have kept iy on Friday Night as well as in the summer too. Just like who SyFy no longer show new episides of Doctor Who or Sarah Jane Smith. They sound show clips or preview of the next episode on other networks as well.
ha… I just had a mental note that it was airing this week, didn’t realize or notice that the night changed again so I’ll have to watch it later.
SyFy’s scheduling and extreme hiatuses are definitely half of the 1-2 knock out punch (the other half being the horribly slow, soap-opera beginnings ie most of season 1).
Oh well. Hopefully we’ll see a return to Stargate in ~5 years. Maybe sooner, depending on if/when/how online viewing gets mainstreamed and becomes attractive to air shows that way.
I’m very surprised that they got the numbers for Deliverance that they did,considering eevrything that’s been said here and before in other post threads!SyFy’s insane programme scheduling carries more than just half of the responsibility for everything that’s happened,I think.They wanted to compete with big players,network tv shows,without any real vision and/or a plan.They just desperately wanetd to build up numbers,which naturally ended up in a complete failure.And the thing that amazes me the most is that they do not learn from their mistakes,they just keep on stubornly going the same way,not only with SGU..that’s dead and barried,but with the… Read more »
I can’t say I’m suprised the numbers didn’t go up. I didn’t expect the audience to grow dramatically anyway, but cancellation is a pretty big buzzkill for many people to continue watching a show, knowing it’s going to end soon.
What I meant to say was that I’m surprised they got even this much viewers,I expected even less.
@asindro:
“You people seem to keep forgetting that Syfy does not profit from DVD sales and nor would they necessarily from pay per viewing and download services. […] I still can’t believe that only 1 million tuned in last night after all the buzz. ”
You seem to be forgetting that ratings do not include everybody. I can’t believe the networks are still hanging onto ratings SO stringently when they represent just 0.02% of the US population. How in hell can you gauge interest on that?
1.000.000 viewers for a cancelled show is not that bad. Hopining for at least one movie.
Hi Everybody, Well I actually do not think that Syfy or MGM want to lose Stargate in principle… There are not many shows to replace it – first and second – there are not many proven shows. Syfy in principle will continue to exist under this or another name ,because this is a huge chunk of the modern TV and in this line so sure they will need shows to put out there,so…just relax for now….I think what all are looking in this moment ( MGM and Syfy ) is a way out of this situation and how to improve… Read more »
they really need to think up some new way to show there show to the world and not only to US people who sure dont like scient fiction shows as the raitings say … US people like csi and all the criminal investication shows … there is like at least 10 tv shows in a week what is about police investicating some criminal activity and these shows get 5+ miljon viewers raitings … if the scient fiction shows would be world wide then the raitings would be a lot more then it is rite now to … i have Syfy… Read more »
@an72: I lost my faith in tv business executive’s competence a long time ago.
As of Wednesday, March 9th, the episode has not been put up on HULU. Syfy does put the episodes on HULU and monitor how many people view it. I am not sure how much they profit from that, but they run a few quick ads where there were commercial breaks.
High or low ratings this show isn’t getting renewed the fanbase has moved on.
A Million Viewers? Are they sure? because I’m from the Bahamas and I watched, and that dude from Holland watched. So that’s two more than a million. Makes one wonder, how many of us foreigners watch the show. i know, how about those from syfy as us foreigners which commercial was the most memorable? I know denorex dandruff shampoo was the most memorable for me, because i have dandruff BAD!. And when i get some coin, i’ll buy it, and the selsun blue shampoo, but after they brought on the denorex commercial five times, i think i’ll get that instead.… Read more »
Did anyone REALLY think the ratings were going to jump much? Now that the show is cancelled? I think it did quite well, considering. I also think that if the show had the same tone as Deliverance all along, there would be a third season. It was actually a pretty good episode. And they showed signs of dropping the ‘whoa is me’ undertone, they were just a year late in doing it. If the rest of the episodes are like Deliverance, I’ll at least say that the show is going down with it’s head held high. But I doubt that… Read more »
@ Jim You are quite right. SyFy has proven time and again that it can’t (should I say won’t) learn from past mistakes. We only have to look at one of their earliest and biggest blunders. I’m talking about Farscape of course. Then Sci-Fi indulged in multi-month hiatuses in mid season, changed the day and time from the top performing block to a worse one in order to give newer programming the best slot. I found this the other night […] http://www.watchfarscape.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8477 […] and read it all. I found it’s contents to be eerily familiar. Give it a read and… Read more »
My understanding is that iTunes sales and Hulu views were minimal and didn’t ad very much. iTunes sales would only benefit MGM and Hulu might not actually effect SyFy. As someone who actually liked the show (not loved) I have to admit to my interest waning by the mid-season mark of Season 1, and the lengthy breaks in the show (with no notice of when it would come back, ever!) sapped any will I had between halves. I still have yet to watch my DVRed version of Deliverance.
I didn’t even know the show was on.
Thank heavens the DVR caught it.
@ an72 “just relax”? syfy is constantly giving stargate viewers the middle finger. sgu people in general have been saying they hate wrestling for being on syfy, so what does syfy do? they put sgu on the same time slot as the most viewed wrestling show..monday night raw!! it is seriously the road to wrestlemania, the superbowl of wrestling and they put it on the same time slot as raw. Syfy are just complete bunches of idiots or they really dont give a shit about sgu anymore. They say they given the time slots carefully consideration, well obviously they havent.… Read more »
[…] watch the episode ‘live’ even though not doing so probably contributed to SGU’s less than stellar ratings upon the return of the second season. I felt let down, similar to what I felt with the Season Two […]
The show got the rating it deserved. It was not that exciting. 1 million viewers compared to a mainstream show of 7.7 million viewers. 1 million is pretty bad. Waiting to see Atlantis and SG1 actors make their final appearances on the show. Bet the ratings uptick then.
Well if they would have let people know about it maybe this wouldn’t have been so bad. By the way, SciFi or should I say Syfy is pushing more and more shows away. They are trying to be a reality TV / really stupid/cheesy/boring ass movie network. I’m just waiting for them to cancel Eureka, Sanctuary, and Warehouse 13. Why the hell are they even calling themselves the Syfy channel when they consistently distance themselves from the fan base that built the network up. Straight up, Syfy sucks. Their just like Fox. They may have a big franchise on these… Read more »
@kenny: AFAIK, there are no planned appearances of SG1 actors in the remaining episodes. One episode with SGA’s Rodney and Woolsey and that’s it.
It would be perfect if the ratings hit the roof for the SGA episode and then fall apart again the next week. Perfect message to TPTB, at least from most of you Stargate fans. I want to see this happen.
@kenny I’ve never seen any show on Syfy get anywhere near 7.7 million viewers.
Seems to me it did great considering they use such a flawed rating system and that the show is already cancelled. It’s not easy to care about a show that is cancelled, and probably a lot of people that heard it was cancelled thought the season break was the end of it.
At this point, I have to doubt the validity of Gateworld’s figures on viewership. Few people in America have ever been a Nielsen family such as myself, and even fewer who haven’t don’t know how this out of date system works. There are only about half a million Nielsen households in America, and the data collected from what those half a million people are watching is fed into a mathematical equation containing the total estimated number of TV households in America; this is where these numbers are coming from. Anyone with a decent amount of intelligence can realize that every… Read more »
Admiral, say what you want about the accuracy and usefulness of Nielsen Media Research and its techniques. (That will require you to do some research into the math behind statistical sampling, and not make sweeping charges that the sample isn’t good enough.) But the data is the data, and it’s used universally in the television industry. Of course we’re going to report it.
The system is broken, and the networks know it. They’ve been trying to take steps to repair it for years, but it’s like trying to hold together a sinking battleship with Scotch tape and knitting yarn.
@The Admiral, the data may be flawed but it is what every network out there uses to decide the fate of a series. That is the reality we currently live with, every show out there lives or dies by the “flawed” Nielsen ratings. Not just SGU and not just Syfy.
ok first can i sayy that i really cant beleive tht sgu didnt et to show the whole b4 it was cancelled but now it is starting to show sg features like the humour but they are encorporating it perfectly with the show but it took this long to really get the show started yea it was diffrent from other sg shows but now they are on the path to make it brilliant but tbh ffs syfi f off from englang
Gee…After episode 10 what WILL we talk about ;)
@ Darren Sumner You are absolutely right Darren. And the problem is two fold. First Nielsen: they haven’t kept up with the changing face of broadcast media. They haven’t increased their sample size to something close to reasonable, say 10% of the total viewing households, though I have no idea what it would cost Nielsen to track 10 million+ actual households every night. Second, the networks. They contine to accecpt Nielsens’ numbers as facts. And they haven’t demanded that Nielsen shape up, with a modern and vastly more accurate system, or ship out. And here’s a question I just thought… Read more »
@Admiral (and everyone): Perhaps you might be interested to read an article titled “The truth about TV ratings, online viewing and sci-fi shows”, by Craig Engler, GM and senior VP of Syfy Digital. http://blastr.com/2011/01/the-truth-about-tv-ratings-online-viewing-and-sci-fi-shows.php Mr. Engler writes that “… the difference in revenue derived from TV views compared to online views is massive”: a 10-to-1 difference would “probably be lucky”; “…and that’s likely an optimistic number.” (The hope is that online-viewing revenues may continue to rise in the coming years.) (For further reading: More than 40 replies by Mr. Engler can be found among the first 6 pages of comments… Read more »
I just found this recent article (31/Jan/2011)about the Nielsen system. […] http://splitsider.com/2011/01/why-nielsen-ratings-are-inaccurate-and-why-theyll-stay-that-way/ […]
Good reading and informative.
Thanks, Slayme — that’s a good article. It makes an important point about why networks haven’t given Nielsen the ol’ heave-ho with the advent of online television viewing: Nielsen is currency, and it’s the only game in town. The networks have nothing else by which to measure the rates they can charge to advertisers. It’s not just that Syfy accepts this data as valid, it’s that all networks and all advertisers do. Try discounting the Nielsen measurement as faulty and then convincing Johnson & Johnson to give you $150,000 to put their ad in between Act 3 and Act 4… Read more »
Well guys ,I have no idea what US people prefer to watch, but from my observations one thing is so sure: Before SG franchise shows did not have any “viewers problems”. Did you some of you ask why this happened now that so many of the present Syfy shows are just knock down by the auditory and what is this “thing” which make this shows “a like” with the result…. I have been giving a thought and here it is what I think…why SGU did not have this great rating as the others…well according me is not the story ,is… Read more »
@ Slayme Yes,regarding your Farscape post,I know that very well,since I was very involved with that whole mess at the time and yes it’s an exellent showcase of an awfull transformation of the Sci-Fi Channel,that had started back then already.You’re right about that,that was the beginning of the situation we have today.And bare in mind,no matter what,the overall situation back then was still so much better than it is nowdays.But as far as learning from previous mistakes and thus changing things,it is literally unbeliavable how incompetent they are! Regarding Nielsen,it is more than imperfect,it’s absurdly far from reallity and getting… Read more »
Unless it is in the Star Wars Universe(live action not cartoons) or a massively hyped up relaunch of Star Trek no sci-fi show will ever have huge ratings.
Sci-Fi is just not “cool” and mainstream in the pop culture of our society.
I just don’t know what these networks expect. They’re not going to draw in millions like they do for American Idol or some other reality nonsense which unfortunately leads us to getting more reality shows.
@Chris1: Sci-fi usually has very hard expectations to meet. But I wouldn’t say that “nerds” aren’t “cool”. Not based on my experience.
The reason we get annoying reality shows is because they are cheap and require no skillzzzzzz.
@ Jim The “overall situation” was better back then. In one of the special features interviews in the most recent box set of the Farscape series, one of the producers/directors (can’t remember the name) said that throughout season 1 they spent as much per episode as might be spent on a small motion picture. By the time season 3 was being produced those costs were far less than what Sci-Fi could have hoped to pay in Canada or the US (the show was produced in Australia and all the actors with the exception of Ben Browder were Aussie). As for… Read more »
Yikes. And that’s when Castle doesn’t have a new episode on (it was a rerun this week, and I believe will be back with brand new episodes on the 21st of March). I just got around to watching the episode last night, and while I enjoyed it, I admit I watched the Castle re-air when SGU was airing, and I’ll still be watching Castle every Monday at 9 p.m. central. SGU will get timeshifted at least one day for me, if not more. I’m still not sure what SyFy is trying to do except for attempt to lose the demographic… Read more »