Yesterday’s new episode of Stargate Universe picked up significantly in the ratings, with more than 1 million viewers tuning in to “Epilogue” — perhaps helped by SGU‘s new pairing with Sanctuary, starring former SG-1 actress Amanda Tapping. But Sanctuary‘s move from Friday to Monday dealt a major blow to its own ratings.
“Epilogue” drew an estimated 1.092 million viewers to Syfy at 9 p.m. on Monday night (“Live + Same Day”), up 27 percent from the previous week.
Sanctuary didn’t fare so well at 10 p.m., with just 868,000 viewers. That’s comparable to SGU‘s numbers at 9 and 10 o’clock this spring, but a far cry (39 percent, to be exact) from what Sanctuary was doing on Friday nights just three days earlier.
Last Friday the show gained 17 percent over its mid-season premiere with 1.424 million viewers, holding on to about half of WWE Smackdown‘s 2.825 million.
This goes a long way in supporting our theory that, for the average Syfy viewer, it’s not so much the show as the night that it is airing — and that whichever of the network’s three dramas they kept on Friday nights back in October would be the one to keep its ratings up in “renewal” territory.
Monday night on the big networks saw 4.07 million viewers for The Chicago Code in FOX’s 9 p.m. time slot. CBS aired repeats of The Big Bang Theory and Mike & Molly, with 7.68 million and 7.86 million viewers, respectively. NBC limped along with 4.62 million for the sci-fi-ish series The Event (which is actually a notable improvement for that show).
But the victor for the night was once again ABC’s Dancing With the Stars, which crushed the 90 minutes from 8-9:30 p.m. with over 22 million viewers. That was followed by the sitcom Better Than You at 9:30, with 11.2 million.
Syfy’s line-up also faced an NBA play-off game this week, which averaged 3.35 million for TNT.
Don’t miss the penultimate episode of Stargate Universe next Monday! “Blockade” airs at 9/8c on Syfy in the United States, followed by a new episode of Sanctuary.
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View Comments
"it’s not so much the show as the night that it is airing"
Yep.
That quote really does say it all. Looks like putting Sanctuary on Monday was a good experiment to test the theory. Good enough, now put them both back.
So, MGM and SyFy, recall the escape pods. Let's get back to work! Recall what cast you can and set a timeline to restart SGU ... say in a year or two. Bring in an all-star cast to kick-start the interest. It can be done! Make it so!
Er, they already have an all-star cast, in my book.
Friday has always been Syfy's most successful night, with double episodes of two or three original series that night. So the move was never going to be helpful. But Common Descent and Epilogue have been the best SGU episodes so far, so I think this week's uptick can be explained both by Sanctuary's lead in and viewers wanting to catch the continuation of the story started the week before. After losing viewers in season 1 due to focusing on personal drama rather than scifi, and Syfy's horrible scheduling (seriously, a 4 month hiatus?), moving it for season 2 practically guaranteed its death.
Can you get the raitings for the show Sancturary was bumped for by any chance?
Does Syfy want Sanctuary out too? I guess Monday is the slaughterhouse where Syfy takes shows it wants gone. Will Syfy be smart enough to take its two biggest shows back to Friday for a one-two punch? Probably not, they don't do SciFi anymore, they do wrestling.
Seriously?? Childbirth 5 times over in 60 seconds was just wrong. I was upset that sgu was canceled, but with half the episodes ending with some horrid song and the lack of anything scifi... I can't even form words this is just a very big disappointment. They should have just took the stargate and put it on One life to live if they wanted a drama show... and lets put it on during the day since its basicly a soap. Listen i'm some one who likes 98% of all scifi, I even liked enterprise and voyager.. just saying if I don't like it.. its really bad. Just do us all a favor and bring back Atlantis!!! Lets face it everyone wants Atlantis! MGM Atlantis = $$$ SG1 DVD's =$$$, I'm still pist that MGM took down the atlantis set to film hot tub time machine!!!
This episode was superior to similar episodes done in other sci fi shows, like ENT's E2.
Or DS9's Children of Time.
I don't want more SGA - I want more SGU. Last nights episode was not only top qulity Stargate but also top quality Sci-Fi. As for ratings it's quite obvious that w/e series has the lead in of WWE will receive the best ratings...