After a slight boost in live viewership in its first post-Stargate airing last week (story), Sanctuary headed back south in the ratings on Monday. “Normandy” drew an estimated 656,000 viewers to Syfy Channel (Live + Same Day), according to TVBytheNumbers.
The seventeenth episode of the show’s third season drew a 0.2 rating in the Adults 18-49 demographic, down a tenth from last week.
This is a painful drop of nearly 20 percent in viewers, and the least-watched episode in series history.
The show wasn’t competing with Dancing With the Stars‘s monster, 22-million viewer win for the final performance show on ABC (8 p.m.). Instead, its biggest network competition at 10 p.m. was the second hour of The Bachelorette, which turned in an average of 9 million viewers from 9 to 11 p.m. But it is NBA playoff season: the Mavericks/Thunder game on Monday night drew 7.41 million viewers to ESPN, leading all of cable for the night.
| EPISODE (air date) | VIEWERS (million) | CHANGE |
| Pax Romana (Apr. 15) | 1.217 | |
| Hangover (Apr. 22) | 1.424 | + 17% |
| Move to Monday | ||
| One Night (Apr. 25) | 0.868 | – 39% |
| Metamorphosis (May 2) | 0.838 | – 3% |
| Wingman (May 9) | 0.756 | – 10% |
| Awakening (May 16) | 0.815 | + 8% |
| Normandy (May 23) | 0.656 | – 20% |
WWE Smackdown led the cable ratings last Friday, May 23, with 2.889 million viewers over two hours.
This led into another installment of Urban Legends, which rebounded almost 30 percent to 1.236 million viewers. Though it bested former Friday time slot occupant Sanctuary by 88 percent this week, Urban Legends only managed a 0.3 rating — one tenth of a point higher in the key demographic.
Three episodes remain for Sanctuary‘s third season, airing Mondays at 10/9c on Syfy. “Carentan” will air on June 6, following a break in new episodes for the Memorial Day holiday weekend.
The show is currently in production on Season Four, which is expected to bow in the fall — hopefully back on Friday nights.
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i actually quite enjoyed that episode.
i hope syfy moves the show back to friday. (((sanctuary)))
Gotta say that I loved this episode. My favorite episode this season so far (last week's was good too though) very well-done, almost felt like watching an episode of Band of Brothers, rather than that terrible episode of Star Trek Enterprise where Archer went back in time to WWII. Loved the whole look/feel of the ep and from the title of next week's episode I have a feeling that we might get another period piece.
I think what we have to take from this is instead of looking at ratings on a week-to-week basis we should look at an overall season basis to get an average. You can't judge a show's overall viewer based on weekly ratings only, because people aren't always going to be able to watch live or remember that its on (I forgot actually lol, with season and series finales going on I forget Sanctuary still has a few episodes).
I am, however, disappointed with Sanctuary's first 20-episode season. I expected more cohesiveness and a more connected plot, instead we still get random episodes with a bit of an overall plot, but the once an episode dealing with the season's main plot is over, that's about all you hear about it until the next big episode.
I HOPE SYFY GOES UNDER. THAT'S WHAT THEY DESERVE FOR TREATING LOYAL FANS LIKE GARBAGE AND PANDERING TO REDNECKS.
Well I think we can say for certain, Syfy experiment of showing original material on Mondays have been a complete and utter flop. An there no hiding from this one. Even SGU did consistently better in this time slot than Sanctuary is doing. Syfy need to change there strategy and some new management at the top. An I think us fans need to keep applying pressure to Syfy management.
Only Idiots get things wrong twice. First with Universe than Sanctuary now, can't they see that the only thing they are doing is hurting the show? Even when and if Sanctuary gets back into Friday, it will certainly loose credibility with those that pay to announce adds in the intervals of the shows.
Well I think we can say for certain, the Syfy experiment of showing original material on Mondays has been a complete and utter failure. And there’s no hiding from this one. Even SGU did consistently better in this time slot than Sanctuary is doing. Syfy needs to change their strategy and try some new management at the top. And I think we fans need to keep applying pressure on the Syfy management.
syfy needs to make room for moved stuff from other comcast / nbc networks and next year round 1 of the NHL.
Welcome to trying to run a genre show against monsters like Dancing With the Stars... SyFy really needs to write off this experiment with moving genre shows to the fall and trying to compete with long-established shows with a massive audience appeal as a bad idea and move the genre shows back to summer/winter where they will do wonderfully... Anyone want to start a petition to bring back a 5-hour block of SciFi Friday with Warehouse 13, Eureka, Sanctuary, Blood and Chrome and a new Stargate show?
Woohoo! Finally some good news!