'Dollhouse' premieres soft; 'Terminator' dives Expectations were low. But they weren't quite this low. The series premiere of Joss Whedon's "Dollhouse" was seen by 4.7 million viewers Friday night and garnered a 2.0 preliminary adults 18-49 rating and 6 share. It was beaten in the 9 p.m. hour by ABC's "Supernanny" (6.1 million viewers, 2.2/7) and is the lowest-rated scripted series premiere on a major broadcast network this season aside from NBC's now-defunct "Crusoe." "Dollhouse" was paired with the midseason return of "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" (3.7 million, 1.3/5), which was shifted from its previous Monday post. "Terminator" came in third place in the hour and hit a series low (by like 27%). "Terminator" beat NBC's "Howie Do It" (3.9 million, 1.2/4), but not by much. Both "Ghost Whisperer" (10.3 million, 2.4/8) and "Wife Swap" (4.3 million, 1.5/5) did better. The performances represent a disappointing debut for what was, on paper, a good idea: creating a male-skewing sci-fi block to go against CBS' night-topping female-skewing crime shows. Fox didn't expect to win against CBS, but had some hope of coming out ahead of ABC's reality shows. But "Terminator" was sinking in the ratings earlier this season and "Dollhouse" has suffered from negative buzz and creative trouble for months. Critics, overall, seemed disappointed with Whedon's latest effort. Fox had a third-place finish for the evening despite airing full-budgeted dramas. "Dollhouse" fared OK against two of its competitors, with CBS' Canadian import "Flashpoint" (8.9 million, 1.9/6) and NBC's ailing "Friday Night Lights" (3.5 million, 1.1/3) pulling lower numbers. It also did better than last year's short-lived "Canterbury's Law" in the slot. At 10 p.m., an episode of ABC's "20/20" (10.9 million, 3.4/11) about the impoverished hill people of the Appalachian Mountains drew the newsmagazine's largest Friday audience in more than four years (ABC, in fact, won the night over CBS, which is rare). Yes, there was a whole morbid curiosity "real-life 'Deliverance'" aspect to its popularity. But give ABC and Diane Sawyer credit for convincing so many people to watch a report on poverty. Usually a newsmagazine needs an octuplet mom to pull off those kind of numbers.
Friday is notoriously known as the graveyard for TV shows. I don't see why this news would be surprising to anyone Choosing to premiere this show on a Friday was a dumb idea.
I missed it last night, will have to check out the online feed of it. Nothing Joss Whedon has ever done has disappointed me, so I am hopeful that it will get more viewers.
Fox's decision on that. Indeed Friday is a grave yard. Not sure how they put it there. And as for Sarah Conner, there are way too many shows on Monday. You have ....House, 24, How I met Your Mother, Big Bang Theory, Chuck. If they felt it needed to be moved, they should have tried another day in the week before moving it to Friday, but then the shows was always feared to be taken off. I'm sure Doll House will develop its cult status, but of course that cult status never seems to be enough, especially if they don't have a Nielsen box. Although, a lot of people hitting up their website is another way to show there is a demand.
Heroes is on Mondays as well. It's not getting the 11-14 million viewers it did in the first season but it's been teetering between 7 and 10m still. Mondays is a very crowded night for television I was actually kind of worried about Lie to Me when that premiered as well because of LOST being on at the same time but LOST's ratings have fallen a lot this season and Lie to Me isn't doing too bad since it's following American Idol.
Forgot about Heroes. Have not seen it since the first season. I'm going to try to catch up soon, but I have yet to hear good things consistently. As for Lost, most of America is too stupid and doesn't like things that take time. So I can see how it would lose a following eventually, even if it's finally ramping the story up and throwing more interesting things in. Lie to me looks interesting but just too much on... I got to check that out soon. Well, I'll hope that Fox pays attention to the online activity of those who want to see Doll House but don't want to stay home on Friday to watch. Although DVR's of course are the other option.
I'm pleasantly surprised with this. Considering that this is on Friday, this is pretty good. Especially since the new head of Fox loves the show and has a history of supporting critically-loved but commercially unsuccessful shows, like The Office, and 30 Rock. Eventually those two shows got popular, so hopefully this will too. In regards to the episode, I thought it was pretty good. Didn't blow me away like Whedon's previous work, but still pretty good. The thing about Joss' shows is that they get better as they go along. Just look at the quality difference between Firefly's pilot (The Train Job) and the late-season episodes (Objects In Space, Ariel).
Hmm... The first episode wasn't that great. That being said, I still think the series has a lot of potential. (The last two minutes were the only thing that stood out.)
How the hell do the ratings people know the AGE of the people watching their shows? I've never understood that, and it's fucking creepy to think about.
Nielsen, the company in charge of that, has "test" families, and they keep track of what those families watch, and the ages of all the members in said family.
Yah in my opinion the process for ratings and view counts is really stupid and inaccurate. Shows people say are losing interest seem to be having the exact opposite effect where I live and shows people say are doing great only seem to be doing decent here. I understand that doesn't mean nationally the shows are doing the same as here, but I think geograpics play a major role in what people watch. Maybe its just me and my friends, but I think people tend to watch things that all their friends watch, so that they can socially interact with people on the subject matter. I know that is why I picked up on the office and now I love it. I also picked up on Heroes because this community seemed so into it. I just think it's sad to see shows die only because the estimated ratings are too low. If that happens to any of my shows... I'll cry lol.
Wow. That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. That'd be about as accurate as me trying to throw an egg through a swinging tire from about 300 yards away.