The overnight ratings numbers are in for the premieres of Dollhouse and Smallville and they’re not as rosy-looking as we’d like. Then again, it is Friday night and our favorite returning shows are up against some heavy hitters.
CBS dominated Friday night with their shoe-in season premiers of Ghost Whisperer and Medium. Both shows raked in over 8 1/2 million viewers.
Even the encore presentation of FlashForward dusted our favored shows by bringing in an additional 4.6 million viewers.
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Dollhouse premiered with 2.56 million viewers and Smallville’s 8 o’clock showing reaped 2.5 mil viewers. Not great numbers for sure – especially when they don’t lead into or have decent lead-in shows.
Smallville is the lead-in for America’s Next Top Model’s encore airing. Two 1/2 hour comedies, Seinfeld and a new comedy, Brothers, are the lead-in for Dollhouse.
The usual practice is to have like-genre programming follow each other. This is how Smallville got shoved out of Thursday nights, in favor of Vampire Diaries being paired up with Supernatural. Or at least put Vampire Diaries in the same time slot that viewers have been tuning into on the network. Again, another desirable factor.
At least Smallville and Dollhouse aren’t up against each other… as if that mattered.
Dollhouse is up against Dateline NBC, Friday Night SmackDown and Medium.
Smallville is battling Law & Order, Ghost Whisperer and what looks like encore airings of FlashForward. (Not sure that’s the regular schedule.)
As far as I see, neither network is probably expecting anything solid out of the overnight numbers and I hope, neither Fox or The CW would be looking to use ratings as an excuse to do anything drastic.
We can only wait… and see.
Source: TV By The Numbers
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20 Comments
Dawn Ostroff is to blame. I’m glad The Beautiful Life got canceled. Melrose Place is next…. Hopefully they move Smallville into earlier in the week… or hey… how about Smallville and Dollhouse back to back?
Smallville on Friday nights at 8 followed by a encore of America’s next top model, seriously CW, WTF. Smallville got off to a great start with Savior and looks only to improve. Smallville deserves more respect after saving the CW for more than three years.Other than Smallville and Supernatural what else is there to watch on the CW. Smallville is probably fine because it’s on the CW which doesn’t draw near the same ratings as the other major networks but Dollhouse which I haven’t seen but hear good things might be in trouble since they are on a major network used to bigger ratings. If this is Smallville’s last season I hope the CW give the Smallville show runners enough time to properly end a great series.
I really don’t care. just hope the show’s budget isn’t cut and i get to see a season 10. Stupid CW.
Though that would be a cool combo Lily, they’re on different networks… grr.
Well Friday night is now full of scifi shows, and will only get worst with SGU and Sanctuary coming backing in the next 2 weeks. It not a surprise the ratings are low, especially with no support from other genre shows, the fan base is very similar across all of these shows, we are simply spread to thin . Plus the fan base is full on intelligence people who will probably just download the show as and when they want to see it from the internet.
I how ever do not see smallville surviving into next season. The story is coming to a end, I will kill someone is clark not flying by the end of the season and a change in costume is a must. Through I can hope they do a spin off may be based on the Watchtower/justice league, I do not know. I do hope the network allows them to do a big send off, with a budget to match.
As to the Dollhouse the only reason the thin survive was because Fox did not want to deal with the consequences of cancelling a other of Whedon shows in the first season, mainly the PR disaster , it almost certainly cancelled and that was before it even started airing a second season.
Awh man!!! Smalllville “SAVIOR” rocked out loud. I don’t want the show to suffer because of the night it’s on.
@ Lily and Bruce
Yes,they are on different networks,but the are already back to back.
I love that both shows are on back to back.I just wish that they were on a different night.Tuesdays would be perfect,then they could both lead into Sons Of Anarchy and my night would be complete.
get rid of dullhouse and bring back the sarah connor chornicles.
A Wednesday night move for Smallville would be great provided Top Model gets bumped to 9PM and Smallville gets the 8PM slot.
I hope Dollhouse sticks around. I found the first episode to be absolutely great. Joss is getting to have some fun with his characters and it shows.
Dollhouse deserves to be around, and deserves to have more viewers than what it’s got. I don’t understand why people don’t like it or aren’t tuning in. Is it that they don’t understand what’s going on, or too lazy to try and figure it out? I really don’t understand it at all. Out of all the television shows, it’s got the most urgency and energy. It’s acting is superb and the writing is even better. And if people read these things on the internet or whatever, why don’t they try to get into it? I just don’t understand people.
However, about the ratings Dollhouse got, I believe I read that they renewed it because of the DVR viewings and the iTunes downloads and such. I hope those numbers are strong. I also read that if they are consistent to last year that they’d bring it back. Don’t know if that’s true but still. I’m hoping the show can bounce up to over 3 million viewers per episode. I think it would have the best chance to survive if it does that.
John Kees, in your opinion Dollhouse has great acting and writing, but in my opinion it has anything but. Personally, I really don’t see how anyone could think last season of Dollhouse was well written, but I guess these are opinions we’re talking about, so to each their own.
Also David, the reason Dollhouse was renewed is because Fox decided to renew either it or Sarah Connor, and Dollhouse had the higher proffit margin. Sarah Connor was actually produced by the Halcyon company which (owns the Terminator copyright) and meant that Fox had to pay a steep royality to air the show and didn’t have complete control over it. Therefore Dollhouse was actually made them more money last season even if it did have the lower ratings. Although by the end of the season I bet they’ll be wishing they had stuck with Sarah Connor instead. That show was almost universally praised whereas critics were lukewarm at best to Dollhouse. Heck, even the fan-based sites like Screenrant and AICN had their fair share of complaints about Dollhouse.
I agree Smallville should get moved to Wednesday nights or another time slot. I dont think Dallhouse is going to make it past this season, I wouldnt even be surprised if it didnt make it past the holidays
Whoever runs the CW is an idiot, and I mean that. Smallville has been their top rated show for YEARS despite them doing nothing to promote it. I see tons of commercials for Gossip Girl, 90210, Melrose Place, Vampire Diaries and even Supernatural, but I never see one for Smallville, and it was their highest rated show for years. It even set a record for the CW for the premiere as the highest rated Friday night primetime show in the network’s history. If they had any sense at all they would move it back to the middle of the week, in the slot the beautiful life had, and promote it.
@ Luke
Yes, everyone has a different opinion and the like, but what I’m noticing most from people is that if they liked Sarah Connor, they didn’t like Dollhouse at all. And vice versa as well. And I believe that that is letting people make quick decisions on certain aspects on both shows. I liked both shows a lot, but I’d still take Dollhouse over Sarah Connor for many reasons. And you made a good point about the reviews. However, after episode six for Dollhouse the reviews got a lot better, and Epitaph One set the course for the show. Both are pretty good shows and deserve to be on the air. More so than the other Fox shows like “The Cleveland Show” or “Brothers” or all the reality based stuff. And don’t get me started on shows on other networks that don’t belong. . .
On the other side, I’ve never watched Smallville, but I knew it was a good one for CW. Why they moved it, I don’t know. But if this is the last season for it, it’s a shame because no one is going to watch it.
The people who run the CW are idiots. Every show they have produced that’s has some real substance to it they ignore and all the crappy shows geared toward young teenagers they promote like there’s no tomorrow. During the CW first year they had a tv show Called Reba which they stuck on sunday at 7:30 and it averaged about 4 million viewers at that timeslot which is incredible. They canceled Reba, have never really promoted Smallville or Supernatural, didn’t pick up everwood, not to mention a billion other mistakes they have made. I hope the CW give the Smallville show runners enough time to end the series properly.
@Jon Kees, you’re right I am a Sarah Connor fan. However, I honestly did try to give Dollhouse a chance. I watched the entire first season in hopes that it would grow on me. I even watched the season premiere, but I think that unless the next couple episodes really blow me out of the water I’ll probably be done with it. The show has a good premise, I’ll definitely give it that, but it frustrates me because I really don’t think they’re making the most of the material.
I could go on in some detail as to why I feel that is, but suffice to say I think they’re placing the emphasis on the wrong elements. As a result, I believe the show is just a decent dramedy, that varries significantly in quality from week to week, when the premise really would allow it to be a terrific science fiction show if executed correctly. It feels like they’re barely scratching the surface of what the show should be and, after a year of waiting and not seeing much change, my best guess is that they showrunners don’t even realize the well could be running any deeper than it already is.
Also Jason, I agree with your reasoning completely. You’re right, Smallville gets a fraction of the promotion they’re other shows get and yet somehow is still their top rated series year after year. Why they would want to move their biggest hit to the Friday Night no man’s land and replace it with an unproven new series is beyond me.
Once again a network in this case the CW has tried and failed with it’s FRIDAY switch of what seems to be turning out to be the best season of Smallville yet. Sorry but most Smallville viewers weren’t CW Friday night viewers and just because you put a major show on that night doesn’t mean it will change. All it means is that the Powers that Be will probably decide to scrap another good series because of idiotic programming.
Same is true with Fox and their Friday choice for Terminator the Sarah Connor Chronicles a show that in it’s 2nd season was really gaining it’s legs but once again viewers didn’t switch nights and it was cancelled leaving the Brothel/Spy entity known as Dollhouse in order to keep it’s creator happy.
Terminator the Sarah Connor Chronicles died a horrible death and I’m sorry I hate to see Smallville fall to the same fate because of the executives decisions to play multiple chairs with shows that got good ratings on their original nights.
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