Ratings Report: 90210, FRINGE, GOSSIP GIRL Thriving
Privileged and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles not so much.
I’ve been keeping track of the Nielsen ratings — those all-powerful numbers that help networks determine advertising rates and thus the future of TV shows — for various rookie and seasoned series covered her at Grrl TV.
Although most shows have yet to start airing fresh episodes, there’s plenty of data on early starters like The CW’s 90210, Gossip Girl, and Privileged, as well as Fox’s Fringe and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. The picture is fairly or exceedingly rosy for a few of the shows (90210, Fringe, Gossip Girl) and completely the opposite for the remaining ones (Privileged and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles).
The biggest and most positive news pertains to Gossip Girl, which achieved its highest ratings ever in every key demographic during the September 15 episode “The Dark Night,” and Fringe, J.J. Abrams’ new Fox spookfest and heir apparent to the X-Files fandom, which had a really big night yesterday, according to fast overnight ratings, when it retained an impressive 93% of House’s 14.41 million viewers.
As a result, Gossip Girl can boast about series highs of 3.7 million viewers overall (a big deal for the struggling CW network), and Fringe can flaunt its September 16 ratings of 13.36 viewers all together, a significant increase over its series-premiere performance of approximately 9 million viewers in total. Can those numbers last, though? We’ll see in subsequent weeks. Personally, I thought the second episode was less captivating than the first after the initial mesmerizing scenes.
90210 is also performing respectably (at least for The CW) since it managed to attract 3.34 million viewers overall on its third outing, a slight improvement on the previous week’s total of 3.31 million viewers. This despite airing directly opposite the fifth-season premiere of Fox’s medical behemoth House. I honestly wasn’t expecting the lightweight yawner to do so well.
Now for the “Uh-oh” news. While The CW’s Gossip Girl and One Tree Hill were having the night of their lives, so to speak, Monday’s Sarah Connor Chronicles saw a very substantial 13% drop in viewers from its season premiere the week before. Thanks to the decline, the series only lured 5.49 million viewers to its most recent episode. In contrast, the September 8th second-season premiere attracted 6.34 million viewers.
Even worse, particularly from advertisers’ perspective, the show’s numbers in the highly coveted 18–49 and 18–34 demographics tumbled a troubling 17% and 10%, respectively. I don’t get it since I think Terminator is holding up pretty well creatively so far this season.
Finally, it looks like The CW’s airy dramedy Privileged won’t be able to claim the staying power of its fellow newcomer 90210 after plummeting 17% in overall viewers, resulting in 2.43 watchers this week as opposed to 2.9 million for its series premiere last week.
The last number wasn’t all that notable, either, making it no surprise that Privileged also repeated its dead-last performance in the coveted demos, losing viewers even in the age groups the series seems to target. If it weren’t on a poorly rated network, I’d say Privileged has a limited run ahead of it. Even on a poorly rated network, the same is probably true, unless the situation improves soon.
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POSTED IN: 90210, Fringe, Gossip Girl, Privileged, Ratings, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
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