Final Update February 16, 2009, 5:30pm PT: now number one.
Updated update: as of 10:15p PT on 2/15 Dollhouse is now #2!
Update: as of 5pm PT on Sunday, February 15, Dollhouse has jumped to the fifth most downloaded show on iTunes.
We always hear about how well shows do on iTunes from fans of shows. No matter the show. It can be a show with very bad ratings that is sure to be cancelled and we'll still hear about the great iTunes rankings. Problem is the iTunes rankings are displayed at a point in time, and even if they weren't they don't really amount to much more than a rounding error compared to traditional television viewing.
Friday night's Battlestar Galatica is ranked higher on iTunes, than the premiere of Joss Whedon's Dollhouse is. But in round numbers, three million more people watched Dollhouse which averaged 4.7 million viewers on TV than BSG which has been pulling about 1.8 million viewers based on live plus same day DVR viewers.
BSG will add another 600,000 or so viewers when a full week's worth of DVR viewing is lumped in, but Dollhouse may add even more than that.
Because of NBC's willingness to post information about iTunes downloads, we know for example that the February 2 premiere of Heroes was downloaded off of iTunes less than 50,000 times in its first five days of availability. Exactly how much less than 50K is hard to say since NBC has lumped its video on-demand, mobile and downloading altogether. I'd guess that the 48,690 figure for the period of 2/2-2/6 represents iTunes almost 100% (from what I gather Netflix to Xbox 360 streaming is not included, but Amazon Unbox is included - I'd still ascribe almost all of it to iTunes). These shows do get downloaded more as time elapses, and you can see from the link above that the volume 3 finale on 12/15/08 had actually been downloaded more than 184,000 time by February 6.
As I peruse the current Top TV Episodes list, Heroes is #53. But when I looked Wednesday morning it was in the top five. Since iTunes won't allow you to specify time frames, there's really not much to be made of it. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is currently number 10 as I write this, and I promise you, even if it shoots to number one on iTunes and stays there, that won't make any difference at all in its renewal prospects, which have gone from awful, to even worse than awful. Friday night's TSCC is currently number 10, ranked higher than Dollhouse even though it was watched by a million fewer viewers.
Yes, Friday night's Battlestar Galactica is currently number one (and it was a frakkin' great episode if you wanted a heavy dose of the Cylon mythology, which I did). Dollhouse is number 19, but for all we know there are literally 18 downloads separating BSG from Dollhouse.
One thing I'd love to know is what percentage of the downloads come from Apple fanboys (and girls) who just felt the Apple fanboy (or girl) compulsion to buy an AppleTV. I'd peg the correlation between people who bought an AppleTV and people who watch Battlestar Galactica at nearly 100%. Now, software like Boxee allows you to watch stuff from Hulu directly via your AppleTV. Apple must hate this somewhat, because FREE on Hulu is $1.99 less than iTunes. Boxee has a Windows version in the works too that will work with Media Center PCs.
Speaking of which, BSG actually cast John Hodgman (who plays the role of "PC" in the Apple Mac advertisments in addition to his role as a correspondent on The Daily Show)" in Friday's Battlestar Galactica and while it was kind of funny and a little cool to see him there, mostly I found it distracting. I kept waiting for "I'm a Mac" to show up. Not only is Battlestar Galactica the show sometimes strange, so is it's treatment on Hulu, which when it comes to BSG advises:
Episodes 13-17 will be posted on Hulu the day after their TV broadcast. Subsequent episodes will be posted 8 days after their original broadcast date.
Friday night was episode 17, and it's on Hulu, so starting next week the remainder of the season will be delayed by 8 days, which is sure to make many o' BSG fan frakkin' damn the gods, before they go download it via Bit Torrent or OK, iTunes, but come on, it's number one on iTunes even when it's freely available on Hulu the next day!
I'm not sure what to make of it. The season 4.5 premiere drew around 2.1 million viewers on TV (live plus same day DVR) and then started hemorrhaging viewers the next couple of episodes before leveling off after the fourth episode. So NBCU/SciFi might not like the hit to the ratings, or they might not love giving something away that a bunch of BSG loving fanatics will pay a couple of bucks for. Either way, there are obviously some cases where NBCU is not completely comfortable with the notion of making shows readily accessible online for free.
I think people might want the episode if its good and i think itunes is good because u can just get ur ipod touch or whatever and watch it whereever you want: plus the ipodtouch is actually better in my opinion than the apple video on the pc in terms of picture quality.
Itunes ia annoying because i don’t beleive in pirating videos so if i can’t wait to buy the DVD, i end up spending like £10 more on itunes buying and watching the episodes. The only show that i do get straight after it airs is Heroes (and a britsh show ‘Being Human’) but thats because I brought the season pass and i don’t even watch the episodes: i just want to support it: which is why i’ll still end up buying the Season three boxset. Huh… such dedication. Anyway I think delaying the video by 8days is to make fans buy it online (Apple or amazon whatever) who won’t pirate because it won’t help their show.
Oh who cares. The “i-tunes” numbers? hulu numbers? Insignificant next to bittorrent numbers…
As I check just ONE tracker (eztv) currently there are AT THIS MOMENT:
BSG 4-15 (current episode)-small file 350meg:
15,030 Seeds, (completed) 4,782 peers (downloading) and a total of 166,518 completed downloads of the episode.
The HD version (1.09 gig)BSG 4-15 (current episode)
3559 Seeds (completed), 2282 peers (downloading) and a total of 21,723 completed downloads of the file.
That is just ONE FRACKING TRACKER. There are tons of them on the net.
Dollhouse is getting similar numbers, but Galactica has been achieving these numbers for YEARS.
The media loves to poke around the edges of what we the viewers are doing, but y’all don’t have a clue to be honest when it comes to actual “viewers”.
The numbers I just provided are just a snapshot as of “right now”. Even older episodes of this show have literally thousands of downloaders PER TRACKER.
It amazes me that people still think that the “pirates” are some small niche. Start tracking the actual downloads on torrents and you begin to see a slightly different set of numbers that doesn’t EVER hit the creaky nielsen ratings. Of course those videos aren’t encumbered by a bunch of viagra or tampon commercials either.
Once the entertainment industry figures out how to embrace these technologies, then perhaps some of the more intelligent and watchable shows won’t fall off the radar quite as quickly.
In the meantime, technology rolls on…about 10 years beyond what hollywood seems to understand or get.
Casey, while I understand the point you are making and me as a European I consider myself as “one of those several thousands” (though I use Usenet instead of torrents), you have to understand that they might actually know that their shows are being downloaded that much, they just don’t care right now because there is no money to be made there.
The only possible solution I could see here is for the commercials to be shown during the shows and then I don’t mean product placement as we see with dodge for example in TSCC, but actual commercials shown during and in the show somehow. But as long as there are options to download the show the next day off of usenet without any commercials or without waiting for network television in my country to buy the airing rights and then suddenly stop airing it after 8 episodes “because the summer programming has kicked in”, my choice remains clear and I’ll just keep supporting my favorite shows by buying their DVD boxsets.
Even if they were able to sell product placement based on illegal downloads (which they never would be able to do without legitimizing something that the studios are very very much against) the problem is that more of those downloads are from people like Jean, who are not Americans, and therefore the advertisers don’t care. The numbers are much smaller if you were able to filter out all the non-American downloaders.
Julia, probably 50% less. Americans pirate big time.
Ask anyone in my industry and they’d say they’d trade the War on Drugs for a War on Piracy. Legalize drugs and make pirates pay.
One is stealing and hurting others. The other is doing drugs and hurting others on a much smaller scale (like driving while under the influence).
So, Nick, you work in the drugs industry?
But yeah, as long as most products in this world aren’t sold to an international market, advertisers won’t care at all for international viewing rates. But that leaves me to wonder how large of a percentage the international DVD sales are, compared to the US, when looking at the top television shows. This could (and probably will in some cases) make a network station decide to let a certain show run till the end of the season instead of cutting it off half way through, to get their final revenues from DVD sales.
I guess that would be a start, it won’t make a network decide to order another season, but in the future, perhaps…