The New York Times has a story about Rescue Me returning for its fifth season on Tuesday. Though it's much more focused on the show itself than the ratings, it did touch on them a bit:
Ratings for “Rescue Me” through its first four seasons were remarkably steady, with the first telecast of each new episode drawing between 2.7 and 3 million viewers. But thanks to the writers’ strike of late 2007 and early 2008 the show has been off the air for 18 months, the kind of hiatus that almost always diminishes a show’s audience.
FX has responded with several unusual votes of confidence: a supersize 22-episode order (a rarity for basic cable, where a season typically is never more than 13 episodes), a plan to run those shows over 22 straight weeks, a 10-city “Rescue Me” comedy tour headlined by Mr. Leary, and a commitment to a sixth season of 18 episodes, to begin in 2010.
I'll be very interested to see how it performs, but I don't think FX is likely using Damages as a benchmark for expectations. Damages drew around a million in its finale, but even for FX, it is not a show with broad appeal. A better benchmark might be Nip Tuck, which generally seemed to average between 2.0 and 2.4 million during its second half of its fifth season that ran from early January to early March. That might set set the high-water mark for FX at this point, and I'm guessing if Rescue Me performs within that range, FX will be ecstatic.
i will be watching cant wait
Catching up with this show on hulu. I’ve seen a good bunch of episodes and always liked it, but always fell behind for one reason or another. Also, 2 million sounds about right (I hope, at least).
This is going to bomb.
Well, it’s nice to see a network throwing resources behind a show it believes in! That list of things they’re doing to promote it is pretty impressive.
I never watched rescue me when it aired live, but a few months ago my brother bought the dvd’s so I watched seasons 1-4, and I liked it a lot so I’m pretty stoked its coming back, though I’m kind of surprised about the 18 eps for season 6. I kind of figured after these 22 episodes they would go back to 13 and probably have 2 more seasons and end the series at the nice round number of 100 episodes.
cool? What is your theory that it’s going “to bomb”?? It’s a solid show. It has been off the air for a while but that’s no fault of the show and it’s fans know that. I expect a very solid performance.
The fifth season of “Rescue Me” premieres this week, and we’re counting the minutes until Denis Leary and the crew are back. But it wasn’t until recently that we realized we had a thing for TV firemen and didn’t even know it. Check out these great TV firemen who’ve lit up our small screens over the years and see if you do too.
http://www.getback.com/gallery/fireman-heroes/2986830