What a week for Garret Dillahunt! Two season finales that are almost certainly series finales. First, on Life in his role of Roman Nevikov and tonight on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles where he's played the role of Cromartie and John Henry. I wish it was as easy to pull stats for television as baseball because if it were I could find out easily whether any actors have ever starred in two series finales in one week before.
I don't really know or care whether some sites have legitimate "Terminator cancellation confirmation" (or for that matter, legitimate copies of finale scripts) or whether they were scams. We'll find out on the script tonight. As for the show being canceled, sources are not required, the show will absolutely not be renewed. That hasn't really been in doubt since October.
TV is actually a business that is run by the numbers! Sure, we're biased because we're TVbytheNumbers, but like it or not, the ratings do matter. I get it, some people don't like that. But that's like not liking that the sun rises in the east instead of the west. There's just not much to be done about it.
TSCC's fate was sealed even before it moved to Fridays, and if anyone thought Friday was really going to help its prospects for next year, I don't understand why. But hey, it enabled FOX to air all the episodes, and the fans ought to be happy about that.
I believe FOX really did want to give Fridays a try to see what happened. But what happened wasn't good - it hasn't been good for Dollhouse either. Let me explain. Sure, the expectations are LESS on Fridays. Those shows didn't need to perform as well as House and Hell's Kitchen, Fringe or Bones. There is no doubt about that. But unfortunately, for fans of TSCC and Dollhouse, CBS has set the bar for Friday night expectations for new airings of scripted dramas. Currently that bar is set (in its last new episode) at a 2.6 rating with adults 18-49 for Ghost Whisperer and a 1.9 rating for Flashpoint.
FOX may have been very OK with TSCC pulling even 75% of what Ghost Whisperer does. Unfortunately it's been pulling 50%-60%. While expectations were lower, they were not that much lower.
Dollhouse faces similar challenges. It's currently doing about 78% of what Flashpoint does, but since Flashpoint only performs at ~73% of Ghost Whisperer, the expectations for Dollhouse versus Flashpoint were probably that it do at least 85%-90% as well. And unfortunately it's doing a little less than 80%.
Sure, it's possible Dollhouse could turn things around in its last four episodes, but that's not very likely. And again, while FOX's expectations for scripted shows are indeed lower on Friday, there can be no doubt that both shows are underperforming FOX's hopes.
If DVD sales are high for Dollhouse, anything is possible. If the Terminator movie winds up being a blockbuster that leads to massive sales of season one and season two DVD sets of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, could it be resurrected? Sure. But I don't know how that is going to shake out. What I am certain of, however, is that when FOX announces its lineups for the 2009-2010 on May 18 none of that, nor online viewing is going to matter. Neither show will be announced as being on the 2009-2010 lineup.
Nope, I don't have any inside skinny, haven't seen an official press release and don't really care whether the sets have been torn down or left up. I just care about what makes sense based on the numbers, and in the case of TSCC, the numbers aren't remotely good enough to even be considered a bubble show. There's a much better case for bubble-dom for Dollhouse, but relative to even Flashpoint, not a very good case for it, really.
I'm looking forward to tonight's finale of TSCC. I hope it's great. The good news is that some day, Summer Glau will be back. Just not on that show.
While TVbytheNumbers.com has an incredible track record for predicting series success and failure, its equations are not yet applicable for the future of TV… which involves mostly data not released by the studios. TSCC is caught between the past and future systems. TSCC is an international mega success, enjoys super DVD sales, huge iTUNES, paid downloads and streaming. Stop predicting failure and start figuring out how to adjust your formulas to access and reflect this information and TVbytheNumbers will be the 21st century Nielsen!
Summer Glau will be back??
where?
I’m not as hopeful (delusional?) as HopeCA is but at the same time I think TSCC might have one saving grace. If Terminator Salvation comes out and is a box office blow out I can’t imagine the Fox network not giving it a limited mid-season pick up.
I mean, there’s no reason for them to necessarily cancel it. The show’s owned by the same parent company so they don’t need to strike the sets necessarily. They can release the cast and still keep them under contract “in case of a pickup”
Again, I think it’s probably gone for good but if you want to pin your hope on something I’d say the movie is your best bet
at this point it’s almost a given that Terminator: Salvation will be a massive hit…i would just like to point out the irony that were this movie released in conjunction with the show, say to build up some sort of momentum in an attempt to bring the show back….no one would be able to stay home and actually watch b/c of the fact that it airs on a friday!
now i know there’s plenty of excuses floating around saying that huge new hit movie ‘A’ is what is ruining fox’s friday nights, and while it most certainly is mainly excuses, there must be a small grain of truth to that…and this scenario makes it glaringly obvious (yes i am ignoring that releasing a summer “tentpole” movie does not overlap with the tv season, and yes i am looking past the fact that TSCC was a dud midweek as well)
irony…
I hear the rumble of fanboys in the not so distant future
Tom, it won’t matter how well Salvation does at the box office unless that leads to increased buying of TSCC DVDs. If it does, WB might offer it to FOX so cheaply that FOX won’t care if it gets a 1.3 rating. There’s no chance FOX will even nibble otherwise, and there’s no chance WB will steeply discount it unless Salvation has meaning for TSCC’s DVDs.
I’m pretty sure that’s how it would have to play out. And it’s merely a guess, but my guess is Salvation won’t be particularly meaningful to DVD sales of TSCC.
“where he’s played the role of Cromartie and John Henry”
Don’t forget Laszlo, star of Beast Wizard VII.
You’re just loving to be the bringer of bad news don’t you…
You have no proof, and your equations are flawed 100%.
You compare TSCC to shows that are not on Fridays, to shows that are not on the same time slot, to shows that are not on the same network, and to shows that do not even have the same audience demographics.
What you’re doing is exactly like me, saying, “Oh yes, a human mission to Saturn would not be difficult, since my formulas for going to the moon held up. It will only take a little longer that’s all.”
WB approved T4 and T5, because it predicts great success. This is also more evidence that Fox and WB would have to be stupid not to approve of a Season 3. Worse, Fox would have to be absolutely brain dead to cancel TSCC, DAYS BEFORE Terminator 4 release. Severely damaging WB-Fox relations and giving Journalists the opportunity to write front-page headline stories about how TSCC was canceled days before T4 release. Even “Silently announcing next schedule” will not save Fox from the backlash.
TSCC’s numbers are adequate, they would be the same for any other show if it lived through the same scheduling problems. Dollhouse being so hyped up and having an almost similar fate to TSCC, is just more evidence that Fridays are not made for scifi.
You cannot give me a single statistic that proves that if any other show lived through the same schedules, it would have performed better than TSCC. You act like as if, TSCC produces horrible episodes, and thus people tune out… Yet, every person I meet (and I meet many people) who has watched TSCC , more than one episode, has loved the series and praised it for its quality. Are they all insane? Are they all wrong?
TV is a NUMBERS game… but you use NUMBERS IN ABSOLUTE, rather than NUMBERS IN RELATIVE to each circumstance.
Execute: sorry, but I don’t love being the harbinger of doom, and TSCC’s numbers are awful relative to *any* circumstance for a scripted show on broadcast television. We don’t need proof. Shows with ratings like TSCC are never renewed. If it had started out on cable, things might be different. But, it didn’t.
Btw, other than Average + sum… you guys don’t seem to know anything else about statistics… You make no graphs… you don’t use statistic functions, ever heard of distributions? Variance? Standard deviation? Normal distribution? Gamma distribution? Anything?
we have heard of all those things. We do have some charts and we did look at distributions and deviations and found that they didn’t seem to matter in renewal analysis and that simple averages tell the tale. If you want to start a site that does all that, have at it! We’ll definitely take a look.
By the way, have you studied these graphs? Have you compared graphs with other shows? This is the kind of information, that would get your site lots of hits. Instead of just constant “Doll house is dead, TSCC is dead” posts.
http://image.wetpaint.com/image/1/SGSFMQdi9tPqfOvZpV2eHw93073/GW705H424
http://image.wetpaint.com/image/1/-KJcp0nji6v3k3BwaUnhEg33447/GW483H291
I’m sure you’ll just say “it’s still horrible bla bla bla”… That’s great you’re giving your opinion, but no one cares about negative opinion. Positive opinion is always in demand.
can’t believe life is lifeless … T.T. that final episode was so good…. tscc is gonna end it with sarah talking to a priest… sounds dull… T.T.
Execute99 says:
“Btw, other than Average + sum… you guys don’t seem to know anything else about statistics… You make no graphs… you don’t use statistic functions, ever heard of distributions? Variance? Standard deviation? Normal distribution? Gamma distribution? Anything?”
Kurtosis? WHERE’S THE DAMN KURTOSIS?
This site is getting really cheap. Anything for another hit right? You’ve posted the same story about a billion times now. Maybe you should follow Hibberd’s lead when he said he’d stop posting TSCC stories back in February.
Jesus Christ, man, don’t scare me like that!! When I saw the title I though you had an official cancellation announcement. That was low. No matter how sure you are, don’t use a title like that unless you have something official!!
Execute: It’s not a negative opinion or a positive opinion, it is analysis (that you don’t like) based on numbers (that you don’t like). Since the simplicity of the analysis hasn’t impacted the accuracy of it for any one hour scripted dramas, we’re not prone to move off the approach we use. So far as I know, we have no special powers that force people to read content they don’t want to read (Bill might, but if he does he hasn’t shared his evil plot with me).
When the 18-49 averages are vastly lower than average (and vastly lower than other scripted dramas on Fridays) the fate is bad. That’s just the way it is. You seem to have trouble accepting that. I love the show LIFE on NBC (and definitely enjoyed it more than TSCC), but feel no differently about its fate, no matter how the numbers are crunched. I *wish* the numbers were different, but that wish doesn’t change how I look at Life’s numbers. It seems like your wishes for TSCC do influence how you look at the numbers. And, it’s a free country! Have at it.
Boris – ha. I don’t see a future where the show statuses in the renew or cancel indexes are changed to things like “mesokurtotic”, but you never know…
How weird is it that people remember that TSCC has had time slot adjustments, but yet forget that it was pulling in horrible numbers on crucial nights (Mondays). They pulled it from Mondays for the same reason FOX swallowed Drive after 4(ish) episodes: It was killing the ratings for the show’s lead-out.
However, I do see how the rabid fanboys would hate this article. It kind of alludes to annoucing the show’s cancelation without it having actually been cancelled.
Regardless, this show’s ratings have been a plague to every show around it. And I’m not even being bias AGAINST the show. I own and enjoyed Season One. It had mad potential. Yet it seems like the writers didn’t know where to take it. The plot (until recently) has BARELY MOVED. Are THEY waiting to see how the movie goes? We spent a WHOLE EPISODE at a sleep clinic, and her dreams were even boring! I wouldn’t even call those nightmares. Season Two hasn’t even found a focus. Even Summer has had less to do with the show.
So to tvbythenumbers: I agree with your article, while I don’t agree with the misleading caption (as if you were announcing it’s been officially cancelled).
To the fanboys (and remember, I liked the show at the beginning): You have to step back and look at this objectively. Once this show’s gone, you should check out Supernatural.
Robert Seidman says:
“Boris – ha. I don’t see a future where the show statuses in the renew or cancel indexes are changed to things like ‘mesokurtotic’, but you never know…”
While I was mostly animated by bewilderment over the mention of “the Gamma distribution,” I suppose one could well imagine the possible utility of data visualization in analyzing fine-grained Nielsen data. Consider this, but (loosely) with “flights” being viewers and airports being programs:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5a6p58