PLEASE NOTE: The DVR viewing makes comparisons difficult because we are comparing this year's August (actually July 27 - August 30) that has only 16 days worth of August's Live+7 DVR viewing to last year's August (July 28-August 31) where all of the live+7 numbers are included.
I would love to compare only live+SD with only live+SD numbers -- or full live+7 vs live+7. But we don't have access to the former, and the latter will not exist for at least another couple of weeks (and I doubt we'll see any updates).
With those disclaimers -- and granted they are big disclaimers -- aside, it looks like despite the record breaking successes with Warehouse 13, that Syfy is down year over year when comparing August '09 ratings to August '08.
In primetime, household rating was down 9%, and P2+ viewing was down 7% year over year. Viewing with women 18-49 was down 17% and overall 18-49 viewing was down 17% as well. It could be these difference will be made up for when the rest of the live+7 numbers are factored in.
My memory is so bad that even though I'm sure I watched Syfy last summer, I can't remember the schedule well, so I'm not sure that there weren't more original shows running last year than this year (perhaps Ghost Hunters started earlier in the summer?) and it could well be that scheduling differences make comparisons hard on top of all the disclaimers. But just looking at the numbers, it is perhaps to earlyto declare the rebranding efforts a success!
Bill can do a more in-depth analysis if he's motivated, or he can go back to the well of riling up TV Land fans!!
Funny you should write that, I was just about to poke Kyle XY fans again over the fact that ABC Family hasn’t expired without them. Their August 08/August 09 prime-time results were basically flat in P2+ viewing and adults 18-49.
Wasn’t BSG on last summer? and maybe the last season of Stargate Atlantis? SG1? Also the premiere of Sanctuary… my memory is faulty…
Surely… they had A LOT more series going on than… Warehouse 13 and Eureka, and that definitely played a part in the ratings being higher.
They had SGA and yes BSG but even with that they were down from the year before when they had BSG and SGA and SG1. I’ve been trying to learn about how ratings work specifically because I’ve been watching Scifi/Syfy scramble. They may have W13 but overall they’re getting a reputation for cheap movies, ‘now you see them now you don’t’ shows and ticking off their core. I used to really like this channel too.
Maybe they just permitted themselves to get out of the “only one-worded-horror-flicks-until-infomercial” formula they’ve been in for so long.
I don’t know why they didn’t spell their new name “T-h-e H-o-r-r-o-r C-h-a-n-n-e-l” because it would be far more accurate. And less cheesy, too. But I’ve felt that way for years…why I don’t watch it until _actual_ Sci-Fi like BSD/Firefly/etc comes on.
Other channels have trouble with naming, too:
Bravo “Gay can be fun” channel
HBO “Let’s kill somebody” channel
Lifetime “Why you should hate men” channel
Showtime “Let’s kill yer wife and go have sex” Channel
Yeah, maybe “SyFy” makes as much sense as everything else.
What keenly bothers me is shows like Dexter: so you can put yourself in the mind of a serial killer. So you can think about what you might do, instead. Creepy.
Dexter kills for the greater good.
He only kills criminals who slip through the cracks in the justice system.
I don’t watch Dexter, but isn’t Dexter a serial killer who *happens* to target people who “slip through the cracks in the justice system”? Or else wouldn’t one’s time be better spent patching up those cracks, rather than ritually murdering people?
I like the line about now you see them, now you don’t shows. One never, ever knows when or where a show will pop up on Syfy, how long a season will be, how long between seasons, etc. That can’t help.
But as for one-word horror movies… I think SyFy should make “Mansquito” the official network mascot.
Brian, for my last class for my TV degree I had to read a book which I am blanking on the name right now but can get for you as soon as I’ve unpacked (read: um… maybe sometime this year?) but the book has a whole discussion about the psychological reasons why people watch TV. One of them is as an outlet. You can’t go and kill people who (you think) deserve to die, because that’s not how society works. But you get to watch Dexter do it instead, which is a release of the tension caused by wishing some people would (hypothetically) die. It’s an interesting read.
And, Joseph, Dexter is a cop, so theoretically he is working to fill those cracks.
If the bulletins I found about last year’s 2008 Sci Fi schedule are right, the summer fare was Ghost Hunters (premiere July 9), Scare Tactics (same), Eureka 3.0 (July 29, only 8 episodes in this run), and Stargate Atlantis (July 11). Battlestar Galactica aired in 2008 but ran from April to June, not quite a summer schedule. Can’t find much beyond that of note.
Sooooooo… even swapping the record-setting show with Artie’s giant toy box in for the Stargate as a tent pole the ratings are still down overall? Ouch. Unless those other numbers factor things in upward, I would say SyFy rename success is a NoGo.
Soooo…they have a new ‘brand’, but only two dramas (one predating the re-branding) to back up the launch–and not much in the way of ‘original mini-series’ a la Lost Room and Taken. I think the “Syfy” campaign helped hype Warehouse 13 as a hit and shore up Eureka, but they still don’t have enough orginal programming–other than those supremely crappy weekend monster flicks–to back it up. A zillion commercials of Tracy Jordan floating beneath a chandelier on acid may have generated hype, but I still can’t imagine how it wouldn’ve convinced people to watch a 5 hour block of STNG reruns the fans have seen three dozen times already.
“And, Joseph, Dexter is a cop, so theoretically he is working to fill those cracks.”
With body parts.
Well, Sanctuary will be back in October, so that should help. It’s nearly as significant as Eureka and may overtake it this season if the promises of season two being better and edgier are true.
I’m really waiting to see how they recover Ashley from the Cabal and what further damage she does before they do, now that she can teleport like her father.