Some who watched on DVR watched it the same night the show aired (around 400,000) so were in the ~2.21 million Live+SD number we originally reported for it a couple of weeks back.

The show won’t be getting any more “expensiver” if it has a 10th season, as all the above-the-line players (key cast and crew) signed two-year contracts for Season 9 AND 10.

And below-the-line costs will be the same as always, so it’ll average out to around $2M per episode, if they do a Season 10, which is the same as Season 8 and 9′s average cost.

In-fact, below-the-line spending has increased, because Tom Welling gets paid more in gross points. This is why Season 9 has more production values – especially when it comes to visual and special effects – than Season 8 and before.

Another key factor in making Season 10 likely, is that the CW don’t pay full-whack for the series. Production costs are split fairly evenly. IIRC the CW pays $1M out of the $2M episodic budget and gets a chunk of merchandise/international sales. As they command $70,000 per 30-second commercial, they make a lot of money relative to their investment.

WB of course reel it in. They break even just from international sales to the UK, Europe and Canada (in-fact, with the UK they just signed a $10M contract for a 10-season syndication package for NBC UK) – Asian, African and Latin American sales are bonus, as well as DVD/BR sales, AND local syndication (which they’ve yet to really tap into).

Unlike some networks, CW has chosen here to show the increases over LIVE viewing. Live viewing numbers are never reported anywhere. The overnight and weekly results already contain some portion of DVR viewing. For the week above, the reported L+SD (live plus same day DVR viewing) was 3.53 million for Vampire Diaries, so the additional amount added to the numbers we regularly report was around 810,000.

In the “nearly 1.4 million additional” that they mention included almost 600,000 viewers that were already reported.

So where’s MP in the press release? Isn’t MP also an original from the CW,besides 90210 and other crappy shows from Dawn?

The CW sucks badly. If not for their veteran shows like OTH, SV and SPN…the network should have closed down earlier.

It’s got the entire superman mythology behind it as well as nine years. It should be able to pull its own. If it doesn’t return next year it won’t be because CW moved it to Friday… it will be because it’s an older show with a cast that keeps getting more expensive each year. Do people really want this stuff to run forever? Friday for Smallville was a bit of a show of faith. They knew it was the only show that would be able to hold an audience on that night. It’s like saying FOX moved FRINGE to Thursday to kill it. They moved it there to be a powerhouse on a big night for ad money… it didn’t work out the way they planned, but it wasn’t like they went out of their way to sacrifice it. Believe it or not, CW would prefer if Smallville was doing better… and if the profits justify it they will most definitely bring it back… they’re not trying to “kill it” on fridays… nor are they taking it for granted. It has enough history to pull its own weight.