The Friday night 10pm premiere of The Pillars of the Earth averaged 690,000 viewers between Starz (423,000) and Encore (267,000).
press note from Starz:
Despite robust Free On Demand sampling with our affiliates and additional online opportunities, preliminary viewership data for The Pillars of the Earth netted across Starz & Encore at 10PM ET/PT a combined viewership P2+ figure of 690,000 individuals watching the first two hours of the 8-hour event.
Pillars will not be on Encore for new episode premiers going forward. See below for Starz & Encore breakdown
Additional Sunday airing on Starz and on other Starz theme channel airings will almost certainly send this figure well over distinct 1 million viewers, and will take a couple of weeks for the significant on-demand/online sampling to come in (based on past experience for our other originals).
I have no way of knowing if that is a good showing for a pay channel. It doesn't sound that good to me, thoughts?
given the range of performance for Starz it's kind of in the middle. It's not awesome, but at Starz' best for any original stuff (Spartacus) it's over 1 million viewers, and at its worst under 100,000
It's better than most shows Starz airs.
Since Starz is available in a lot fewer houses than cable and other pay channels (approx. 22 million), these numbers aren't that bad. If I'm not mistaken, I believe the highest Spartacus ever got on Starz was 1.3 million viewers — and that number was considered a huge success. Party Down didn't even get enough viewers to be statistically significant.
I think Starz was looking to gain credibility more than ratings with this series. Ian MacShane automatically does that – and the series is getting mostly positive reviews.
I agree that this is an acceptable rating for Starz.
On a different note, is anybody else wondering where the US$ 40 mil budget went? I wished this had been an HBO adaptation. They would have made an effort to pace it more elegantly. Watching this I felt as if i was being ushered through the main bullet points of the book without a possibility to breathe in the beauty of the story. I hope this is just to introduce the characters.
As someone who hasn't read the book, I managed to enjoy the show very much. It was very fast-paced and I hope there'll be more room to breathe in subsequent episodes. Even if there won't be, I'll still be watching! The show was visually STUNNING and the cast was amazing. Definitely very enjoyable.
As for the ratings, that's slightly better than how Spartacus did on its Starz & Encore premiere, which was something like 0.67 million viewers. This is 0.69 million, so the starting point is the same. Let's hope Pillars rises, because it's certainly ambitious, quality TV entertainment!
fortunately it really doesn't matter of it rises or doesn't. it's an 8-hour miniseries and they aren't selling ads. You can be sure you'll get to see the whole thing regardless what happens in the coming weeks.
Given that this is essentially a bought in programme rather than commisioned by Starz, I think Starz will be pleased with the results. I look forward to Gods of the Arena, Torchwood and Camelot.
I imagine Spartacus season 2 will air in summer or fall depending on when the filming schedule ends.
Well for what is worth, this is just a mini-series so no matter how low it could go, all the episodes produced will be aired, I don't think it will reach Party Down/Gravity numbers though
I maybe should have mentioned that I never read the book myself. I still felt as if I was forced to wolf down a big chunk of meat not allowed to taste the seasoning…
Next question: does anyone know if Starz licensed this exclusive or will there be a second window on the networks? I recall that that a disaster mini Scott Free and Tandem produced together was first licensed to Syfy and then got a 2nd window on ABC.
I've read 'Pillars of the Earth' as well as 'World Without End' and it obviously moves quickly without a lot of back story and scene set up. This sort of original seems to be the MO for pay TV lately ( Showtime will be launching 'The Borgias' Spring 2011) and I think when you figure in replays and on demand, and word of mouth , the series will push over 1 million viewers.
There's no doubt now that the mini-series format was the right choice for this show. It would have been insane if they had cut down any of this stuff.
As for the ratings, I naively hoped for higher, but mostly because I was hoping that if it did amazing then they could do a quick turn-around and start filming World Without End. Oh well, if I'm really lucky…
BTW, was I the only one who was very impressed with the special effects. Maybe it's just because I watched in in HD, but seriously, somebody put a surprising amount of money and time into that portion of the budget.
I watched these on Netflix.. I thought they were good.. I look forward to seeing the additional episodes.
I enjoyed the 1st 2 episodes and look forward to seeing the others. Watched on Netflix
Yeah, but I want as many people as possible to see it 'cause it's so pretty.
And also, I don't want Starz to be discouraged about doing stuff like this in the future too. Premium cable is the place where the most ambitious shows are these days and I don't want them to have any reasons to stop producing them. There's nothing better than an ambitious TV show!
I watched the first episode and it really didn't capture my attention.
I'm done.
If it was a series I might have tuned in later (Spartacus got much better) but I'm pretty sure this just isn't going to change much over 8 episodes.
I hope this doesn't discourage Starz but I'm not sure who they're aiming their shows at. They're shows are all over the place content wise. Thats not how you build a loyal audience (if you let me tell it).
They announced at MIPTV that they will produce World Without Ends next year.
I received the distributor's press release: “The first two episodes increase audience share for the slot by 87%” Imagine if they said: “2% of the 22 mil subscribers” or ” 0.4% of the 115 mil US HH”. Watched the second episode and like it much better than the first one. It's a great show, no question!
I am not the only one watching this series on Netflix. I wonder what the Netflix numbers are?
I thought it was AMAZING – 10/10. The book was one of the best I have ever read and the TV adaptation lived up to my high expectations. Amazing casting.