Axiom's Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy

By John J. Joex

After ABC’s FlashForward started off the season with a big splash and a lot of talk that it would be the next big thing in Science Fiction television, it wrapped up its Fall run with numbers that have plummeted over 40% from its premiere. That show bowed in late September with a 4.1 rating in the 18-49 demographic and 12.4 million viewers. This past Thursday’s airing only pulled a 2.2 rating and 7.3 million viewers. Even worse, the show now goes on an extended three month hiatus and will not return until March 4th. This almost assures that FlashForward will be a one-season wonder. Unless the show turns around its attrition and builds back up its audience across its back-nine episodes, which is highly unlikely considering the trend it’s seen so far and the extended break, ABC will assuredly cut ties with the show. I have now raised the Cancellation Alert on this show to Medium (more on that in the next Cancellation Watch column).

Fringe, on the other hand, got a bit of good news this last week as it improved its numbers to the highest it has seen since its second season debut. Without new episodes of CSI and Grey’s Anatomy to contend with, the show managed a 2.5 rating and just under 7 million viewers. Not spectacular numbers, but at least the show saw an upswing. The bad news for the show, though, is that FOX will keep it in this timeslot throughout the second half of the season and will also give it a second hiatus in spring from February to April. I still believe that FOX will continue to show patience with this one, but if they do end up pulling the plug on it at the end of the season, they have no one but themselves and their poor scheduling decisions to blame.

Heroes continued its upward trend as it finished out the Fall with a 2.5 rating. Still, that show has become a shadow of its former self ratings-wise (Season 4 has actually been pretty good quality-wise, though). It has yet to even equal the numbers it saw at the end of Season 3, which were already pretty low. Dollhouse returned to wrap up its remaining episodes and did not cause any tremors in the ratings. During the first hour of its two episode block it barely bested a repeat of Smallville on the CW. And finally, Ghost Whisperer and Medium continue to win their timeslots on Friday evenings, but their numbers continue to be down from what CBS saw on that evening last year. Not certain if that will prompt CBS to make any changes during Spring, but these two are underperforming on a network notorious for have little patience with shows in the genre.

Here is the full breakdown of the numbers for all of the Science Fiction and Fantasy shows that aired on the broadcast networks this past week:

Source: TV by the Numbers

Previous Results: V Finally Levels Off

For more on the Cancellation Alert for each show, see our Cancellation Watch column