Axiom's Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy

By John J. Joex

The audience for Lost may have been dwindling over its past few seasons, but quite a number returned for the debut of the show’s sixth and final season. The two hour premiere in its new Tuesday night timeslot pulled a 5.6 rating in the 18-49 demographic and over twelve million viewers. That’s up from the last year’s premiere by 10%. Even the recap show that preceded the season premiere this year pulled over a 4.0 rating and close to ten million viewers. This suggests that the series will go out on a ratings high-note, though I wouldn’t be surprised to see these numbers tapper off some after those fans who have been away for a while decide it will take too much brain matter to get up to speed.

FOX’s Human Target received some bad news this week as it settled into what I guess will be its regular timeslot at 8 PM EST on Wednesdays (I thought it was slated for the 9 PM slot). The series only pulled a 2.4 rating in the 18-49 demographic and under eight million viewers. That’s considerably down from the 3.2 rating and around 10 million viewers it has enjoyed so far this season. You can blame FOX’s schedule juggling to some extent because the show has not been in the same timeslot two weeks in a row so far. But a 25% drop in its ratings score? That show needs to turn things around real quickly, otherwise Christopher Chance will have to find some way of protecting himself from the network executioners.

Things are looking up for FOX’s other genre entry Fringe, though. That show managed to hold its own against new episodes of CSI and Grey’s Anatomy as it pulled a 2.7 rating and 7.4 million viewers. That’s down from the 3.0 rating it had last week, but it only had repeats as competition then. Of course the good news comes with bad news as now Fringe takes a second hiatus and will not return until April (Past Life will sub-lease its timeslot in the meantime). So just as the show starts to pick up some momentum, FOX slams it back down with their scheduling tomfoolery.

On Friday, Smallville pulled its best numbers of the season with a special two hour episode “Absolute Justice” which introduced the Justice Society into that show’s mythology and acted as a pilot for a potential series as well.

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: Fringe Gets a Win

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