By John J. Joex
The fourth season of Torchwood (and first produced in America), has received generally favorable reviews (you can see our look at the series at this link) and decent ratings so far for a cable show. For combined viewing across multiple airings of new episodes it has pulled at or over a million viewers and somewhere around a 0.3 rating in the 18-49 demographic. And for one of the pay channels, that is considered okay if nothing spectacular (in comparison, the most recent episode of HBO’s True Blood pulled a 2.8 rating in the 18-49 demo and over five million viewers). But whether Torchwood will continue on Starz past its current fourth season, ten episode run is still up in the air. In a recent conversation with TV critics, Starz CEO Chris Albrecht was rather elusive about the future of the show. He claimed that a new season would depend on whether series creator Russel T. Davies came up with any news ideas that would work for both parties and he also commented that “Torchwood is not one of the show we went into thinking about a yearly return”. Albrecht said that Davies has “a lot of things on his plate” and whether Torchwood was “at the top of his list” would determine the show’s status. Definitely some non-committal comments, and while they don’t doom the series neither do they suggest a bright future. I’m sure that if Torchwood was pulling even half the numbers that True Blood enjoys then Albrecht’s tone would have been quite different. At this point, though, we can only wait an see.
Over on Syfy, Alphas continues to do well in the ratings, pulling a 0.7 in the the 18-49 demo and just over two million total viewers. That has the show just slightly behind its Warehouse 13 lead-in which pulled a 0.8 rating and 2.2 million viewers this past Monday. Eureka is currently pulling similar numbers to Alphas with a 0.7 rating and 2.1 million viewers this past week. Warehouse 13 and Eureka are both already set for their next seasons and we can expect a renewal announcement for Alphas soon. On TNT, Falling Skies continues to grow its audience, pulling a 1.5 rating and 4.3 million viewers for its past outing. That series has already been renewed for a second season. On MTV, Teen Wolf slipped a bit this past week to a 0.5 rating and 1.5 million viewers. That series has already been renewed, though, so it does not need to worry. And the premiere of the ThunderCats reboot did well for Cartoon Network, pulling a 0.8 rating in the 18-49 demo and 2.4 million total viewers.
Ratings Source: TV by the Numbers
