Proof That Ratings Are Not Always An Indicator Of Quality
The 2-hour epic finale of Battlestar Galactica played out on Friday night to an audience of 2.4 million viewers, said to be the show’s biggest audience in more than three years.
But here’s the amazing thing. Battlestar Galactica’s ratings were considerably less than either Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (3.7 million) or Dollhouse (4.1 million).
Having seen the episodes for all three, there is simply no way that Battlestar Galactica’s finale was not superior in all respects. Don’t get me wrong, both Terminator and Dollhouse were great and I am in no way attempting to criticize either of them. I love watching both, especially Terminator. I am simply making the matter-of-fact statement that Friday night’s viewer count offers proof positive of why ratings are not entirely reflective of quality.
If ratings were reflective of quality, the viewer numbers of these three series would be turned upside down.
Source: E Online
March 23rd, 2009 at 5:36 pm
If it were possible to have two shows of objectively equal quality with one on a channel that is available to almost all televisions and another on a channel that is limited to a subset of a subset of all televisions, the one with greater viewership would still almost certainly have greater viewership. The difference in availability seems to invalidate direct comparison, so I’m afraid the numbers neither prove nor disprove anything.
That said, I too think the most recent episodes of all three shows were great, although I still have mixed feelings about the third part of Battlestar Galactica’s “Daylight”. Part 2 was very strong then Part 3 had strange pacing and left me not quite satisfied.
Here’s an interesting twist: compare the most recent episode of all three shows (counting Part 2 and Part 3 for Battlestar Galactica, if you like) to their own shows and consider which episode compared best to its own show. In that case, I think Terminator and Dollhouse both had very strong episodes indeed.
March 23rd, 2009 at 6:18 pm
In such a comparison Battlestar Galactica would lose out, because unlike Terminator and Dollhouse, it has a plethora of superb episodes against which it’s final would have to be compared.
On the other hand, if the comparison was one related to a percentage of consistency, well it would win hands down.
It’s a difficult topic this one, for I feel I am painting a poor picture for Terminator and Dollhouse. Truth is, I absolutely love Terminator and think it’s the second best sci-fi series on television (taking into account that BSG is now complete).
March 23rd, 2009 at 10:59 pm
Leaving my criticisms of bsg behind (not a big fan), viewing figures hardly mean anything these days. You have people who download the show, either legally or illegally. They never factor in their viewing figures into that.
Unfortunately The big TV companies still look towards ratings for success and that’s why we get so many good shows removed before its time…
March 23rd, 2009 at 11:13 pm
Yeah, absolutely. Although it was interesting to hear recently that one of the factors that was taken into account for the renewal of Heroes was that it was one of the most downloaded shows on the internet.
Even then, there’s no way they can get their torrent/p2p etc numbers right. The world has more private trackers than public.
Personally I think the amount of viewing each series gets is completely underestimated by the networks because they don’t make their series fully available internationally as soon as they are available locally. If they did, their real viewer numbers could be tracked more accurately, and I’d hazard a guess and say they’d also stand to make more money. I find it difficult to believe there would be so much pirating going on if people could simply and legitimately access what they want, when they want.
Most reasonable people would pay $1.99 to download their favorite shows week after week if it meant they could have them the moment they were released. Network competition would also then be determined not by when series are aired, but by the quality of what is available. Perhaps that’s why they are hesitant to do it…
March 24th, 2009 at 1:35 am
I don’t even have television service. I haven’t for maybe a couple years now. Unless I happen to watch television while visiting someone else, I only watch via Web sites such as Hulu, Fox (their site showed the newest episode of Terminator before Hulu and in decent quality), etc. or via iTunes.
March 25th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
Personally I don’t see any relation in quality and ratings, therefore you can’t compare the two, and you would come to the obvious conclusion that ratings are not an indicator of quality. Look at some of the canceled shows for instance, one recent one being Back To You. That was a great show, and of great quality, and those who watched enjoyed it very much, however, from lack of viewers, it was canceled after the first season. Also, all they have to go by is ratings guys. All of you saying that they don’t factor in the viewing from downloads…well, the reason shows get ratings is so they can report back to the sponsors. No one wants to run an ad during the timeslot if a show isn’t getting many viewers. Obviously this would exclude anything downloaded as there are no commercial’s. In fact, I believe there’s only commercial’s if you view on the networks official site. If you download from iTunes the network does have an income source from that, but they can’t report it in the ratings because there are no commercial’s supporting their sponsor’s. The network wants to make as much money as possible through it’s sponsors, so they need to keep the viewers for each timeslot as high as they can so their sponsor’s will pay more money for a commercial.
So the ratings are right, and they also include views from their official sites in the ratings, but other downloads can’t be counted in the ratings that they show to their sponsors.
You must remember that every show is of great quality to SOMEONE, and just because more people like on show over another doesn’t mean the other one is worse. For instance, you say you preferred the BSG episode over the Dollhouse episode, while I’m on the opposite side of the fence. That doesn’t mean BSG was bad quality, and it doesn’t mean Dollhouse was bad quality, it just means we have different tastes. Maybe BSG is a show people prefer to download off of iTunes (or other sources), while Dollhouse isn’t worth $1.99 to download. You’ve also gotta remember Dollhouse is a new show so it’s still going to have some of the people that are watching to see if it’s any good and if they’re going to like it…also, it’s already going to have a pretty good following just because it’s Joss Whedon. I’m sure this show will go down to around 3.5m-4.0m viewers towards the last 2-3 episodes.