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So, when do the ratings come in?

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by orac:
Even the B5 re-re-re-runs got great viewing figures on Sc-Fi and the international market for something like Rangers is huge.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Sadly, SciFi couldn't care less about the international market, which is kind of natural, I guess.

That could only interest WB who would probably be more than happy to sell Rangers abroad if it goes to a series, but as I've understood, SciFi is the one paying for it - and thus only the US market matters to them.

It would still be good to know, one way or another. OTOH, if ratings were much lower than expected, then wouldn't it at least be told by now that there won't be a series?

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"Isn't the universe an amazing place? I wouldn't live anywhere else." - G'Kar, B5: Rangers
Kribu's Lounge | kribu@ranger.b5lr.com
 
Just a quick diversion; Farscape is produced in Australia and the Aussie dollar is 50 cents US. Even if it has low budget over here, it makes for a bigger budget there. Except for Ben Browder, all the main actors are Australians, which means the they only have to be paid in Aussie dollars, not US dollars. That is why a fair number of Hollywood movies are shot in Australia and New Zealand. It would also mean the ratings, though important, don't have to bring in as much money.

I'm not saying that the B5 world should move to my homeland, but it would be cheaper in the longer run. Farscape has proved that you can make decent sci fi out side of the US.

Oh one more thing, Australia is such a beautiful place too (and I have to wait another 18 months before I get back there). I am sure that all the cast of B5:LOTR would love to spend time in such a beautiful country.

Well that is my 2 cents worth.

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<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by AntonyF:
... ratings aren't necessarily everything here. We're hoping great ratings will wmake them ant to commision a series, but not necessarily. Plus there are always other factors at work. So it'd be fair to note that great ratings will not automatically equal a series.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I don't know...
We were told since that time when the rough cut was shown to SciFi execs that ratings would be everything. Some of the actors said it, even JMS posted for a newsgroup that he doesn't like to ask the viewers to watch his shows, but in this case would be vital. Now, I'm pretty confident that the american audience did their share (we're not sure yet but there are very good signs).
I don't want to low my expectations, on the contrary,I'll keep asking "why all this marketing campaign, never seen before for a SFC show?". Just to end like this?
No. Just to quote someone from the OTHER series "it is not logical". This is logical:

Good product + good promotion = good ratings
and good ratings = U$$$$.
Pure and simple.

So, i'm still waiting for good news
smile.gif



Almir

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<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by milenium3:
I'll keep asking "why all this marketing campaign, never seen before for a SFC show?". Just to end like this?
No. Just to quote someone from the OTHER series "it is not logical". This is logical:
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

A couple of reasons come to mind:

1. Whether the movie is a pilot or not, it is something they spent money on to produce. You usually want that money to pay back for you in terms of ratings and...

2. Sale of time to advertisers. When you make a sale of ad time, particularly the sponsorships IBM, Jeep, and others bought, you guarantee those advertisers a certain ratings level. If you don't hit that level, you owe the advertisers makegoods.

3. With their number one show, Farscape, starting new episodes late this year, their first quarter is weaker from a programming standpoint. They needed a "ratings leader" to draw people to the network and act like a base for promoting their other programming.

Those are three compelling, logical reasons to advertise the movie that have nothing to do with its series potential.

As to whether an effort like this has ever been made before, this was not the first time SciFi used in-theater advertising to advertise a show. And other properties have gotten big ad pushes from them--Dune, Invisible Man come to mind.

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There sure is a lot of backtracking going on around here. Before 1/19 everything depended on ratings. Now that its apparent that the ratings aren't that good, everybody is all "ratings aren't everything."

Personally, I'm not sure what the hell is gonna happen but it doesn't look good. No sirree, not good at all.

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"Dawn's in trouble? Must be Tuesday." -- Buffy Summers, "Once More With Feeling."
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Farscape is produced in Australia and the Aussie dollar is 50 cents US.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Rangers was shot in Canada. As of this morning, the exchange rate was at one Canadian dollar = 61 cents U.S. And that's up from where it was a few months ago. (Which is why I'll probably buy my B5 DVD sets from Canadian retailers, as I have with The X-Files.
smile.gif
) Factor in travel for the American production contingent, long distance telephone charges to Los Angeles, New York, overnight shipping etc., and it is probably cheaper to shoot where they did.

Regards,

Joe

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Joseph DeMartino
Sigh Corps
Pat Tallman Division
joseph-demartino@att.net
 
With any luck, the reason we're heard nothing about the ratings is because negotiations are going on.
crazy.gif


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God be between you and harm in all the empty places you must walk.
 
Joseph DeMartino,

Yes, that is correct my dear friend Joseph!

The dollar exchange rate factor of the low Canadian dollar relative to the US currency is a huge determining factor as to why many US production frequent Canada...

Not to mention that there are top notch experienced talent (cast and production crews) available!

Vancouver is the third largest TV/Film production city in North America! And like I said, alot of that has to do with the weak Canadian currency!

Vancouver is relatively close to Los Angeles...pretty much a hop, skip and a jump!

Vancouver can substitute (stand-in) for various US locations...

And the list goes on...

Cheers! -Warren-

laugh.gif


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Here is an article at Medialifemagazine.com on last week's cable ratings.

1. It ranks 25 top cable programs by household rating and lists all the way down to a 2.6 rating. B5LR isn't on the list.

2. It lists top 10 programs for the Adults 18-34, Adults 18-49, and Adults 25-54. B5LR didn't make the top 10 for any of them.

Cable ratings article

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I don't understand why going so far, i.e. in Australia ( sorry to all who live there, but it's just something I don't understand) shen you have Canada with a dollar almost as cheap, but located just few miles in the north.

Ok, for productions like Xena/Hercules you needed a very spectacular and exotic outside visual, but when come to shot in a studio, why going so far ?

I just don't understand... (PLEASE ! I don't want to troll, or be flamed by all people who live there ! Again it's just that I try to understand something that don't seem logical to me ! I love you all anyway !!! :) )

- Garibaldi's Hairs

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---------------------------------
When I said my quarters were cold, I did not mean "Oh, I think it is a little chilly in here. Perhaps I'll throw a blanket on the bed." No! I said it was cold! As in, "Oh look - my left arm has snapped off like an icicle and shattered on the floor!"
- Londo
 
There seems to be a bit of a lack of understanding of economics here. While it's true that one has better purchasing power in Australia and Canada than the USA, you can't simply infer that from the current exchange rate. There's no rule that says that the fundamental unit of currency in every country has to have the same amount of purchasing power. For example, if there are 100 yen in a US dollar, that does not imply that a dollar goes 100 times farther in Japan than in the US.


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I'm sure this has been said already on this thread, but I'm going to say it again. What the hell is taking so long for the ratings to come in?? I just can't believe that after the gigantic advertising campaign for the movie (I must have seen the commercial at least 50 times, maybe more/ the advertising in the theatres/ the wraps on the cars/ the free t-shirts/ ads in magazines and TV Guide) that the ratings might not be that great. Come on. Even non B5 fans should have tuned in out of curiosity (if nothing else) after seeing it advertised so much. And I can't believe that the "Epoch" movie (which I thought was only fair at best) would have gotten bigger ratings. That doesn't make sense. B5 has a built-in fan base that a first time movie like that doesn't. I think the ratings (whatever they are) would have been much higher if the movie had been broadcast on a weeknight. Saturday night is a date night. Even if you said that most sci fi fans don't have dates on Saturday night and would be home to watch it (which would be a harsh and possibly inaccurate thing to say; I'm NOT saying that), there would still be some people who might watch it on a weeknight that wouldn't on a Saturday night. I know Epoch got good ratings (for Sci Fi) on Saturday night, but still... Anyway, I know that the overnights have already been posted (Futon Critic has posted them, but only posts the networks: NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, UPN, & WB), so he didn't list it. But you think that Sci Fi would at least give us an estimate of the overnight ratings or something. Unless they are waiting to negotiate a deal to make it a series and then post that news at the same time as the ratings. But they could post them seperately, so that doesn't make sense. I'm afraid it doesn't look good. They may have had to wait a week for the overall total ratings nationwide and might post them today (overnights are only in the big cities), but that is just my hopeful thinking. I don't know. All we can do is wait. But they should have told us something by now!

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<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by ranger32:
I'm sure this has been said already on this thread, but I'm going to say it again. What the hell is taking so long for the ratings to come in??
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

The ratings are in. That is what that article was about that I posted above.

It's just that the people who know them, aren't talking.

(Overnights aren't just for major markets. There are two types--major market overnights that are available in the morning and national overnights that are available in the afternoon after a program runs. A few days longer on holidays and weekends)

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<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>
B5savant wrote

It lists top 10 programs for the Adults 18-34, Adults 18-49, and Adults 25-54. B5LR didn't make the top 10 for any of them.

Cable ratings article

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<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

This is implying a rating of less than 2.8. Not good.

I assume that SCFI is SciFi.

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Andrew Swallow
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>
Originally posted by AndrewSwallow:

This is implying a rating of less than 2.8. Not good.

I assume that SCFI is SciFi.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Actually thank's to SavantB5's latest link we now know that "Rangers" did no better then 2.6
frown.gif


An optimist would think "Rangers" did a 2.5, but would even that rating be enough for a series? This is a far second to "Dune".



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"I walk, i shop, i sneeze. I'll be a fireman when the floods roll back. There's trees in the desert since you moved out ... and i don't sleep on a bed of bones."
 
Ah, thanks.

So it would be theoretically possible that one showing of Rangers got, say, 2.5, another got 1.8 and the third one 2.3, or something like that?

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"Isn't the universe an amazing place? I wouldn't live anywhere else." - G'Kar, B5: Rangers
Kribu's Lounge | kribu@ranger.b5lr.com
 
Does anyone know how the 4 B-5 movies did that were shown the Monday-Thursday before B5-LOTR.

Thanks,

Cerberus

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I don't know why LOTR's success is being compared so much to Dune's... As far as I can tell, Dune has never had to struggle for each and every fan. It's always been easy to go out & rent for people who had never seen it. Meanwhile, B5 has had to scrape and crawl through networks, critics, low budgets, and other seemingly overwhelming odds for eight long years. Not to mention the several years it took for JMS to even get it on TV in the first place.

Then we have Frank Herbert's Dune. Sci-Fi pushed this show, and they pushed it HUGE. LOTR never got even a fraction of the push FHDune got. They showed FHDune commercials constantly, to the point of being annoying. LOTR didn't get that much exposure until the last week or so. FHDune was very well done, but it was also a 6-hour TVmovie. LOTR is a 2-hour TVmovie, which seems to have been written as a pilot.

Dune has garnered fans from television, theater, and print for years, decades even. To me, it's a no-brainer that it would do so well in the ratings...

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-Londo's Hair
"Vir, intelligence has nothing to do with politics!"
 
I'm not sure that television executives, as a species, make all that much sense.

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"Dawn's in trouble? Must be Tuesday." -- Buffy Summers, "Once More With Feeling."
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Kribu:
Sadly, SciFi couldn't care less about the international market, which is kind of natural, I guess.

That could only interest WB who would probably be more than happy to sell Rangers abroad if it goes to a series, but as I've understood, SciFi is the one paying for it - and thus only the US market matters to them.

It would still be good to know, one way or another. OTOH, if ratings were much lower than expected, then wouldn't it at least be told by now that there won't be a series?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Why would SciFi not care about the international market? I mean I know it's a "local" cable TV company, and as such only have to worry about (a segment of) the US market. But surely they can make more money from selling rights to a series to foreighn networks (that doesn't even compete with them), and/or selling Video and DVD copies of the series internationaly, than from airing the series itself...

Or am i missing something (does WB own the re-distribution rights or something)?

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[This message has been edited by Sherool (edited January 25, 2002).]
 
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