JMS said that
Jeremiah should be available for syndication in about two years.
Re: Audience size.
Not every American town is even wired for cable TV, and not every home in the ones that are wired subscribes to cable. And the Sci-Fi Channel isn't even carried on every cable service that
does reach this already limited number of homes. So it is available to a much smaller number of households than any broadcast network show and most syndicated shows, and doesn't even reach as many households as other cable networks like TNT.
This is mostly because most analog cable systems have a very limited number of available channel positions, and older, better established networks tend to already occupy them. Sci-Fi is gaining ground as cable operators slowly convert to higher-bandwidth digital delivery systems, and as consumers opt out of cable altogether and go for digital satellite services, which can carry hundreds of channels in contrast to the 50 or 60 offered by most analog cable systems. But it is still not in a huge number of American homes.
For this reason, published ratings reports for cable channels like Sci-Fi and TNT are "adjusted" to show what the rating
would have been had they been available in are larger number of homes. (I think the formula is based on 90% coverage.) So an absolute rating of .66 on Sci-Fi (representing "X" number of households) is reported as a .85, perhaps. (Numbers are for purposes of illustration only. Any resemblance between the numbers I've used here and the actual numbers is
purely coincidental, since I have no idea what the real formula is.
)
On broadcast television
B5 was not on a "real" network either, so it didn't air at the same time on the same day across the country, and there were many cities where no local station carried the show. While PTEN was a "pseudo-network", as a practical matter
B5 was sold the same way a first-run syndicated series is, station-by-station in each city, and with similar results.
I think for most of its run
B5 was on the air in something like 90% of U.S. television markets, and most or all of the top 30 markets, but it never acheived the 100% penetration that some broadcast networks enjoy. (And in many areas it was on hard-to-get UHF stations.) But even with all of those problems
B5 was available to far more viewers on broadcast television than could ever watch it on either of its cable/satellite TV homes.
Regards,
Joe
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Joseph DeMartino
Sigh Corps
Pat Tallman Division
joseph-demartino@att.net