Pondering 'Battlestar' puzzler: Ratings down, popularity up

Members of the always-smug Battlestar cast are willing to show off their hotness at a moment's notice.

(Credit: SCI FI)

As a fan of Battlestar Galactica, I've watched every episode thus far. What didn't fully dawn on me until I pondered an Associated Press article this week, however, was that out of all the 60-plus episodes I've seen, I've probably watched less than five "live" on TV (I don't have a DVR yet).

I discovered the series on DVD and was able to catch up that way. After that, I began downloading it from iTunes when it was available. On those rare Friday nights that the planets aligned and I was at home, I'd watch it on TV--if I remembered to, that is. Accustomed to watching the show on DVD and on my PC, I sometimes just plain forgot that it came on Friday nights.

According to the AP article, I'm not alone. BSG's Nielsen ratings have steadily dropped since the series debuted in 2004. "The series averaged 2.8 million viewers an episode during Season 1. During the most recent run of 10 episodes, the show averaged 2.2 million viewers, a slight dip overall but up from Seasons 2 and 3. The series lost some of that steam by the midseason finale, falling to just 1.8 million viewers," according to the article.

Despite this, the show's popularity has seemingly only increased. Jamie Bamber, who plays "Apollo" on BSG--and is the one actor whom virtually every woman I know has a crush on--said he gets hounded on the street much more frequently now that the ratings are lower than in 2004 when the ratings were at their peak.

Also, I know many people who only watch it on DVD, and most of these people aren't even the sci-fi-watching types. For many reasons I won't go into right now, this show transcends the Trekker/nerd stigma.

The producers of the show believe most people do watch the show during long DVD marathons or a few days after an episode has aired on their TiVo or DVR. This doesn't even mention sites like Hulu, where users are able to stream the episodes over the Web for free.

Even with its recent improvements, the Nielsen system is broken, as it still does not account for all the many ways that someone can watch a show. It's basically biased towards shows that are viewed in the more traditional manner. DVD, DVR, services like iTunes, and sites like Hulu are changing he way we watch TV. Here's hoping a much more accurate gauge of a show's popularity is on the horizon.

[thisislovell]

I would argue that except maybe for the DVR thing, the Nielsen ratings are fine. Mainly because their only real use is for networks to figure out how many people are watching to help decide how much to charge for commercials. People watching on DVD, iTunes, and Hulu aren't getting those commercials, so it really doesn't matter if they're counted in the ratings or not.

[Wes#1]

Yup... TV is all about the selling of commercials. Doesn't matter how many people watch a show days, months, years later on disc or from a download. Commercials pay for production; advertisers keep the Sci-Fi channel alive. You bypass that with non-broadcast media, it doesn't count (as far as the people who fund the show are concerned).

Are you willing to download the commercials, too? THAT might get their attention.

[m4dgfxk1d]

This is true but do you really think the same suits that are paying people to troll youtube looking for 5 second clips of their shows are smart enough to truly appreciate the popularity of their content across all these new mediums? These network execs are dinisaurs and need to just take their archaic business model and scrap it.

[robd11]

So, yeah, the word is out that BSG is a good show. But who the hell watches live TV on a Friday night? (On a side note, besides sports, who watches live TV at all. Get a PVR dammit!) But the suits still continue to make decisions around the number of people watching live TV. And who watches live TV? Idiots and poor people. So that's the kind of TV we get. "Hits" starring Charlie Sheen and Jim Belushi.