Last week, Lone Star premiered to some truly awful numbers. Despite having House as a lead-in, the new FOX drama attracted a fourth place 1.3 rating in the 18-49 demographic and 4.1 million viewers. Considering the positive reviews and buzz, the numbers were shocking to many in the industry.
There’s been a lot of talk about the show in the past several days, about how good it is and supporters encouraging others to watch. The show’s creator even asked viewers to just give it a try. Has that buzz made an impact on last night’s ratings? Well, yes and no.
Last night’s episode attracted another 1.3 rating in the demo and just 3.8 million viewers. It’s positive that the demo number remained the same, especially considering most new shows lose about 10-20% in week two. Unfortunately, it’s still a very low number and hardly acceptable.
FOX hasn’t announced any plans as yet but it certainly wouldn’t be surprising if they shut down production and cancelled Lone Star very soon.
What do you think? Will FOX pull Lone Star this week or give it some more time?
Image courtesy FOX.
This is a great show with a differnet plot and characters. Thwy did not get a chnce to develop. Ratings mean nothing. Remember shows like MASh and SEINFIELD..it had taken more then a couple seasons for people to watch..and like it. Reviews from those first shows were awful..! Let’s see those other episodes now, or put them on disc, I will buy them immediately! And so will many others that you haven’t heard from. After all, no one asked me If I watched it..?
I am really interested in how they would develop the characters. We need something different, give it a chance.
I would say the FOX network will Cancel the show. I dont think anyone would be interested in a man who has two wives . I never liked the previews. Already knew i didnt like the show. Sorry. CANCEL the show!!!
I tried watching this show last night but I just couldnt, who wants to watch a show about a lying bigamist and his a-hole father who go around stealing people’s money? Dont we have enough lying swindlers like that in washington? we dont need that kind of entertainment!
This is a real shame. Fox has a terrible history of early cancellations but this is ridiculous. Two weeks? Why even bother putting the show on, promoting it, give it a good time slot after HOUSE if you are not going to give it chance to build an audience. If a show isn’t working in that time slot, you move it. They could have moved FRINGE to mondays and put it after HOUSE. Then put this show on after BONES on thursdays. They could have moved those new comedies on wednesday to thurday and moved GLEE to be a lead-in… Read more »
I say let them cancel it. I usually dont say that about tv shows but I watched the pilot and it was so bad. I didn’t even want to tune in like I usually do with tv shows.
I really hope they wait before canceling this show, at least until they fulfill their order for the first season. I know the ratings aren’t good now, but a lot of that could be because the petition to save it from cancellation began right after the pilot aired. Knowing that there’s a fair chance of its cancellation is going to turn a lot of future viewers away from it. Nobody wants to get into a show that’s about to be canceled.
Won’t surprise me if they cancel it. All the networks work the same way. They debut a new show, it doesn’t perform to their liking and they cancel it. Then they scratch their head as to why it failed. The answer is THEM! Nobody wants to start watching a show and get hooked only for it to be canceled after a few episodes. Or in the case of Heroes and FlashForward, let the show develop only for it to end without closing the story lines.
It’s not a bad show, but, strictly from a businss viewpoint, I’d air one more ep, & if the Neilsens didn’t show significant improvement, axe it.
Their gonna cancel. If it was NBC, CBS or ABC, they’ed give it a couple more episodes. But its Fox. So kiss it goodbye. It’s gone. Prove me wrong Fox.
Regardless of industry reviews, a reason for poor ratings might be the theme of the show: people might not be that interested in a guy who has two wives and lies to both of them. My wife and I watched the opening scenes of the pilot where that was established and said, nope, not for us, and changed the channel. Recently there was a story of a town of men practicing polygamy and that was frowned on, and those wives at least knew about each other!
This is one of the very few original shows this season that don’t have a g immick or fall into any sort of a specific genre, other than the good ‘ol ‘drama’. UNDERCOVERS has the action/rom-com angle covered. THE DEFENDERS and the other slew of L&O shows have the lawyer genre taken care of. BLUE BLOODS does it’s typical crime/cop show.
FOX would do well to keep this show on, at least till November to let the numbers grow. After that, if ther numbers haven’t improved, then as a network I could see why they would cancel.