NBC’s struggling serial drama, The Event, returns tonight after 13 weeks away. The network has been giving the series some nice promotion and is bringing it back with a two back-to-back episodes. Will that be enough?
The Event had a solid debut back in September with a 3.6 rating in the 18-49 demographic and 10.88 million viewers. Unfortunately, it fell nearly 20% in week two and another 17% in week three. The ratings kept falling until they seemed to even off at a 1.7 rating and about 5.5 million viewers. That’s a far cry from the promise that the series once held.
NBC put the ailing series on hiatus at the end of November, promising a big relaunch in late February. That return was later bumped to tonight to make room for The Cape, another casualty of the timeslot.
Networks have tried putting serial dramas on long hiatuses in the past and they just don’t work out. Many viewers assume that a series like The Event has already been cancelled, that they won’t remember what was going on, or have gotten into the habit of watching other shows. Whatever the reason, a show like The Event has to fight to get the viewers who were watching pre-hiatus to return, never mind attracting new ones.
Sadly, it seems that it will take a ratings miracle to save The Event at this point and NBC certainly hasn’t shown a lot of confidence in getting new people to give the show a try. More than half of the audience who were interested enough to watch the premiere, left over the course of the first 10 episodes. Of those who did stick around, it’s reasonable to expect that a sizable percentage have moved on after 13 weeks.
If you check our season rankings to date, you’ll see that The Event is currently in the middle of the pack with a 2.2 rating and 6.86 million. If the new episodes can attract the same number of pre-hiatus viewers, it will slowly sink lower down the list. If The Event starts doing Cape-like numbers (a 1.2 in the demo), it’ll fall much quicker.
Either way, unless the ratings turnaround or NBC has no faith in its new pilots, it’s very doubtful that The Event will be coming back for season two.
What do you think? Will you be watching The Event? What could NBC do to save this series or is it too late already? Is it worth saving?
Image courtesy NBC.
Don’t cancel! I have been waiting since last year to se the next season. I loved the show!
I have been waiting for new season to start and just found out it was cancelled. This show was great. I agree with comments of others finally found a show I liked and it gets cancelled. This makes 2 shows in 1 week that have been cancelled. So hard to find a good show I only have netflix for TV and when I find a good show worth watching I watch online. I can only hope they will reconsider.
Please bring it back … I loved it and just looked for a start date and your saying it’s cancelled … Me and my family love it. !!!
We loved lost to … This event filled my void from lost ..
Bring it back please
I loved The Event and couldn’t figure out why it hadn’t come back on. I finally did a search and found out it’s been cancelled. There is so much junk on TV and then when they have something good like 48 or The Event they cancel. Go figure!!!
Bring the series back. I just watched the 22 episode series on DVD through Netflix – and loved it!!!!!! I never even heard of the series because I have cable TV, I guess, and am in tune to the News in the daytime and then channels like Sy-Fi, Lifetime and other movie channels or the Netflix movies that are sent to me in the mail. That is where I found the Series, The Event, and ordered it with 22 episodes. I absolutely loved that series and was very dissappointed to see that there was no real ending. I googled this… Read more »
“The Event” is definitely worth saving, it’s a good show. Because of my schedule I am not able to sit and watch it every week to follow the story line. I just finished watching the entire series on DVD, I loved it. The show is better than “24”, and more realistic than “Fringe”. If NBC could find a way to broadcast multiple times during the week or use the internet or “On Demand” and make money, the show would make it. Moving it to “Syfi” or “USA” could be another option.
I just have to say everytime I find a TV program I like it gets cancelled. It is sad The Event was a freat program.