Though the television networks don’t seem to notice, remakes of old series rarely meet with much success. While shows like Bionic Woman, Knight Rider, and Melrose Place bring name recognition, they rarely live up to expectations. Still, ABC moved ahead with their plans to revive V. Though it was initially successful, will it ultimately meet the same fate?
Like the original, the new V revolves around the arrival of aliens to the planet Earth. While the visitors profess that they’ve come in peace, their ulterior motives slowly become clear. The cast includes Elizabeth Mitchell, Morena Baccarin, Morris Chestnut, Joel Gretsch, Logan Huffman, Lourdes Benedicto, Laura Vandervoort, and Scott Wolf.
The new V started out strong with a 5.2 rating in the 18-49 demographic and 14.3 million total viewers. That was the highest rated debut of the 2009-10 season.
Unfortunately, a large percentage of those viewers didn’t return for the second week. Episode two brought in a 3.8 rating and 10.7 million.
Week three dropped yet again, to a 3.1 in the demo and 9.26 million viewers. Last week, the numbers evened off and episode four attracted a third place 3.1 rating for 18-49 viewers and a total viewership of 9.2 million. While those numbers are pretty good on their own, they do represent a 40% drop in the demo when compared to the premiere.
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If the ratings held steady, the series would likely be headed for a second season. Unfortunately, in part due to backstage problems, ABC has made the risky decision to split up the season into two parts. The first group of V episodes has finished airing and now, the series isn’t expected to return until after the Winter Olympics in March 2010.
If recent viewership trends have taught us anything, they’ve shown that long breaks can be disastrous for a serial drama’s ratings. People naturally become interested in other shows and any momentum is lost. What’s more, because storylines are ongoing and complicated, few new people feel inclined to start watching midseason.
Shows like Lost and Heroes saw significant drops in viewership when they took long midseason breaks. They both had very strong ratings and a lot of buzz going into their respective hiatuses. Fortunately, enough viewers returned to keep them on the air.
The new V doesn’t have nearly as much viewer buzz and can’t afford to lose many more viewers. If a high percentage of people don’t return to watch the second half of the season, V won’t survive and will be cancelled.
What do you think? Are you anxiously awaiting the show’s return? Will the hiatus kill the new V and cause its cancellation?
Image courtesy ABC.
This just proves that the only place for good Science fiction shows like V, Heroes, Invasion,Etc. is the SyFy channel. If this show was on SyFy then the amount of viewers that it has would be enough to keep it going. It would also not suffer from loooong breaks between seasons. If a show like Eureka where stuck on one of the so-called major networks then it would have been canceled long ago and never allowed to find it’s audience. Attention all science fiction show producers sell your shows to SyFy if you want them to have any chance at… Read more »
I will start watching it when I am reasonably convinced it will have a conclusion.
I dont watch TV just case a show is good and shows promise to continue, I have been ripped off by networks too many times to invest in great shows only to have bumbling network handling destroy it. Mid season break’s are a prime example.
when I see it looks good that it will make it to a finish (story conclusion) I will start to watch it, till then my time goes to something more usefull.
Well they just cancelled Caprica due to low ratings after giving the series a long hiatus, I am afraid the same fate awaits V. The best two science fiction shows in the last couple of years both screwed over by inept decisions.
Amen, Robert.
I haven’t seen the series yet, (got the Season 1 BDs on order), but if the series is as you say in comparison with the Obama Admin and the Progs, then this should be an interesting series to watch.
It’s funny when I first saw the film “V for Vendetta” back when Bush was still Pres. the Left compared the fascist British government to Bush, but once Obama took office, the fascist British government started to look more and more like Obama’s Admin, while V started to look like the Tea Party.
I hope they don’t cancel V its a epic show loved it from the first episode.
I love the show. It appears to have the innuendo of how the Progressives are trying to take over our country by acting like they are here to help us while planning ways to have more power over the people as they look down their elitist nose at us. Dangle free healthcare and how they are going to take care of us when nothing is really free, there is always some motivation behind it. The Fifth Column is like the Tea Party working on opening the eyes of the people caught up in the dreaminess and lore of Obama and… Read more »
Just when you get involved in a series like
V, the stupid network puts it in hiatus. Maybe they should put some of these over priced Network execs. into hiatus. Reality shows suck!!!!!
V is great please bring it back to our tv screens…….my whole familt love to watch it together.
I think they should really consider their online audience. More and more people are cutting the cable and smashing the dish to take control of their media instead of forking out ridiculous sums of money to be force fed fecal matter. Online entertainment is the future.
Have you people been living in a cave? Season 2 has been filming for a couple of weeks already.
the new V is just as good or better then the first one the fact is it’s not as 80″s and that gives it it’s own look and that’s really good story goes with world events thats also good.
I am so sick of all the bull#%&* reality shows that get on! Put V back on….it was
just getting ramped up! All good shows take a bit of time to work out the kinks!
Fire the heads of the networks and hire me…..I am a writer etc….I can see good
work when it is in front of me, not the mind numbing crap that has been showing on other channels!
BRING THE SHOW BACK !!!! Finally something worth watching!
I hope it doesn’t get cancelled. It took a couple of epsiodes to get to the nuts and bolts of story and suspect thats why there was a drop in audience in the early stages. I’m hooked now as I jumped back in when it got more interesting
I really hope that it doesnt get cancelled. All the shows that I love are getting cancelled and I would really hate for this one to get cancelled too…