There’s more to go on besides tv ratings.
No, not really. That's it. That's the essence. You have to attract and retain enough viewers that the company can either make money by 1) selling ads, or 2) by receiving subscription income. Without that, commercial television programs cannot stay in production.
And in the case of tv ratings, its better to draw the 18-49 demo that the 50+ demo. Has it ever been confirmed that Enterprise's audience was trending toward the older audiences instead of the intended younger audiences?
Beats me. What I do know is that the lowest-rated episode of ENT Season Four was "Babel One," which had 2.53 million viewers. In an episode of the
Treksperts Briefing Room podcast, ENT producer and "Babel One" co-writer Mike Sussman noted that UPN made the decision to cancel ENT after that episode reached ratings that low; Sussman said that they had figured the show was likely to get cancelled, but that reaching ratings that low meant that, in a way, he had co-written the episode that killed
Star Trek.
In the context of network television in 2005, I don't think it mattered if the audience was trending older or younger if the audience was that small. The only episodes that year to get higher than 3.5 million people were the final two episodes, "Terra Prime" and "These Are the Voyages...," which both got 3.8 million. Not a single episode reached even 4 million people. So ratings for
the entire season ranged from about 2.5 million to 3.8 million.
By contrast, the
highest-rated hour-long drama TV programs of the 2004-2005 season included
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation season five (whose episodes were averaging between 25-30 million);
Desperate Housewives season one (whose episodes averaged between 20-25 million); and
CSI: Miami season three (whose episodes averaged between 19-22 million). Less successful hour dramas that season included
Lost season one (whose episodes mostly hovered between 16 million to 18 million viewers);
NCIS season two (12-15 million);
Boston Legal season one (10-15 million); and
The West Wing season six (8-15 million).
And none of that is including reality competition shows like
American Idol, which did amazingly well.
In that context, averaging about 3 million viewers is just not a sustainable business model. Advertisers were not realistically going to be willing to pay enough money for the show to remain profitable for only 3 million potential customers when they could reach 8 million on another show, or 10 million potential customers on another, or 16 million, or 25 million.
Likely the only reason UPN didn't cancel ENT after season three was that it was worth Paramount's while to get the series to about 100 episodes, because that was the point at which syndicated reruns could become valuable to broadcast stations and cable networks at the time. But the amount of money Paramount would likely lose from trying to produce a fifth season with insufficient advertising revenue would probably have negated syndication profits if the show had remained in production.
And its not even taking into account that TiVo existed and was before DVR ratings were counted in the ratings.
Which means nothing if advertisers don't think that advertising on your program will allow them to reach enough potential customers to be worth paying the money necessary for the program to be profitable.
And that it’s final season was on Friday nights; surely it was outperforming other shows on Friday back in 2004/05.
Well, the Friday night network television competition for the 8:00 PM-9:00 PM time slot is
here. In particular, ENT was up against
8 Simple Rules, Joan of Arcadia, JAG, 60 Minutes II, The Simpsons, That 70s Show, Malcolm in the Middle, The Bernie Mac Show, Arrested Development, What I Like About You, Grounded for Life, and
Dateline NBC.
Remember, ENT season four ranged about 2.5-3.8 million.
Its average was 3.09 million viewers for the season. Here are the average numbers of viewers for the competing network shows:
In addition, ENT was directly competing for the sci-fi audience with season eight of
Stargate: SG-1 on what was then called the Sci-Fi Channel on basic cable. I couldn't find much info on
Stargate's ratings, but
this bit indicates that a rating of 2.4 equaling 3.22 million viewers was a ratings record for
Stargate, so I would assume ENT was usually getting higher ratings than SG1 that season.
In other words:
Star Trek: Enterprise beat out some low-rated sitcoms on the WB and was probably beating out its genre competition in
Stargate: SG-1, but it was absolutely
not outperforming most other television programs that aired during the 8:00 PM-9:00 PM time slot on Fridays in 2004-2005.
The Bernie Mac Show was getting 1.71 million more viewers than ENT, and even shows that got cancelled like
Joan of Arcadia, 8 Simple Rules, and
JAG had ratings twice or almost three times as high as ENT's ratings.
I have a hard time believing that ENT wasn’t squeaking by.
I don't. It
might have squeaked by if it had been airing on the Sci-Fi Channel, because the Sci-Fi Channel's ratings in all programs were lower and it might have been able to talk advertisers into viewing ENT as part of a different marketplace than broadcast network shows. But in the context of its network broadcast competition, I have no trouble believing Paramount and UPN couldn't sell enough ads to keep the show afloat.
Only way it would be an issue to continue is if an investor walked away.
Network TV shows are not funded by investors.
Which could have been solved again by waiting until the dust settled around the UPN/WB merger,
Once again, that merger was not on the table until a year after ENT was cancelled.
and then get an investor on board to support a final season of Enterprise. Even what was raised by the TrekUnited campaign (around $3 million) was surely enough for a single episode or two at the time.
Enough for the discrete costs of an episode? Yes, but would that have been enough to pay for the costs of keeping the actors on call, the crew on call, and keeping the sets standing on soundstages where other, more lucrative programs needed space? How much money would Paramount have lost by disrupting the ability of lucrative shows to build necessary sets because ENT's sets were just sitting there on the soundstages, unused?
Make all the excuses you want. The ball was fumbled on ENT because Moonves wasn’t a Star Trek guy.
Sorry, but no. Moonves was a piece of shit, and he may not have been an ST fan, but I see no reason to think this call was made out of anything but an assessment of ENT's finances.
I remember that when ENT finished its last show, the head of CBS? Paramount? whoever was calling the shots, doing the green-lighting or cancelling, he didn't just dismantle the sets and store them piecemeal, so pieces could be used later for other productions - a typical measure at studios, they never throw anything away.
No, storing sets of cancelled TV shows was not a typical measure.
Star Trek sets were often stored between 1979 and 2005 because various ST shows and films were in almost continuous production during that period, so it was an effective cost-saving measure for the anticipated future productions. But once ST was no longer in production, storage costs by definition made it more financially efficient to strike the sets. This was really common with cancelled shows -- the sets for
Firefly were struck rather than maintained even when Joss Whedon was shopping the show around to other networks, for instance.
The sets were also not auctioned off, even though Trek fans would have paid for genuine Star Trek props and set pieces, even the red-headed stepchild Enterprise. No, the sets were destroyed. Literally bulldozed. There seemed to be a maliciousness to it by what's-his-name, the guy in charge. Like he was sowing the ground with salt so nothing would grow again.
Again, this was just standard practice for cancelled shows. I hate to break it to you, but decisions like this are usually made purely on a financial basis, and studio execs usually don't love or hate what their studios produce; their job is to make money, not pursue weird vendettas against shows they don't personally enjoy.
Those of us who were there, with the campaign to continue, to find financing, find a new home, all that, it didn't matter. There needed to be people in power who loved the show, and loved Star Trek, and this guy hated it.
An exec loving a show is only ever relevant if it means that exec believes the show still has the potential to make money. An exec can love a show all they want, but if the show doesn't get high enough ratings to induce advertisers to pay enough money for the show to be profitable, then all the love in the world won't save the show.
