Battlestar Galactica Failed on NBC

[Darth Buddha]

Subtract out those who had already seen the program in one of its many airings (BSG was re-aired at odd hours throughout the week) and you really don't have that much of a target audience left!

[Dahak]

First as I said before showing BSG cost the network basicly nothing. They didn't have to pay money to show a movie (since they made it) and the cast, crew, and other had allready been paid. Sure the ratings sucked but if they spent enough less to offset the low ratings they still come out at least even.
Second no one here is thinking like a suit. If BSG gets good ratings on Friday then it must be because the mini was shown on Friday. Also if the DVD sales go up then once again it was in part (at least in theory) due to showing the mini on NBC.
Third while it didn't work out at least NBC tried to pimp a show on the main network to get viewers to watch a cable show. NBC and Fox are the only two offhand that I can think of that does a pretty good job of cross promoting their shows.

[jckfan55]

Good point. BSG's so intense that you can't hope to begin to understand it from three episodes, let alone ones from so late in the season.

That's kind of what I was thinking. You'd have to be somewhat familiar with the backstory to understand late season eps. Besides, anyone over 35? who hadn't been paying attention probably thought BSG was just like the old 70s show.

[chyron]

Personally, I didn't realize that there WAS a BSG event on NBC. Maybe the issue was its promotion. At any rate, I would have done something much bigger like the following...

(All on or after September 15th....)
Hour 1 - BSG Behind the Scenes & Season 2 sneak peak
Hour 2 - Hour long Season 1 recap
Hour 3 - Air the Season 2 Premier

Also, I wouldn't use the performance on NBC as an indicator of how BSG will do in syndication. However, given that some of the episodes were a bit racy - actually MOST of the episodes with Number Sex - I'm thinking that its going to be interesting to see if they're edited or air later in the evenings.

[chanvw]

The overnight ratings are in.

Last night, NBC got it's butt kicked by every other network. It came in last place every single hour it aired, scoring absolutely dismal ratings. Full report here.

The same happened here in Australia - Channel 10 ran a large advertising campaign for BSG before it aired here, but the ratings weren't too good, so they pushed it back to a really late timeslot by the end of the season.

[chyron]

I think that NBC would have been better of airing the original mini-series and the seaons finale (with somesort of filler bridge in-between to cover the highlights between the two). I mean who WASN'T shocked when [ Adama was shot and then the Star baby revelation at the end. ]

[Rushlight]

I think everyone is missing the most important poinst: I got to watch BSG in HD when it was on NBC!