Need proof the television ratings system is dead, a victim of the TiVo, the omnipresent satellite cup of tea and schizophrenic viewing habits? Take a look at what's happening with "Battlestar Galactica."
If the traditional ratings system is used to measure its success, considerably, the series is scraping bottom like a viper throwing sparks on a hot landing.
Yet the show's producers ar moving forwards with two post-"Galactica" projects that would never receive seen the light of a cathode tube had ratings been the merely factor in the decisions.
Jamie Bamber, the British player who plays Lee "Apollo" Adama in the series, has a much better way to gauge ratings. Turns extinct, as the ratings plummet, the show's popularity continues to rocket as it reaches the end of its five-year run early in 2009.
"When the numbers racket were high I would get stopped-up in the street perchance once a week," Bamber said. "Now that the viewing figures are lour on the TV, everyplace I go someone will come up to me and say what a huge fan they ar. That barely tells me that people watch the show in a more modern way and that it has reached its sort of critical mass."
"Galactica" wrapped shot in July and the final 10 episodes will begin airing in January. But the franchise won't stop there.
Producers recently proclaimed end-of-the-summer production of a two-hour standalone "Galactica" prequel that testament air in 2009 after the serial finale. And they've also shot a pilot for a new series called "Caprica," which has all the same to be picked up by the network simply seems destined to air.
These things never used to happen. There never would've been a "Rhoda" had "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" tanked. "Fish" would've been fried had it not been for the popularity of "Barney Miller."
"Galactica's" numbers - to arrange it politely - have begun to stink. The latest Nielsen ratings seem to point the show's viewers are as hard to find as the fleet's mythologic destination of Earth. The series averaged 2.8 million viewing audience an episode during Season 1. During the most recent run of 10 episodes, the show averaged 2.2 million viewing audience, a little dip overall but up from Seasons 2 and 3. The series confused some of that steamer by the midseason finale, falling to just 1.8 trillion viewers.
Co-executive producer Michael Angeli thinks the numbers ar irrelevant, however. He believes most "Galactica" fans have atypical wake habits and take advantage of new technology to watch the show whenever they want.
"I think we were one of the first ones," Angeli said. "TiVo had just sort of taken off. This was iV or five seasons agone, and because we were on Friday nights nearly people, near fans don't watch it (on number 1 run). They TiVo it and watch it a zillion times."
Others rent or buy the DVDs after the season is over and see in long marathons. To take advantage of this group, producers will be releasing the two-hour moving-picture show on DVD shortly after it appears on SciFi.
The movie is a prequel that gives some insight into the machinations of the cylons before they unleashed the nuclear holocaust that wiped out all but 50,000 human inhabitants of the 12 colonies. "Galactica" star Edward James Olmos will direct and Dean Stockwell (Cylon No. 1), Aaron Douglas (Chief Tyrol) and Michael Trucco (Sam Anders) - all "skinjobs," cylons world Health Organization appear to be human - will participate.
While the movie is a interlace to air, the destiny of "Caprica" remains to be decided. The pilot has been shot and screened, and there's a trailer up on YouTube. Angeli is helping with early scripts in case the series is picked up and said the show is an almost complete passing from "Galactica."
"In fact, I don't intend we ever go into space," he said.
"Caprica" takes place 51 years earlier the events of "Galactica." It stars Esai Morales and Eric Stoltz as the heads of rival families wHO clash over the creation of hokey intelligence, which will eventually lead to the cylons.
Besides the robots and the location, the only material connection between "Galactica" and "Caprica" will be Joseph Adama, the character played by Morales. While Joseph Adama - father and grandfather to the characters played by Olmos and Bamber - never appears in "Galactica," his operate as a lawyer provides a moral compass in a significant storyline and his list is oftentimes evoked.
Like "Galactica," which took on war, terrorism, anguish, religion and questions of morality, the storyline in "Caprica" will have many things to say virtually our society.
"It's really around big business sector, the machinations and the subterfuge that go on inside of it when you have something that is groundbreaking and could change the nature of life and the future," Angeli aforesaid. "In this case, they're developing artificial intelligence."
Executive producer Ronald D. Moore described the show to reporters at the Television Critics Association coming together in Beverly Hills. While he was talking around the fabricated colony Caprica, he could just as easily own been talk about today's America.
"It's more or less a vibrant society. It's really at the height of its power and the height of its decadence at the like time," Moore said. "So it's truly a prospering, vibrant culture that's going away to add up apart as we watch, but it's sort of the rolling wave coaster. It's thrilling at the top when you see how far down you've got to go."
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