SFTV Roundup - Schedule Updates and Network juggling

SFTV Schedules Updated, Schedule Shuffling, TV Big Shot

The Upcoming SFTV Schedule list and Season to Date list have been updated with the latest information I've been able to track down. With the writer's strike now really having an affect on availability of new episodes for most of the shows that started this fall, there's a lot of schedule juggling going on as new shows are brought in, shows with no more episodes left are dropped, and the networks play chicken with each other to try to gain an advantage. Right before Christmas, CBS dropped new episodes of three shows at short notice to run repeats. This past week, ABC and NBC played chicken with the start of Celebrity Apprentice with apparently NBC winning as ABC didn't move the last new Grey's Anatomy to Jan 3rd after NBC moved The Apprentice back to that date, after moving it to Jan 10th AFTER having previously announced it to start Jan 3rd.

Yes, I've been paying much more detailed attention to non-SFTV shows to attempt to keep near the top with TV Bigshot. My top network, SFTVPlus, is at #17 currently. Aleph still has most of the top ten but others have been gaining on him. I'm just trying to keep up with them. TWOP will definitely need to rethink the game for next season, though. Too much of the game has become dependent on increasing your network value by buying and selling shows to gain network value.

But I digress. The latest schedule juggling is from FOX, who instead of just burning off New Amsterdam on Friday nights starting in late February, have now decided to give it a big push by previewing the first two episodes following American Idol episodes and then putting it into the Monday night 9 pm time slot once they run out of Terminator episodes. That's a pretty surprising turn of events for the show considering FOX shut down production on it BEFORE the writer's strike, effectively killing it before it aired. With the strike continuing, that may be a new lease on life for New Amsterdam.

Fans4Writers Auction, Special shirts

The fans4writers web site is having an auction to raise money to support their efforts that includes a lot of signed Galactica scripts and other items of interest. You can also support the strike by buying Strike Swag including the special Star Trek day shirt (assuming they aren't all gone.) I got mine already...

I definitely would like to see the strike settled soon, but only if the writers get what they are due. If anything, we've got some new genre stuff coming up including new Torchwood and Doctor Who (which is UK made and not affected by the strike).

New Schedule Lists Updated, TV BIg Shot

The latest schedules have been updated at sftv.org. I've also got a good bit of news in the Upcoming Schedule update as well. Things have been a bit busy as I get ready for a busy month of conventioning with World Fantasy Convention, TusCon 34 (still a maybe) and LosCon 34. I did make it out to the Horror/SciFi Film Festival and got to see Claudia Christian.

As for TV Big Shot, after some problems getting things working properly, things have settled down a bit. My SFTVPlus network is in the top 60 and moving up fast. I missed out on some of the initial ratings gains that garnered bonus points for those that caught on in time for the first week of ratings, but I've managed to keep pace to some extent. The main issue is that one of the users did make the right choices in the first couple of weeks and has several networks heading up the top of the heap. I think its still possible to catch him by making the best use of your budget during the heavy repeat weeks and if there's a writer's strike, trying to guess what will do well in the filler shows will not be a simple task. If anything, I've picked some shows this week that may garner significant bonus points if they do as I expect them to while the leader appears to be playing things safe this week.

Lee

SFTV Network Ratings Update

The second week of the new season has come and gone and none of the new genre shows have been cancelled yet!

That doesn't mean that a few dropped off a bit in the second week and they better not keep sliding, though.

First up, NBC's SciFi Monday has some legs, although Journeyman's are getting a bit wobbly, in part due to losing a good chunk of the lead-in provided by Heroes. The first week's total ratings for Heroes were bumped up a bit due to a new Nielsen rule that allows a network to show the same episode twice in a week and add the ratings points together if all of the commercials are the same. Thus the second week of Heroes dropped quite a bit from the first week but in actuality was close to the same. Both Chuck and Journeyman dropped a bit over 10% from their first week, which isn't too bad compared to some of the other new shows in their second week.

On Tuesday, Reaper did OK, dropping about 15% from its debut, but not losing any of its Beauty and the Geek lead-in.

Wednesday saw a big drop by The Bionic Woman, about 18% in ratings and 27% in the adult 18-49 demographic. Wednesday also saw Pushing Daisies debut very strongly with an 8.3 overnight rating.

On Thursday, Smallville held fairly close to its season debut and Supernatural returned at about its season average.

Friday saw CBS's lineup hold fairly steady, with Ghost Whisperer, Moonlight, and Numb3rs dropping only slightly from their season debuts.

Thanks for The Futon Critic for the ratings info...

On the cable front, Stargate Atlantis returned to SciFi on Sept 28th and drew a 1.2 rating. Definitely better than Painkiller Jane or Flash Gordon had been doing. This past Friday, SciFi started airing the Battlestar Galactica Razor flashbacks during Flash Gordon, which in turn delayed the start of Stargate Atlantis. If you don't want to sit through Flash Gordon, SciFi is making them available online as well. Also, it appears that the Friday night before the Razor movie airs, SciFi will air all of them during the 9:00 pm to 10:30 pm time slot during an Enterprise marathon.

In other SciFi news, they announced that Ghost Hunters International will debut in January. It looks like between the original Ghost Hunters, the Ghost Hunters International, and the upcoming UFO Hunters, they'll be having something new each week year round.

As for my TV Big Shot Network(s), I've done fair the first week (didn't realize how significant the points were for a ratings gain, which really paid off for shows that debuted strong versus the network's average last year) but I hope to take advantage of the gains in budget I made selling sliding shows and buying rising shows to start to make progress. That's why there isn't much SFTV in SFTVPlus because most of the genre shows dropped in the second week. Yes, I have no clue about the image for my network, it keeps showing up even when I have replaced it with something else. There's still a few bugs to be worked out of the system.

I'm a TV Big Shot!

TV Big Shot!

Television Without Pity and Bravo have launched a new Fantasy TV competition called TV Big Shot which allows users to buy and sell current TV shows, gaining points on how well they do in the ratings and other factors. It launched early this week and appears to be having some growing pains (as well as some confusion about how it all will work, especially with shows going on hiatus or in limbo). Since they do have a grand prize of $100,000, there will be a lot of people trying to win and right now it isn't clear what is the best strategy. You are limited to a budget of $300 million and the way shows are priced, that will get you two hit shows and one or two other lower priced shows. My network, SFTVPlus will likely not win overall, but I figured I'd try a mostly genre strategy. No one will actually get
any points until after next weeks ratings are in, so it's currently a list of 6000+ networks all hoping to do better than the others. With the limited budget for each network, it may make it difficult to have one single one break ahead of the pack.

SFTV Schedules Updated

The SFTV Schedules have been updated and the upcoming schedule file will be emailed out this weekend. In the meantime, you can check things out to the right of the page.