The Orville’s Ratings

I’ve been talking about The Orville almost every week, reviewing each episode on my Periscope thus far (which you can follow here where I do daily broadcasts live, or I upload to Youtube later here ). It’s a fabulous show, capturing the heart and soul of Star Trek in a way I haven’t seen since Voyager. About the opposite of the Discovery in so many ways.

I looked around for the ratings today to see how it’s faring and found this:

For its premier, it actually beat Discovery in the demo, and while we don’t have any info on Discovery after that, one can only imagine that more people are watching this network program than something for a pay service.

When they switched to Thursday, we saw a steep decline in viewership, which I’m rather sad about. It would have been nice if they left it on Sundays, but it is what it is. Moving show days is ALWAYS problematic for TV shows, and we see that coming here. I think the first show moving being the weird “two males with a baby” episode probably contributed to the decline in the following weeks as well — even though it wasn’t a bad episode at all, the concept looked a little iffy and so people might have tuned out at that point, and kept tuning out for a bit.

that said, the show keeps getting better. Every episode is better and has more Star Trek heart than the last. It’s really so good.

These ratings are really a bubble rating grouping for a show like this, not great at all, but not horrible either. If it retains the numbers, it will be in good shape, if it loses audience, it will be gone. I’m glad there was a small boost for “Krill” which I think was the strongest episode yet. TV By The Numbers commented that The Orville does have some leeway other shows don’t because Fox loves Seth MacFarlane — as much as I like to complain about him, his being the producer, writer and lead may actually be what keeps this show on the air as Fox wants to keep him happy, and it’s clear he’s very happy making this show.

For comparison, however, Family Guy has about a 1.3 rating now, slightly better than the Orville, but also a LOT cheaper to produce. Gotham, a branded show which is high budget has a 0.9, not doing quite as well.  Lethal Weapon, riding on a brand and not quite as good as Orville is getting a 1.2, so very close to the Orville’s numbers.

Interesting stuff but we all need to keep tuning in and telling our friends about this show to keep this going. It’s our last, best hope for a space-action show.

If you like cool space concepts with heart, you’ll probably enjoy my recent novella, Gravity Of The Game, which is getting a lot of buzz for a Hugo Award nomination. Check it here.