Titon
July 17th, 2004, 07:17 AM
This comes from the old Kobal files concerning who really "Killed Galactica". I know alot of the original series fans have read this article but for those fans of the new series that have not read this, take a peak at just how grand the original series was. I know there's been alot of talk on how cheesy some think the TOS was but in all honesty it was widely though of differently in 1979 by millions of people. I'm one of those millions that watched in awe as this epic series came to life and i'm one still remembers it for what it was. Battlestar Galactica. Enjoy.
:)Who Killed Galactica?
by William Adams
Battlestar Galactica was not a failure. By every method used to measure television it was a success, perhaps even the strongest new show of the 78-79 season. The average rating for a successful new series is 18. Battlestar, at 20.4, was a full five million viewers above that average and one of the top 25 series on television. It was the sixth highest rated new series for the entire season, and before ABC began fooling with the show, it was pulling ratings of 22 and 23, high enough to make it one of the top 15 series on TV. As for the audience shares, for a successful new series the average is 28. Battlestar, at 32, was again well above the norm.
[The demographics are] broken into five major divisions: Women 18-49, Men 18-49, Teenagers, Children, and over 50s. Galactica placed in the top ten with three of the groups and in the top 20 for a fourth. Only a handful of programs can match those demographics and all of them are still on.
Its competition was the strongest on television, with both CBS and NBC stacking their schedules against it. The night itself was only a moderate success. ABC hadn't done any better than second place for years. The leadin, The Hardy Boys, had an average rating of 13 and the program that followed Battlestar was a movie where the ratings depended on what was showing. None of the requirements needed to break 23 was present. In fact, Battlestar shouldn't have broken 20. Yet it did, and when the competition was just another new series, it broke 24. Its ratings were so high CBS panicked, booted Mary Tyler Moore out and rearranged their entire schedule less than one month into the season. They took four of their five top series and formed a wall against Galactica. NBC didn't have enough strong series to move, so they countered with their best movies, biggest miniseries and most publicized specials. NBC lost. CBS won, barely. Battlestar's ratings declined two points to fluctuate between 21 and 23, still within the top 15 shows on TV.
Battlestar did not cost ABC a million dollars an episode. According to Variety the price was more like $750,000, for which ABC bought the rights to show each episode twice (and you were wondering why such a failure reran all summer.) That was the same per hour fee ABC was paying for one showing only of the lower rated Monday Night Football and most of their Hollywood movies.
Universal Studios probably was paying a million dollars an episode, but it's not unusual for a producer to lose money. On a series like Charlie's Angels the producers were losing between one and five million dollars a year. A producer makes money by owning a series that runs long enough to go into syndicated reruns. Once that happens, the rental fees make up for the original losses. Yet, in spite of a first season cancellation and a $250,000 per episode loss, Univeral was happy. The release of Battlestar's motion picture version had already paid for all production. The money from ABC was profit.
As far as Universal was concerned, Battlestar was a financial miracle. Even ABC, despite rumors to the contrary, did not lose money on the series. According to figures from Advertising Age, A.C. Nielson, and Variety, after all fees had been paid, ABC still netted over 15 million dollars, and no matter how they pad the accounts, that still comes out to several million in pure profit.
Battlestar did not plunge down the ratings ladder. I'm well aware ABC can show a 14 point drop. It's done by carefully selecting the highest and lowest weekly figures. But, if that's how a plunge is figured, Alice, All in the Family, Fantasy Island, Happy Days, and a dozen other shows beat the Galactica to the bottom and lived to tell about it.
So why was Battlestar Galactica cancelled? In short, ABC didn't want it. The series was too expensive, so ABC killed it. That's not sour grapes, that's the conclusion of a controversial study conducted at Ball State University in Indiana.
"Hard core" SF can not produce enough profit to satisfy the networks even though the networks would love to have the SF community among their viewers. That's why we get an endless line of programming like Mr. Merlin and The Incredible Hulk, which are relatively cheap to make, but not one hard core SF series since Star Trek has been allowed to stay on. Because advertising rates are based on cost per-thousand viewers rather than cost of production, the average Galactica-like series needs ratings over 30 just to produce the same profits Real People will make with 19.
ABC, at the time the richest of the three, went with Battlestar, but only as a three-part miniseries. Unfortunately for them, once word got out, public reaction was so strong the network was forced to change its plans and order a full-fledged weekly series, but there was no intention of letting it succeed. ABC began by hyping the show. That means instead of buying ads, they got papers to give them free space under the heading of news.
No series in the history of television had ever been so hyped. In one three-week period it was the cover story for Newsweek, People, US, TV Guide, and almost all of the "TV Weeklies" published in local newspapers. During the same period it was a major part of Time and even the Smithsonian magazine did a special section on how it was being filmed. Everyone in the country thought they knew all about the series. Rumors were rampant. One SF magazine finally flew an editor to Canada just to view the actual film and hopefully find out what was really going on. Such massive hyping guaranteed two things. First of all, a huge opening audience, and secondly, an audience loss. For Dallas the loss between the "who shot J.R." episode and the next week was over 15 million viewers. Such a loss is expected. No series has ever been able to maintain a hyped rating. Yet in the case of Battlestar, which dropped from a rating of 28 to 25, or a loss of about nine million people, ABC claimed a decline proved the show couldn't hold an audience.
So you see folks, as much as alot of people have stated to the contrary, Galactica was a spectacular hit and ABC did indeed truely kill Galactica for no reason. With those ratings in today's world this would be a runaway hit unseen in television since ER hit the air. The truely sad thing is Scifi seemingly has done the same thing, hyped Galactica and spent a TON of money on advertising it. Will this eventually succeed in giving the new series the same fate?
;)
:)Who Killed Galactica?
by William Adams
Battlestar Galactica was not a failure. By every method used to measure television it was a success, perhaps even the strongest new show of the 78-79 season. The average rating for a successful new series is 18. Battlestar, at 20.4, was a full five million viewers above that average and one of the top 25 series on television. It was the sixth highest rated new series for the entire season, and before ABC began fooling with the show, it was pulling ratings of 22 and 23, high enough to make it one of the top 15 series on TV. As for the audience shares, for a successful new series the average is 28. Battlestar, at 32, was again well above the norm.
[The demographics are] broken into five major divisions: Women 18-49, Men 18-49, Teenagers, Children, and over 50s. Galactica placed in the top ten with three of the groups and in the top 20 for a fourth. Only a handful of programs can match those demographics and all of them are still on.
Its competition was the strongest on television, with both CBS and NBC stacking their schedules against it. The night itself was only a moderate success. ABC hadn't done any better than second place for years. The leadin, The Hardy Boys, had an average rating of 13 and the program that followed Battlestar was a movie where the ratings depended on what was showing. None of the requirements needed to break 23 was present. In fact, Battlestar shouldn't have broken 20. Yet it did, and when the competition was just another new series, it broke 24. Its ratings were so high CBS panicked, booted Mary Tyler Moore out and rearranged their entire schedule less than one month into the season. They took four of their five top series and formed a wall against Galactica. NBC didn't have enough strong series to move, so they countered with their best movies, biggest miniseries and most publicized specials. NBC lost. CBS won, barely. Battlestar's ratings declined two points to fluctuate between 21 and 23, still within the top 15 shows on TV.
Battlestar did not cost ABC a million dollars an episode. According to Variety the price was more like $750,000, for which ABC bought the rights to show each episode twice (and you were wondering why such a failure reran all summer.) That was the same per hour fee ABC was paying for one showing only of the lower rated Monday Night Football and most of their Hollywood movies.
Universal Studios probably was paying a million dollars an episode, but it's not unusual for a producer to lose money. On a series like Charlie's Angels the producers were losing between one and five million dollars a year. A producer makes money by owning a series that runs long enough to go into syndicated reruns. Once that happens, the rental fees make up for the original losses. Yet, in spite of a first season cancellation and a $250,000 per episode loss, Univeral was happy. The release of Battlestar's motion picture version had already paid for all production. The money from ABC was profit.
As far as Universal was concerned, Battlestar was a financial miracle. Even ABC, despite rumors to the contrary, did not lose money on the series. According to figures from Advertising Age, A.C. Nielson, and Variety, after all fees had been paid, ABC still netted over 15 million dollars, and no matter how they pad the accounts, that still comes out to several million in pure profit.
Battlestar did not plunge down the ratings ladder. I'm well aware ABC can show a 14 point drop. It's done by carefully selecting the highest and lowest weekly figures. But, if that's how a plunge is figured, Alice, All in the Family, Fantasy Island, Happy Days, and a dozen other shows beat the Galactica to the bottom and lived to tell about it.
So why was Battlestar Galactica cancelled? In short, ABC didn't want it. The series was too expensive, so ABC killed it. That's not sour grapes, that's the conclusion of a controversial study conducted at Ball State University in Indiana.
"Hard core" SF can not produce enough profit to satisfy the networks even though the networks would love to have the SF community among their viewers. That's why we get an endless line of programming like Mr. Merlin and The Incredible Hulk, which are relatively cheap to make, but not one hard core SF series since Star Trek has been allowed to stay on. Because advertising rates are based on cost per-thousand viewers rather than cost of production, the average Galactica-like series needs ratings over 30 just to produce the same profits Real People will make with 19.
ABC, at the time the richest of the three, went with Battlestar, but only as a three-part miniseries. Unfortunately for them, once word got out, public reaction was so strong the network was forced to change its plans and order a full-fledged weekly series, but there was no intention of letting it succeed. ABC began by hyping the show. That means instead of buying ads, they got papers to give them free space under the heading of news.
No series in the history of television had ever been so hyped. In one three-week period it was the cover story for Newsweek, People, US, TV Guide, and almost all of the "TV Weeklies" published in local newspapers. During the same period it was a major part of Time and even the Smithsonian magazine did a special section on how it was being filmed. Everyone in the country thought they knew all about the series. Rumors were rampant. One SF magazine finally flew an editor to Canada just to view the actual film and hopefully find out what was really going on. Such massive hyping guaranteed two things. First of all, a huge opening audience, and secondly, an audience loss. For Dallas the loss between the "who shot J.R." episode and the next week was over 15 million viewers. Such a loss is expected. No series has ever been able to maintain a hyped rating. Yet in the case of Battlestar, which dropped from a rating of 28 to 25, or a loss of about nine million people, ABC claimed a decline proved the show couldn't hold an audience.
So you see folks, as much as alot of people have stated to the contrary, Galactica was a spectacular hit and ABC did indeed truely kill Galactica for no reason. With those ratings in today's world this would be a runaway hit unseen in television since ER hit the air. The truely sad thing is Scifi seemingly has done the same thing, hyped Galactica and spent a TON of money on advertising it. Will this eventually succeed in giving the new series the same fate?
;)