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SpoilerTV - TV Spoilers

Nikita - Series Finale delivers low ratings

Dec 28, 2013

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The early overnight ratings for Nikita's Series finale were a 0.2 in the 18-49 Demo and 0.81 Million viewers.

42 comments:

  1. So sad.. The best show on CW...

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  2. I blame the CW for this, their promotion has been a joke

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  3. Loved the show, loved the ending; it deserved better ratings. But now its' over, do I care what the ratings were? Nope.

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  4. It should have been paired with Arrow last season & the ratings wouldve picked up instead they had it on fridays in the death slot. Also that ending was kind of "bleh" for me, i know they didnt have many episodes to do it in but I think it wouldve been better had they strung the last two eps together for a 2hr going out because the 2nd to last eo was pretty epic, the finale didnt pack as much punch for me.

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  5. Was anyone expecting it to do any better?

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  6. I think if the CW kept Nikita on Thursdays after TVD it would have never got cancelled. So sad, it was such a great show!

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  7. Why would the pair a show that's ending with one of their higher rated shows, they don't need Nikita's ratings to pick up.

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  8. Lame til the end, Nielsen viewers. But that's okay, go on and keep watching reality shows with washed-out celebrities. That'll engage your neurons. :)

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  9. What I think they could've done for the final season is put it on a Mon-Thur night in place of another show during its hiatus. It was only 6 episodes, therefore short enough to fit into a hiatus, and such a move could've boosted the numbers a little. I know ratings for the final season didn't matter, just sayin'.

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  10. It's not unheard of. Gossip Girl, after pulling mostly 0.4's during the final season, jumped to 0.6 in the penultimate episode and 0.8 in the finale. I know Nikita was never the huge pop culture phenomenon GG was in its early years, but still.

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  11. Honestly no, I was expecting a consistent 0.2 through out this 'season'. It didn't have the biggest fan base to begin with. Not that it matters now, I'm just grateful that we got an actual ending.

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  12. Who cares now. It's over and we got our finale and that's all that matters.

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  13. While true, to be fair, I think they are better off wasting promotional resources on their other shows that have long term prospects than on a show ending on a Friday during holidays.

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  14. I was expecting a 0.3/0.4. I know it's holidays but that also means there's no competition and shows like Gossip Girl or 30 Rock were pretty much flops during the entire final season and then jumped at the very end. I was expecting some form of bounce, particularly considering i had reached a 0.3 a few weeks ago as well. Regardless, these numbers are so low that there is no statistical difference between a 0.2 and a 0.4.

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  15. What do you mean? Nikita was on its fourth season, Cw promoted it for years, not like Arrow and The Vampire Diaries but still promoted it. The sad truth is that part of the fans who have Nielsen boxes didn't care about the miniseason finale. Cw could have cancelled it last may, due to low ratings, but decided to renewed it for a miniseason finale (I think it's better than cancellation). And thanks to 90210 and Nikita fans(who have the Nielsen boxes and ignored them,, Pedowitz may change his mind about giving its veteran shows a chance to have a series finale, when they obtain terrible ratings.

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  16. Nikita was great. Stopped after Season 1 cause I didnt like the finale or the season 2 premiere. Im happy that Nikita got its final episode and who cares what the ratings are. Just be happy you got a finale, not like other shows *cough secret circle cough*

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  17. might have had something to do with ad revenues, its ratings were too low and the show itself had a very low ad revenue so CW would have got more money airing repeats on other shows and specials rather than Nikita.

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  18. I think Nikita is one of those shows whose audience is almost entirely non-Nielsen, which translates into horrible ratings. If you consider how millions of people around the world follow TV shows, it's ultimately just a fraction of the TV-viewing population - the ones with Nielsen boxes, or whatever measures ratings in other countries - that decides the shows' fates. A lot of people loved and watched Nikita, but very few of them were among the group that matters. Many shows have been there - at least this one got proper closure. thankfully, instead of being axed on a cliffhanger.

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  19. Something nice I caught: this episode revisited theme music from the show's early days at least twice. The music when Nikita stakes out Jones' transport in the beginning is the same one from 1x04, when she exits her car to storm the Triad's sweatshop (leading to one of the show's most badass fight scenes), and when she grabs Amanda and puts her in the metal restraints, that's the same music as in the epic 1x11 moment when she ripped her chains from the ceiling. Actually, there's a bit of similarity between the scenes, in both cases.

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  20. But even last season there wasn't much promotion

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  21. With that I agree, yeah ;) I just can't feel too angry with the CW about this one because they gave it many chances when it could have gone either way so many times.

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  22. Its ratings wouldn't have picked up at all if it was paired with arrow. Why, because last season even with dvr viewing through seven days the highest it could reach was a 0.5-0.6 which was basically its ratings roof. thats a far cry from what supernatural got last year behind arrow even without dvr

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  23. Yes, I blame the day and timeslot. No one was watching it on Fridays.

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  24. Nikita definitely was the best show the CW ever put on air.

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  25. Especially after America's Next Top Model, I mean... come on now.

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  26. To be honest, I think it would have been better if the "deception" plot had been on for the whole season.

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  27. I loved Nikita, watched all the seasons and will miss it, but Supernatural was able to deal with being moved to Friday, Nikita wasn't. It was a great show that never found an audience and then lost some of its audience after SPN left Friday. Nielsen ratings are what networks use to judge success and Nikita didn't pull anywhere near good ratings. I give Pedowitz and the CW a lot of credit for giving the show the short final season so things could be wrapped up neatly and those fans who stuck around felt rewarded. It may not have brought ratings, but it does give people who watch the CW the feeling that there is a fairly good chance that they won't be left hanging when a show (that has been around for more than 1 season) will be able to get a resolution.

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  28. If you had bothered to read my post at all you wouldve picked up the fact that I said LAST SEASON as in LAST YEAR. The CW is HORRIBLE at matching up their genre/feel for an entire night, Nikita was originally paired with Hart of Dixie for cripes sake! The point I was trying to make was that the series wouldve done far better had they paired it properly with a better lead in show that had the same feel to it. Arrow should have been the lead in for Nikita, instead Nikita was shipped off to Friday nights.

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  29. ha, glad I read all the comments before jumping in, this is my feelings also. At least we got an ending.

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  30. THANKS YOU CW for giving the fans an ending.

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  31. Not to split hairs or sound like a fan making excuses, but Supernatural was moved to Friday for its sixth season, at which point it already had a large, loyal fanbase that was likely to follow it anywhere on the schedule. Nikita was moved for its second season. It's not really a fair comparison. I understand why it was moved to Friday, Smallville ending left a hole there and they needed the better slots for their new shows, but in my opinion, it's undeniable that the move is part of the reason the ratings plummeted (not denying that there were other factors - obviously, the show didn't click with enough viewers or it wouldn't have lost about 40% of its audience during the first season).

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  32. The "villain of the week" approach they tried with the "Dirty Thirty" in season 3 is what killed Nikita, in my opinion. Nikita worked as long as it was a about a young, kick-ass heroine fighting against hopeless odds. They should never have had her and her friends take over Division.

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  33. I've always been against the "villain of the week" format, I find it far less compelling than serialized storytelling. That being said, it's not that different from what they did in the first halves of Seasons 1 and 2 (S1: Nikita foils the Division mission of the week with Alex's help from the inside, S2: Nikita, Michael and Birkhoff work on the black box case of the week).


    In concept, I really like the idea of Team Nikita taking over Division and reversing the show's basic dynamic, with Amanda trying to take THEM down from the outside. They found themselves lured in by the potential of Division's power, only to realize that the corruption was built into the organization's very concept - even without Percy and Amanda around, it was always going to become dirty again. You can't use an inherently evil tool to do good. However, Season 3 was riddled with creative mistakes, giving Michael his hand back (an infuriating cop-out of a brilliant and gutsy twist) and turning Amanda into a cartoony mustache-twirling villain being prime examples. How much of a part that played in the plummeting ratings is difficult to determine.


    Ultimately, I think a combination of many factors led to the show's commercial failure. The tacky promotion before it premiered (Maggie Q in a bikini and her underwear was not exactly representative of the show), being the odd one out on the female teen oriented - at least then - CW, the move to Friday, the dwindling amount of promotion once the network had higher priorities like its new shows, the relative anonymity of the cast (when Shane West and Devon Sawa are the most recognizable names to US audiences, you're in trouble), the crazy two weeks off/three weeks on scheduling, etc. It wouldn't surprise me if some of the audience bailed when they didn't like the direction of the third season, but by that point, the audience was pretty small to begin with.

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  34. You're right, it could -- if done well -- have been an interesting psychological case study on how power corrupts the people who wield it. However, we were talking about ratings and I maintain that most viewers who tune into a CW series are not usually of the introspective kind. They expect either kick-ass action or romance (or both) and they want the bad guys to always be clearly bad and the good guys to alway be unmistakably good.

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  35. Indeed. This has been said a thousand times, but it's interesting to theorize about how Nikita would've fared on cable (I won't say a different network, because those are trigger-happy and would've axed it if it wasn't a hit straight out of the gate). Without network pressure to include more romance (Alex's boyfriend Nathan from the first season was a horrible addition) or initially make Division look like 90210 for assassins, the show could've been leaner and meaner right from the start. The 13-episode format would've eliminated the need for filler episodes, a blessing for a serialized show like this. And it seems cable channels are more lenient about ratings as long as the show is well-received (which Nikita was), and helps them project the image of quality TV as opposed to network garbage.

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  36. You cant comment on a show you didnt feel concerned with enough to watch past Season 1. Nikita ended with Season 4.

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  37. "never" is a dubious word. Im glad it ended on a high note and on its own terms instead of the abruptness of cancellation.

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  38. There was reasoning behind them taking over division. The "dirty thirty" were rogue agents, still loyal to Amanda or Percy and Nikita and her friends felt obligated to bring them in. They were also being threatened by the President and others to keep Division a secret. Something that leaving those rogue agents out there would not accomplish.

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  39. 4 seasons was quite long enough for a show like this. No need to run it into the ground.

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  40. Oh, I understood the reasoning. What I'm saying is that it didn't work...i.e., that particular storyline just wasn't attractive to most viewers.

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  41. I felt concerned with Nikita. When it was on its 3rd Season I was hoping it was renewed for a 4th season so I could watch the show and finish it :P Im just saying that the fans should be happy that they got a final season and not care what the series finale's ratings got :)

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  42. Oh, I quite agree that 4 seasons was enough, we were just discussing why the ratings were as low as they were. Also, while Season 4 should have been the last either way, I think it could've been a much more satisfying conclusion if it had been 13 episodes, and that might have happened if the ratings hadn't been so bad that we were practically lucky to get even a 6-episode final season.

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