Last nights premiere of Extant's 2nd Season hit a series low.
It scored a 0.7 in the 18-49 demo and had a total of 5.17 Million viewers.
It's previous low was 0.8 and 4.64 Million back in Sept 2014.
The season 1 premiere had a rating of 1.6 and 9.58 Million
We'll have the final adjusted numbers for all Broadcast and Cable shows in around 4 hrs time when they get released.
That's pretty bad.
ReplyDeleteDamn!
ReplyDeleteOh Halle!
ReplyDeleteI wonder if the Amazon deal will still be enough to save it. I really enjoyed the premiere.
ReplyDeleteI predicted it correctly.
ReplyDeleteOf course it was going to be bad.
ReplyDeletelast year they f***ed up the storyline in later part of the season and that is the reason ppl not tuning in.
ReplyDeleteBummer. :/ Hopefully the deal it has saves it regardless.
ReplyDeleteI was trying to breakdown some numbers for Extant to see if it is possible that it is still profitable at this level. Not really sure about the conclusion since informations seems contradictory but I think it is borderline at best.
ReplyDeleteAccording to the LA Times (http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/la-et-st-summer-tv-20140607-story.html#page=2),the show is expensive to make. The article mentions 24 cost $4000 last year and it says Extant costs nearly as much. It also says Under the Dome costs roughly $3000 per episode. Since that show has no stars and Extant has Halle Berry, I think it is reasonable that Extant is more expensive - let's say $3500 per episode.
With this 0.7 and considering the bad age screw and no interest in any particular demographic, I estimate 30-Second ad rate to be around $50. Assuming 12 minutes of paid commercials per episode, that would mean roughly $1200 of ads-revenue per episode.
That leaves an hefty $2300 to be covered somewhere else, and that is just for the show to break-even, which is obviously not the goal (networks are interested in profits, last I checked). Then we have contradictory informations:
- per the LA Times, the model they have actually has Amazon taking up half the costs of the show from CBS (which is equivalent to $1750 in revenue) and it also mentions foreign sales roughly paying for the other half (so $1750 of international revenue, which sounds too much to me, but well). That would be profit of roughly $1200 for CBS, so it would still be okay.
- however, Variety (http://variety.com/2014/tv/news/cbs-summer-of-svod-inside-amazon-deal-for-under-the-dome-extant-1201253081/), which I tend to trust more for these things, says Amazon pays $900 (and not $1750) per each episode. Assuming the same very high number of international sales that the LA times mentions, that would mean profit of roughly $350 for CBS.
I think the second option is more likely but that means Extant is severely dependent on those international sales to survive and I have no idea whether or not it is being a hit in those other countries to continue to receive hefty $1750 for that.
I posted my rough predictions of its profitability above.
ReplyDeleteWhat happened that makes you think that they fucked up?
ReplyDeleteIs anyone really surprised about Extant's ratings? I wrote yesterday that I would be surprised if it broke a 0.8 and sure enough it didn't.
ReplyDeleteExtant's buzz going into the premire was non-existant, and like with Under The Dome last week, many viewers mentioned on social media that they abandoned it. Sure enough, in both cases it was reflective in the ratings.
It's also another example of why it's a terrible idea to keep shows in summer for the purpose of having scripted programming. CBS is probably thinking right now that another unscripted hour would have been a better option.
I guess it's not a surprise as S1 finished on a weak note. I wasn't planning on watching this, but decided to give it a chance after the preview article and I will say that the changes that were made pulled me back enough to give it a few more samples, but the prospect of taking the show in a more action-y direction is more interesting to me and we'll see if they can pull it off
ReplyDeletethe min the child was introduced,it became a cliche .miracle baby ,end of the world.too many shows ding that
ReplyDeleteyou should probably note that we're dealing with a few more 00s here, no show is ever going to be produced for a few thousand bucks per episode ^^
ReplyDeleteLol of course, I was just leaving out the extra 000s for simplification.
ReplyDeleteI know, just when reading through your comment with my mind half present I didn't get for a second that you were simplifying it. Just needed to get that straight in case others are as mentally absent as me sometimes :P
ReplyDeleteFair enough!
ReplyDelete