Season 4 x 05 Parasite Lost

it looked like a jar of urine,

not liking the Colonel at all, I can see her turning the DEO into an army unit, and turning them from a peacekeeping/police unit to an all-out warfighting unit.

Fats

Random321 wrote: Maybe I killed the conversation/thread with my first post. Maybe people are stopping watching (tvseriesfinale.com/tv-show/supergirl-season-four-ratings/ kind of a disaster in the Demo). Maybe there just isn't much to say that's not already been said. Maybe all three.

In terms of the ratings, while I don't watch Supergirl any more, I have been tracking the ratings for each of the main CW cape shows. Keep in mind, the CW network isn't as ratings sensitive as other networks like CBS.  As shows naturally lose ratings over time, it might be best to rate Supergirl by comparison to its long-running companion shows (Arrow, Flash, Legends,)  Flash is the high mark, typically getting almost twice the audience of the lower marks, Arrow and Legends. So where does Supergirl fall between Flash, and Arrow/Legends..?

There are two measurements: the demo (a measure of the 18-49 aged audience that CW's advertisers target), and the total (a measure of everyone, regardless of age.)

Season two (the first CW season) started out with Supergirl just a shade behind The Flash in terms of both the 18-49 demo, and the absolute total ratings.  By season's end, however, the demo had dropped to close to Arrow, while the total was about 2/3rds of a way between Flash and Arrow/Legends.  Season three saw Supergirl's demo dance up and down the 0.5 range, while the other three shows slowly lost ratings, so overall Supergirl gained slightly by comparison.  Supergirl's total viewers started out very close to Arrow and Legends, but at the season's mid-third the ratings slowly climbed until they almost met The Flash's (which were on a gradual downward slope.)  As the season ended, Supergirl's total ratings were roughly halfway between The Flash and Arrow/Legends.  Season four (the current season) started with The Flash well ahead in both demo and total viewers as usual, Supergirl and Arrow are close together at roughly half the audience of Flash in both demo and total, while Legends dropped in both demo and total so it forms a new low mark.  So far, all four shows have been on a downward slope in both demo and totals, steeper than previous seasons. (Incomplete ratings, not including +7 numbers from DVRs, suggests that Supergirl's most recent episode had a substantial drop however from the previous episode.)

The overall message is that Supergirl is about as popular as Arrow in terms of the demo and totals, but that all four cape shows are slowly declining month-on-month.


R5

Random321 wrote: Five_Red - I have a challenge for you: Can you find the ratings trend for Wonder Woman, Lois and Clark, and the 6 Million Dollar man? I'm curious in particular about what might have killed off Lois and Clark from a viewership perspective: articles.latimes.com/1997-06-14/entertai...a-3130_1_bad-ratings There are main stream "hero" shows (Bonanza, Gunsmoke, ER, CSI) that have maintained over several years so I don't want to just accept the "everything fades" idea outright.

CSI / ER / Walking Dead

In all cases the trend tends to be that long running shows peak at around the third season (give or take), maintain that peak for a season or two, then go into a slow decline.

Ratings for classic shows are impossible to come by, it seems, without payments to Nielsen. Anyway, you can't really compare figures from the 1960s and 1970s with today' shows -- back then there was only three major US networks, and they weren't competing with DVD/BRs, video games, the internet, Netflix, etc. Shows like the SMDM could maintain an audience across seasons because there really wasn't anywhere else to go, aside from reading a book, listening to LPs, or visiting the cinema. Audiences couldn't afford to be fickle.

A factor that might inform the fickleness of audiences nowadays is the omnipresent availability of content. Suppose back in 1977 I stopped watching Wonder Woman, then a friend tells me that the recent episodes have been awesome -- there's really little I could do except look forward to some day in the distant future when I might happen across said episodes in syndication. Today, if I stop watching Supergirl, I know that the entire catalogue of episodes is merely a few clicks away on my smart tv. It's much easier to break ties with a show because you know there's zero forfeit to go back.

Btw, mentioning Wonder Woman -- Wonder Woman was never formally cancelled, according to a Starlog article published not long after the show 'ended'. It was put on hiatus because CBS wanted to focus on its failing sitcom offerings, but never got resumed.

Returning the discussion to Supergirl: I noticed that during season three, even Michelle Bacon (of the Maid of Might web site) had stopped commenting on episodes. She's quite active on Twitter, but I don't think she mentions the show much at all these days, despite being the creator of possibly the best Supergirl-specific web site (excluding blogs like Comicbox Commentary.) I kinda get the impression that the show isn't really Supergirl, which is presumably why genuine long-standing fans of the character are apathetic about it. For old-school Supergirl fans, we know that Kara is a very different character to Superman -- but I think the show wanted to stick as close as possible to Superman, presumably because of brand recognition, and because doing a female Superman is easier with the casual audience than actually trying to bring the real Kara Zor-El to the screen. You can't blame CW/WB for playing it safe, but it does mean that long-time fans don't recognise the character on screen.

(The irony here is that on the silver-screen DC may be introducing a Supergirl movie specifically to reset/reboot the grim-gritty Dawn of Justice Superman which has rankled with audiences.)

What about myself? I stopped watching Supergirl because the press releases about season two made it clear that the writing issues were unlike to be addressed, and (more importantly) that they were stripping the character of what little had differentiated her from Superman. I didn't sign on to watch "Superman", so being given "Superman in a skirt" was never going to work for me. Rather than carry on watching, getting frustrated and bitter, I figured it would be smarter to just recognise that the show wasn't pitched at genuine Supergirl fans like myself, but at the larger Superman-loving audience. Sure, it's disappointing to wait all this time for a Supergirl tv show, only to be served Superman instead, but breaking with the show early on meant I didn't let that disappointment fester into something far far more negative.

(Btw: If anyone is watching the thriller series The Little Drummer Girl, the lead in that show (Florence Pugh) is my current fav to play Supergirl on the silver screen. She can act (like proper acting -- her Lady Macbeth apparently wowed critics), she can do comedy, she looks classy, and (importantly) she has one of those slightly smokey voices that exudes confidence. Pic 1 / Pic 2 / Vid .)


R5