118786
Polls Archive / Re: Tell us what was the most important 'behind the scenes' decision in DS histo
« on: September 07, 2006, 01:13:49 AM »As we all are well aware, according to DC, the ratings SOARED after he was introduced.
And another misconception that we've tried to dispel ():
...
Though many articles certainly give that impression (along with many other erroneous impressions ), it may not be entirely true. The truth was that ABC gave DS an alotted amount of time (I believe it was 26 weeks) to improve its ratings or be canceled. However, the ratings began to climb slowly once the supernatural stuff really began to be incorporated into the show - they climbed even higher during the Laura storyline - and, of course, they climbed still further once Barnabas was introduced. We'll probably never know if ABC would have considered the pre-Barnabas rise strong enough for the show to have avoided cancellation because the alotted time for improvement ran into Barnabas' introduction, but there had been definite improvement before him. It's also interesting to note that the increased viewership of early-Barnabas over the non-supernatural DS was only a million viewers (10 million vs. 9 million) and was still far short of what viewership would be even a year later (16 million)...