Season 7 TV ratings in 2002-2003

[Librarian Giles]

Hey everyone,


I was just looking at wikipedia and i noticed that Season 7 of Buffy had an all time low of 4.1 million viewers. That is still a heck of a lot of people, but what shocked me even more, that Buffy was ranked 4th on the UPN. I loved Season 7, i know a lot of people didn't like it too much, but i made sure i watched every ep on Tuesday night, and i couldn't i taped it.

So anyway after some research i got a list of the shows from the 2002 fall season of UPN.

UPN 2002 Fall Season

Now, what could be the 3 shows that were beating Buffy? I remember WWE was really popular at that time, so it wouldn't surprise me if that was number 2 or 1. Haunted was a cool show, but I remember hearing it got horrible ratings, which led to it being canned. Twilight Zone was cool, but i doubt it got more then 3 mill viewers, it got canceled after too...

So that leaves shows like One on One, The Parkers, Girlfriends and Half & Half. Seriously, could any of these shows really have beaten Buffy in the ratings, I hardly remember them at all. Oh, i forgot about Enterprise, that show probably could be at number 3. But what else could have been beating BTVS on UPN?

Anyways, i know this is all old news that i digged up, but I found it really interesting. In the end, 4.1 millions viewers is nothing to be ashamed of, Season 7 was magnificent.

 

[Spuffy is true love]

i think the main reason of the drop in ratings at this point in the series was b/c it was starting to become more of a continuous show. what I mean by that is that in the first 3 seasons you have a lot of stand alone eps, ones that kind of featured the monster of the week. When you get into seasons 4 and 5 you still have those, but they contain some of the season long plot. when you get to 6 and 7 the whole season is like one big long ep. So if you miss one part of the season then you miss a big chunk. Also after making the jump to upn it could have very well lost a lot of viewers. Also coming off of season 6 which is by far the most mature of all the seasons i'm sure a lot of parents of little kids were like, no no we watched it last season and you can't see that. just a couple reasons that may explain it.

 

[Astaroth]

I spent more time on this that I care to explain, and still didn't find the answers easy...but I can tell you that Smackdown! and Enterprise were both beating Buffy in the weekly UPN ratings in 2002.

Smackdown! was probably number 1, considering even today that WWE programming is tops on cable.

One would think there would be some site out there dedicated to historical nielson ratings, but there doesn't seem to be any. I would also wish for a great interface, and not just having to download PDF files.

 

[Primal Slayer]

Im not surprised, it was in its 7th year, just got moved to a lesser known network a year ago and was I think the only supernatural show the network had at the time. But those ratings arent so bad and they are still better then TheCW shows.

 

[lovefaith]

Yea 4.1 million is still really good. A lot better than i thought to tell you the truth. I mean. I knew buffy was amazing but i never thought everybody else thought it was amazing. I just thought it was like one of those cult shows that has low viewership but stays on air because the quality is so good. Kind of like 30 Rock.

 

[complex]

At the time... I had JUST started watching when it was about to end. I had reached that age where you understand metaphors and can comprehend what's really going on other than just monsters.
I had watched it before, but I was to busy running around the house with my purse and make up. I was still to young to understand what analogy was actually going, which is why i believe it got such good rating's in the beginning. And agreed, I do believe it did get repetitive. The plots were new, but the storyline lacked. They did a good job, and although I hear people say "They should've ended it differently..." I completely disagree with it. It leaves us with "hope" that Buff WILL go on. That cute little smirk at the end...