Sliders.tv → Sliders Bboard → Sliders Nielsen Ratings
I've been gathering data and making a list for Sliders' Nielsen ratings. Since they're 20 years old I've been able to find a lot of them in USA Today and a few magazines. Does anyone know if the SciFi channel published their Sliders Nielsen ratings for each specific episode other than the premiere episodes Genesis and Prophets and Loss? It seems Nielsen data (which is controversial I know) is tight lipped and hard to find.
I've been gathering data and making a list for Sliders' Nielsen ratings. Since they're 20 years old I've been able to find a lot of them in USA Today and a few magazines. Does anyone know if the SciFi channel published their Sliders Nielsen ratings for each specific episode other than the premiere episodes Genesis and Prophets and Loss? It seems Nielsen data (which is controversial I know) is tight lipped and hard to find.
You should check out the sliders.alt.tv newsgroup. A ton of historical date. You can filter down the threads to ones that began at a certain date to help you wade through everything.
Sci-Fi Channel used to post each weeks's ratings on Sci-Fi Wire; it was a different scale than Nielsen used, but you can still figure out the Nielsen rating by doing the math. You can see an explanation in a post by TemptressInfinity from the old Sc-Fi boards:
http://hof.slidersweb.net/misc/19067.html
The short of it is that during season four, 1 rating point on Sci-Fi Wire equaled 490,000 viewers. During season five, 1 rating point on Sc-Fi Wire equaled 576,000 viewers. On network tv during this time frame, 1 actual Nielsen point equaled 1,000,000 viewers.
On the old Sci-Fi board, I used to post each week what the Sci-Fi Wire ratings were. I don't think the full season four ratings are available on the net right now, but you can see all of season five at this link:
Thanks guys. I couldn't find much on sliders.alt.tv as far as 1998-2000. The hof.slidersweb.net helps a lot TF, I've been looking for archives of the Sci-Fi Wire because I knew they published them but it seems like no one has archived them. I guess it will prove tough to find the ratings for season four. I also noticed some distinguishable inconsistencies as far as the Ratings point with 2 reliable sources USA Today and the Broadcasting Magazine for the first 3 seasons especially 1997. I would imagine for Season Four it's possible they were published in some scifi magazine at the time, however most seem to only list the top 20 for cable. I haven't added season five yet but here's what I have so far if anyone's interested:
Expert had ratings as part of his episode capsules; you can see them on an episode-by-episode basis here:
http://earthprime.com/expert/contents.html
If I recall the show was #2 behind only Farscape on the SciFi Channel.
I checked my records and came up with a few season four ratings. Way back when after Sci-Fi unexpectedly purged a large number of old posts from 1998, I went through the remaining archives and printed hard copies of everything that I felt was newsworthy (news about magazine articles, actor appearances in other shows, etc). Unfortunately, all that was available was from December 20, 1998 forward; so all I have in hard copy ratings data is the back half of season four (with two missing for some reason).
1-11-99 - Net Worth - 1.3
1-18-99 - Slide By Wire - No Record
3-19-99 - Data World - 1.2
3-26-99 - Way Out West - 1.2
4-02-99 - My Brother's Keeper - No Record
4-09-99 - The Chasm - 1.2
4-16-99 - Roads Taken - 1.1
4-23-99 - Revelations - 1.1
The reason for the two with no record could be because Sci-Fi Wire didn't post the records that week; they weren't the most reliable.
Also, purely from memory, I know that Alternateville Horror had a 2.0. It stuck in my mind because of how close the show got back to the Sci-Fi ratings record even at episode 8.
TF, were these episodes you found after re-run hell? Hence lower numbers than say Alternateville Horror?
TF, were these episodes you found after re-run hell? Hence lower numbers than say Alternateville Horror?
Yep. Sliders never really recovered after that. We still had our moments, though; Farscape wasn't number one every week, but we would only win by one or two tenths of a point.
Also, surrounding posts that I printed out suggested that Net Worth's higher number likely resulted from an advertising push that happened just before it aired (including a full page ad in some magazines and commercials on USA Network talking up the return of Sci-Fi's then number one show Sliders). When Sliders returned again in March, it didn't have that singular attention; it was just lumped in with other shows for the all new Sci-Fi Friday ad campaign.
Also to Jim, I don't know what you're using to get the day and time info for broadcasts, but here's a good site for everything Sci-Fi Channel if you need it:
Thanks for all the info guys. TF, that broadcast time for S4 helps too; I emailed SyFy to see if they could direct me to any publications or have any ratings info on the other S4 episodes. I'm sure they are laughing at their computer monitors and I'll never hear a word from them. Pretty interesting that The Alternateville Horror got such a high rating.
Part of the issue there Jim is that the information may not exist, or is locked away in storage somewhere. SyFy's staff aren't going to spend time locating.
As for the ratings, it's a shame. I really fell back into love with the series when they aired the Fox years "in order" during the spring of 1998 leading into S4. I think a LOT of other viewers did as well.
Sliders.tv → Sliders Bboard → Sliders Nielsen Ratings
Powered by PunBB, supported by Informer Technologies, Inc.