Remastered episodes of “Star Trek” surging upwards in weekend syndication January 4, 2007 6:00 pm
Posted by Rosario T. Calabria in News, Science Fiction, Star Trek, Syndication, Syndication TV Ratings, Television.trackback
Remastered episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series are pacing upwards after a slow start back in September of last year.
The last newly aired episode (“The Corbomite Maneuver”) ran during the week of December 9, 2006 and registered a 1.6 household rating. That marks a season high for the series and a noteworthy increase from the 1.3 household rating of the first known rating for the series (“The Devil in the Dark” aired the second week of syndication, while “Balance of Terror” aired in the first week but ratings are unknown for that episode due to Nielsen calculation errors).
After hovering around that range for its first 9 weeks, Star Trek jumped up 33% over five weeks to its current season high (1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.4, 1.6). Interestingly enough, Enterprise went through a similar trend last season.
It’s also the first time Star Trek has registered a stronger rating than Enterprise (1.6 vs a 1.5– view chart below for a detailed view).
Star Trek was the second highest rated program in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Syndication category behind the 1.9 of Alias for the week of December 11 to December 17 (Note: Star Trek airs in a nine-day window, so ratings are registered over a two-week time frame). Other programs in the SF&F category were; Smallville – 1.4, Stargate SG-1 – 1.3, Stargate Atlantis – 1.2, Farscape – 0.7 and The Outer Limits – 0.6.
The show is currently averaging a 1.3 household rating, just slightly below what Star Trek: Enterprise averaged in its first and only season in off-network broadcast syndication last year (1.4, with a peak of 1.7).
New remastered episodes begin airing again this weekend (January 6, 2007) with “Friday’s Child”.
I’ve included a graph which compares the first 13 episodes of Star Trek: Remastered in syndication to the first 13 episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise in syndication (click to view).
Note: The rating for the eighth aired episode “The Trouble with Tribbles” is also unknown.
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Star Trek will never die. Every time I’m out hiking at night and I look up at the stars it brings back memories of many of favorite Star Trek episodes and I just long for the day when we can turn this science fiction into reality.