Cancellation Watch: True Blood Goes Out on Top but What’s Up With the Syfy Shows?

HBO’s True Blood had its Season 5 finale this past Sunday and continued its reign at the top for the evening among cable shows.  Sunday’s episode pulled a 2.8 rating in the 18-49 demographic and just over five million total viewers.  The series has seen strong performance throughout the Summer and HBO has already renewed it for a sixth season, with more likely to follow from that.

Over on Syfy, things are not so rosy, though.  Both Warehouse 13 and Alphas continue to perform below the numbers that they were pulling last Summer, though they haven’t quite sunk to critical levels yet.  Both series pulled a 0.5 rating in the 18-49 demo this past Monday with Warehouse 13 having about 1.9 million total viewers Alphas having about 1.7 million total viewers.  The total viewer numbers actually look okay and are about on par with what they had last year, but the all-important rating in the 18-49 demo has slipped notably for both shows.  Still, the numbers are good enough to keep the shows going on Syfy, as they are not particularly expensive to produce, but I’m sure the network would like to see the ratings rise.  And actually Alphas has been having a heck of a good second season, so I’d really like to see that one stick around.  I’m saying that they are both still safe for now, but I will keep a close eye on them over the coming weeks.

Over on NBC, Grimm dropped a tick from the prior week to a 1.6 rating in the 18-49 demo and also slipped a bit in total viewers to 4.67 million.  It still won its timeslot, though, so you can count that as a victory, but I don’t that this early launch for the series has necessarily proved much of a boon for the show.  On Thursday night, NBC’s airing of the Canadian supernatural drama Saving Hope continued to deliver tepid numbers for the network with a 0.6 rating and about 2.9 million total viewers.

You can see the Cancellation Alert status of all the shows currently airing plus the final results from prior seasons at my Cancellation Watch page. 

Ratings Source: TV by the Numbers


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