Thursday, February 26, 2009

Flashpoint News And Ratings!

So, today I found out that what I had read elsewhere was wrong, and that new episodes of Stephanie Morgenstern (Sailor Venus #1) and her husband Mark Ellis' Flashpoint begin tomorrow :O. Please tune in everyone! I thought I would have had another week to finish up the summaries, but I guess I'm going to fall behind. Sorry to you all! Tomorrow's episode is entitled Business As Usual, and is a plot that reflects these times that we are currently in. Three men take the CEO of a mortgage company hostage , and the SRU reluctantly looks for a replacement for Jules as she is still in the hospital recovering from her wounds in the last episode of Season 1. We're really looking forward to seeing this episode! And we can also bring you some behind the scenes information! This episode was shot last month at Toronto's MaRS Collaboration Centre, more specifically, its auditorium which had to undergo a quickie transformation into a stock exchange. Fans can click here to read the blog entry on MaRS's site, and here to check out some photos of the set!

And before we hit the ratings, we bet all our worldwide fans of Flashpoint just got a little more jealous of the UK! While Canada has the episodes available on iTunes, the UK will be the first market to have the show on DVD! Even we are a little confused by this , wondering why a North American show isn't getting a DVD release first on it's shores! It is currently listed on Amazon UK for around $35 USD, and ITV has posted a very tiny image of what we believe is the DVD cover. And we really love the way the SRU looks with the glittering blue skyscape of Toronto behind them. We can't wait to see this one on North American shelves!

Flashpoint Ratings:

The show, despite it's competition, held its ratings pretty steady. New episodes aired on January 9th, 16th, and 23rd, and February 13th. In between, repeats were shown, and they still pulled in significant ratings. On the 9th, Eagle Two aired, and scored 10.06 million viewers in the US, and a 2.2/6 rating with viewers between the ages of 18-49, winning it's timeslot and CBS the night. In Canada, the show scored 1.269 viewers, and was the 13th most watched show that week. On the 16th, Backwards Day aired, and scored 10.53 million viewers, and a 2.4/7 rating with 18-49ers, again winning its timeslot and CBS the night. In Canada, the show scored 1.741 million viewers, and was the 7th most popular show that week! On the 23rd, Haunting the Barn aired, and scored 10.21 million viewers in the US, and it's 18-49ers rating unchanged from the previous week (2.4/7). Once again, it won its timeslot and CBS the night! In Canada, the show scored 1.279 million viewers, and was the 16th most watched show that week. In the weeks in between, in Canada, the show managed to hold it's viewers over a million, and in the United States over 8 million, as reruns aired. On the 13th, Between Heartbeats aired, scoring 8.7 million viewers in the US, making it the top of the ratings by numbers, however it scored a 1.8/6 with the 18-49ers. That score put the show behind Fox's Dollhouse which had less viewers, but scored a 2.0/6 for the same demographic. Last week, Dollhouse tied with a rerun of Flashpoint at 1.7/5, but only had about half as many viewers. I have a feeling that the viewer gap between the two shows will become larger this week as last week's episode was so terribly convoluted. It left me more confused than the first episode, and I don't believe Dollhouse is as big a threat to Flashpoint as I feared. Don't get me wrong - as many Sailor Moon fans are fans of Joss Whedon's work, this one sure isn't winning any of us over. We'll have to see what tomorrow holds, however. We really loved the last four episodes of Flashpoint, and we hope the same quality carries the show through the second season! However, the ratings are taking a pretty steep dive in Canada, so those of us canuck otaku who are freezing in the Great White North, please turn your TV sets to Flashpoint tomorrow okay?