Sci-Fi Friday Off to Rough Start

February 16, 2009 by brian

Joss Whedon fans’ worst fears were realized Feb. 13 when long awaited new series Dollhouse debuted to very, very weak numbers. The Hollywood Reporter’s James Hibberd reports on the very disappointing debut.

Dollhouse drew 4.7 million viewers, making it the lowest non-reality show debut on a network since NBC’s now deep-sixed Robinson Crusoe revamp. Even more depressing was that the Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles lead-in lost nearly 30 percent of its audience by moving to Fridays. That wasn’t a show that had a great deal of spare viewers to begin with.

FOX hoped pairing the two sci-fi shows together would be a beneficial relationship, but if anything the move really hurt Terminator this week. Combine that with generally unimpressive reviews for Whedon’s latest project and FOX may soon have to separate the two to try and save Terminator.

I’ll admit, I wasn’t blown away by Dollhouse. The question we may never get the answer to is whether the changes suggested by FOX executives helped or hurt. If the show was more confusing than this before, wow. I hope things will get better, but if this is the best number the show can pull it would be unrealistic to expect FOX or any other network to keep it around.