Sci Fi TV Week in Review: Johnny Jay’s irreverent, snarky, and caffeine-fueled look back at the past week in sci fi TV in five minutes or less.
There was not much in the way of news relating to sci fi and fantasy television this week, but there were still a few stories worth commenting on. HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel series House of the Dragon has its Season 1 finale tomorrow night, but apparently that leaked online early. According to a spokesperson from the network, they believe that their distribution partner EMEA region is the source of the leak and they are “aggressively monitoring and pulling these copies from the internet”. Of course, back in the day when Game of Thrones was the most-pirated series on television, the network took it as a “compliment”. So I am guessing this is not hurting their bottom line too much and they are actually welcoming the free publicity.
Netflix had a good third quarter, reporting an increase of 2.4 million subscribers, and they have plans to amp up spending on original content in the coming months. Kind of makes the company execs seem somewhat silly for panicking after losing 200K subscribers earlier in the year. That led to layoffs across the company, cancellations of planned projects as well as existing shows, and they put the blame on subscribers sharing passwords. But all is okay now and suddenly they have tons of money for new projects. Hey Netflix, you going to be hiring back some of those people you laid off and putting some of those cancelled projects back in the development queue?
In ratings news, FX’s American Horror Story returned for its eleventh season on Wednesday but saw a notably smaller audience for its premiere than past years. The show had a 0.13 rating based on same-day viewing for the 18-49 demographic with 384K total viewers for that episode which is down by nearly a third in the demo from the 0.36 score it had for its Season 10 debut. It will likely make up some slack with delayed and digital viewing, but viewership continues to dwindle across the linear networks, particularly the cable channels. Over on NBC on Monday, Quantum Leap dropped to a 0.35 rating with 2.4 million total viewers after two straight weeks of gains. But that show has been doing well in delayed viewing which may help keep it viable for the network. More on the streaming and linear ratings for sci fi TV shows at CancelledSciFi.com.
Next week brings the premiere of the animated anthology Tales of the Jedi on Disney+ on Wednesday. All episodes will be available for streaming that day. Next week is also the lead-up to Halloween and Netflix will be releasing two shows appropriate for this time of year. Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities will premiere on Tuesday and The Bastard Son & The Devil Himself will have its bow on Friday. Both shows will release all episodes on their premiere dates. You can see all the premieres for October and beyond at this link and you can see the Weekly Listings here.
Did I miss anything? Probably because I have been trying to catch up on House of the Dragon before its finale and those episodes are looong, so let me know in the comments below.
Be sure to keep up with the news during the week with This Week in Sci Fi TV and r/SciFiTV.
SciFiTVSite.com: Follow our Sci Fi TV Schedule for all the currently airing and upcoming sci fi and fantasy television shows, and you can see the premieres for all the upcoming genre entries at this link.
CancelledSciFi.com: Keep up with the status updates of all the currently airing sci fi and fantasy shows with our Cancellation Watch posts. And be sure to follow the Cancelled Sci Fi Twitter Site for breaking news and updates.
