The Secret Circle: Discussion Thread

[All My Shadows]

The actress who plays Faye was also on H2O, which was sort of a children's/pre-teen show about mermaids in Australia. It used to air on Nick here, and I always wanted to watch, but I never did. I think this was her very first American production, so hopefully she gets more comfortable.

From what I've been reading, there are some differences from the books so far, of course. The most interesting to me is that Diana, in the books, is some sort of benevolent "force" of good will. I don't know exactly what that's supposed to mean, but it sounds to me like she's a much darker character in the books, but a darker character who is trying to do good. IDK that could just be my broke ass logic.

OH and I wanted to mention. AS SOON AS they showed the "Boathouse" restaurant, all I could think about was the Capeside's infamous Ice House.

[EricMontreal22]

Made me think of the Ice House as well...

Yeah I read the Wiki synopsis of the books (wow they must be short books if so little happens in each one, though I know they were sold at the start as a YA trilogy) and it seems like there are nearly as many differences already as Vamp Diaries had--from setting to the background of the characters... LJ Smith is a terrible author (I hope I don't offend any fans by saying that--but her sentences read like bad fanfic) so I'm more than fine with them taking the elements that work and jus completely rewriting the rest...

[Skin]

The show brought in 3 million viewers and retained all the viewers from it's lead-in Vampire Dairies (although VD was down quite a bit from last season).

[EricMontreal22]

The ratings say it lost some viewers from VD, though less than some would expect. it was a smart move to pair them together.

[Skin]

VD's 3.10

TSC 3.05

It lost 2% of VD's viewers.

[EricMontreal22]

Yes I know I was nitpicking but it still did lose a tiny bit. We'll see if this is different next week when it has competition with other new shows.

[Skin]

Ratings down to 2.1 this past week.

[EricMontreal22]

Not surprising given that they didn't have much new programming competition--all the CW shows that premiered last week have fallen. How much of their lead did they retain?

[Skin]

Vampire Dairies pulled in a 2.5 so they only lost about 16% of their audience. The CW is performing poorly across the board though.

This past week

90210 - 1.5 (-.1)

Ringer- 1.9 (-.9)

TVD - 2.5 (-.6)

TSC - 2.1 (-.9)

Nikita- 1.9 (premiere)

SPN- 2.0 (premiere)

H8R- 1.0 (-.3)

Don't hold your breath for Gossip Girl, the finale last season ended with a 1.4

The bolded are CW's top performers this past week. Most of them are barely scrapping a 2.0.

[EricMontreal22]

But the CW performing with numbers like that isn't anything new, is it?

[Skin]

I don't remember so many of their dramas hitting the 1's as much as they have been this season, especially at the start of the season where ratings are usually higher for them. That could be wrong but I think they had genre shows like SPN, Nikita, TVD and Smallville which usually averaged 2 million + viewers fairly easily week to week. Now though their numbers are falling a lot for their primed niche shows (thrillers/supernatural/horror/sci-fi) and they are also falling for their regular slice of life drama's too which were never that strong to begin with. The days of them pulling a Dawson's Creek, prime OTH and Veronica Mars sized audience are long gone. Their regular drama's like OTH, Gossip Girl, 90210 have performed worse comparatively to the niche/cult shows in the last couple of years. Now they are losing the niche audiences too it seems.

[Juliajms]

I wonder if they would do better by having a stronger summer schedule? Didn't they used to start their fall season much earlier than the other networks?

[Skin]

I don't know it's entirely possible. But I don't even think launch week is the problem anymore. There is just such a low investment in the network in general. They don't have the budget to do much anyways and I can't imagine what they could do to bring in audiences for the summer either. Even when they get hit new shows like TVD's for instance they still wind up fumbling with them in just a few years down the line. TVD's was averaging around 4 million viewers at one point and now it's doing half that.

It's just so odd to see the CW's number so low especially for their new and returning series straight off the bat. They've always been the least watched network, but never have I seen shows with such poor performances straight out of the gate. What's even more distressing is that all of the shows in question will likely lose tons of viewers during mid-season and through out the hiatus in the winter months. They likely won't be able to get them back by the end of spring.

[Juliajms]

I think that all depends on their relative performance. I don't think that TVD, for example, is in any danger of being canned because it's the best performing show CW has. The ones that do poorly compared to other CW shows are the ones that will die off, because really, there is no reason to think any show they put on will do better than their best show is doing right now.

It does suck though because I have a feeling the entire network is on the edge of sinking.

[Skin]

Well of course. The entire network is averaging maybe 1.8 million viewers across the country each day. As long as they have shows that are higher then that relative average the shows in general are "safe" however my point is that the number in general will just get lower and lower for each show as we get further into mid-season and the drop off from the hiatus likely won't be encouraging. The CW is stemming losses left and right. The WB was cancelled after ten years, It wouldn't surprise me at all if The CW goes belly up in a fraction of that time period. They've been performing worse and worse for each following year and are running into the same problems The WB did. They are unable to create new shows that their audiences are engaged with.