The Ratings Game Has Changed

I've been a big fan of the TV series Fringe since it premiered on Fox in the fall of 2008. It's about a small team attached to the FBI that investigates strange happenings at the... outer edges of scientific reality. (See what I did there?) Yes, it does sound a lot like The X-Files (another show I loved, and stayed with until the end, at least two seasons past when it should have concluded) and for most of its first season it was a lot like The X-Files, with standalone "monster of the week" stories mingling with a larger story arc.

But at the end of season one, the show finally arrived at where it wanted to be all along, and gave us its big revelation of a parallel universe right alongside our own. The two worlds are very similar, but different in ways large and small. (One touching detail: in the alternate universe, 9/11 never happened and the World Trade Center towers remain standing. Also, Eric Stoltz held onto the lead role in the Back to the Future movies.)

At the end of season two, with a small but loyal audience and the knowledge of a third-season renewal, Fringe made an extremely bold (by episodic TV standards) move, swapping the two versions of the main character into each other's alternate universe. (Eventually both of them were able to get back to where they belonged.) Furthering this bold gambit, this entire season has played out in both worlds, with stories alternating back and forth while building to an inevitable clash between the two worlds, that supposedly only one will be able to survive. There are two episodes left in this season.

The reason I'm even bringing this up, since it's fairly unlikely many of you are fans, is because Fringe has become something of a "little show that could." Last season and the first part of this season, the show aired on Thursdays at 9, when my DVR was recording CSI and The Office, so I had to either catch recordings of the show when one of those other shows was a repeat or wasn't on, or (more frequently) watch it on Hulu. (I could have swapped out one of those other shows, and in hindsight maybe I should have.)

Then Fox announced it was moving Fringe to Fridays in January. Fridays have not been kind to network TV shows for 15 years or so—not so coincidentally, right around the time Fox moved The X-Files from Fridays to Sundays. Now able to record the Fringe episodes, I made sure to watch them, knowing that networks now look at the numbers for DVR viewing of shows within the week after they've aired, and factor those into a show's overall ratings. I figured I was doing my small part to help Fringe get renewed for a fourth season.

And it did in fact get renewed; it was announced a month or so ago. Yesterday there was an article in the New York Times about how DVR viewing of TV shows has altered the playing field for marginal series like Fringe. Sure enough, the article cited statistics showing that DVR viewing of Fringe in the week after episodes aired boosted its ratings by almost 50%, making it the show with the highest percentage of added DVR viewers this season. (I imagine the tally for online viewings must factor into this in some way as well.)

Obviously this doesn't mean that all borderline shows will get renewals, but if you're a DVR user and care about a show that's "on the bubble," make the effort to find time to watch it each week. It could make enough of a difference to keep it on the air.