Voyager Ratings Rise Again

The last ever regular episode of Star Trek: Voyager, 'Renaissance Man' helped the show to its highest ratings performance since October. The national ratings are now available in a report for the Star Trek Nielsens Ratings Database written by Justin Capone.

The episode scored a 5.5 rating and a share of 8 in the overnight ratings, three points up from last week's 'Homestead.' This translated into a national rating of 3.8 which is the highest achieved by a Voyager episode since 'Unimatrix Zero, Part Two' back in October. It is also a higher national rating than that scored by 'Dogs of War' the penultimate episode of Deep Space Nine two years ago. Overnight ratings are calculated from the top 47 television markets metered by Nielsen. As Voyager is more popular in urban markets, national ratings for the show typically tend to be lower than the overnight.

This high figure was achieved despite intense competition from the other networks in the same time slot. Airing directly opposite Voyager on NBC was the season finale of The West Wing, which achieved a rating slightly lower than in the previous week. The season final of Boot Camp also aired on the Fox network. On the WB, which is more comparable to UPN in size, Felicity could only manage an overnight rating of 3.6 opposite the Star Trek show.

Voyager continues to do well in the lucrative 18-49 age group audience. This week it received a 2.9 rating and a share of 7 in that demographic, putting more pressure on UPN's highest rated show WWF Smackdown. Last week saw Smackdown's worst ever performance on UPN, and it was beaten by Voyager in its key audience of 18-49 year old viewers.

Elsewhere on UPN, Voyager lead-in Special Unit 2 also saw its overnight ratings increase to 3.2, a point up from last week. The series continues to perform solidly opposite strong competition from Dawson's Creek on the WB. The show will be part of a strong line-up for UPN in the Fall, airing directly after new Star Trek series Enterprise.

In the United Kingdom 'Flesh and Blood, Part Two' became the highest rated programme on cable and satellite channel Sky One in the week of April 23rd. It was seen by 910,000 viewers, a figure 50,000 ahead of its nearest rival Buffy the Vampire Slayer on the same channel. Last week's 'Lineage' was the third highest rated programme of the week, beating Angel with 700,000 viewers.

Thanks go out to Justin Capone for the national ratings information. More information on the overnight ratings for Wednesday night are available here at Zap2It and on the United Kingdom ratings here at Omega Horizon.

Discuss this news item at Trek BBS!
 Add TrekToday RSS feed to your news reader or My Yahoo!
Also a CSI: Crime Scene Investigation fan? Then visit CSIFiles.com!