'Enterprise' Viewership Continues Climbing

See Also: 'Terra Nova' Episode Guide

The Enterprise audience continued climbing for the second week in a row with 'Terra Nova,' which became the most-watched episode since 'Fight or Flight'.

According to final ratings released at MediaWeek and at AP, 'Terra Nova' was watched by 8.35 million people, up from last week's 8.16 million and the 7.81 million people that the week before. At the start of the season, 'Broken Bow' attracted 12.54 million viewers, and 'Fight or Flight' 9.18 million. For now, the Enterprise audience seems to have stabilised around 8 million viewers.

Meanwhile, Enterprise's household ratings, measuring which percentage of American homes with television sets was watching the show, also seem to have stabilised. 'Terra Nova' scored a 5.1 rating with an 8 share, comparable to the 5.2 and the 5.0 the show scored last week and the week before, respectively. Of course, final conclusions about Enterprise's ratings stability will only be possible to make once the full season is over.

Compared to the other Star Trek series, Enterprise is still doing relatively well in ability to retain viewers. 'Terra Nova' was watched by 72.9% of the people who watched 'Broken Bow.' This compares favourably to the 60.1% who watched Voyager's fifth episode, the 66.9% for TNG and the 68.6% for DS9. The difference with these last two shows, however, is less than it was over the past few weeks - both TNG and DS9 experienced a ratings surge between their fourth and their fifth episode, while Enterprise's ratings simply held steady. Next week, TNG will likely overtake Enterprise, as that show's ratings kept growing for the sixth episode.

In absolute terms, Enterprise is of course watched by far less viewers than the first seasons of TNG, DS9 and Voyager ever did. This is partly due to the higher degree of fragmentation in the TV landscape, but also due to the fact that Star Trek simply was more popular a decade ago. A positive sign is that Enterprise now attracts more viewers than any of Deep Space Nine's or Voyager's regular episodes managed to in the past four years.

For the entire week, Enterprise placed no. 69 on the chart of all network shows, again comparable to the no. 68 and no. 65 from the last few weeks. Also again as usual, its companion show Special Unit 2 performed far worse, holding on to just over half of Enterprise's audience and ending up at no. 97 on the network chart.

Due to strong competition from the World Series on FOX, ratings for 'The Andorian Incident' might well score lower than any of the previous episodes. Overnight ratings for that episode should be available tomorrow, with the episode's final ratings following a week later.

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