I remember TTSCC being a transfer, cause it used to be on Mondays. So 10 years ago, so the last renewal case was Dark Angel right, unless it was a time slot transfer like Sarah Connor.

Numfar PTB | September 30, 10:08 CET

Dark Angel was on Tuesday during S1, I think, was moved to Friday for Season 2, and died there.

wiesengrund | September 30, 10:19 CET

I looked it up, the last Friday-renewal of a new Fox show was indeed Millenium, which premiered in 1996 in the usual X-Files slot and got renewed for a second season in '97.

wiesengrund | September 30, 10:42 CET

This begs the question - if *everybody* else knows this, then why do FOX keep scheduling programmes on that night.Just do re-runs!

angeliclestat | September 30, 12:45 CET

Cool, a Friday night death slot article, must be [the day after] Tuesday.

Saje | September 30, 13:11 CET

"I never could get the hang of Tuesdays..." (nay "Thursdays")

SteveP | September 30, 14:01 CET

angeliclestat, if FOX could get Friday Night Drama off the ground, it could make a lot of money for them. They keep trying and failing to make it happen.

gossi | September 30, 14:43 CET

I didn't read this as any kind of panic-inducing thing (since, well, obviously Dollhouse is the very cool exception to that apparent Friday-problem Fox has), but more as a data-providing back-up to all these (surely coming up and already happening) discussions about the slot. For instance, from what I've heard around the interwebs the general renewal rate for any show is 15%. Turns out, it's 30, and 15 on Fridays. One misconception down, a gazillion to go. ;)

[ edited by wiesengrund on 2009-09-30 19:55 ]

wiesengrund | September 30, 19:55 CET

Honestly, these statistics only prove that Network expectations are too high on Friday night. Which is perhaps what Fox noticed last season, along with the other extenuating factors that led to renewal.

And honestly, if Fox Network breaks even on Dollhouse, News Corp makes money because of all the other revenue streams. But that's all wacky generalization there.

azzers | September 30, 21:40 CET

Someone forgot to tell the people at SYFY that Friday is the "Death Slot" for shows. :)

But really, SyFy has been showing some of their best shows on Friday for years!

I think what is making the ratings so low lately is that a lot of people still haven't hooked up to a digital converter box yet.

A lot of people are complaining that they can't get as many channels as they used to before the digital conversion.

Little Green Kid | September 30, 23:49 CET

The seasons new shows are incredibly highly rated in many cases, Little Green Kid. Overall viewership seems to have taken little to no impact from the DTV switchover. Oddly, this year audience members are chosing shiny new shows over older shows in many cases.

gossi | October 01, 00:20 CET

I just want to say that, while this does show that shows premiering on a Friday night are more likely to not survive their first season, it does not say anything about the cause of this. In particular we can not rule out that somehow networks program shows they have less faith in on Fridays, causing more shows on Fridays to fail, but those shows might as well have failed on different nights. Thus we can not conclude that being aired on Friday is bad for a show. Of course, unless you know your show is different, if your show is put on Friday for the same reason a lot of shows on Friday fail (for example the hypothetical lack of network confidence), you should still not be happy.

Celebithil | October 01, 02:14 CET