Originally Posted by Dancc:
“I could understand a quality piece adored by critics getting renewed by C4 if it was under 1M but above about 700,000.
But shows with less than 400,000 viewers IMO are rating too low to be worth bringing back, regardless of quality. If it was that good, it wouldn't have been rating that far below the slot average.
10PM used to be a big slot for Channel Four and now it's almost a daily struggle. Bringing back shows that didn't cut the mustard first time does not help them progress. It comes to a point where you just shouldn't ignore what the data is telling you.”
To be fair, there are some times when a programme does OK, is then renewed and ends up being huge. One of this is The Inbetweeners.it was doing relatively well I seem to remember that it was renewed by E4 for S2 after great word of mouth mostly even though S1 averaged around 350,000 which was below other shows, other shwos which did better were cancelled. However it came back in S2 averaging 1.1m as reruns really helped, and then S3 which averaged 3.5m, and is one of, if not the biggest show on E4 that they have ever had.
Same can be said with stuff like Big Bang Theory, it was doing average in S1 doing around 8m, then renewed it and then kept growing and growing and now hits 20m.
Two other ones that paid off was The Walking Dead and Game Of Thrones. TWD averaged 5.24m in S1, 6.90m in S2, 10.40m in S3 and 13.30m in S4 (final got 15.68m). GoT started with 2.2m and averaged 2.5m in S1, and S4 averaged 6.6m and the final got 7m+.
Maybe with the Utopia promotion, they expected It to break through and have it as CH4 golden show? So even though generally shows fall after its first season, Utopia seems like the sort of series that would increase due to word of mouth like GoT, however, it hasn't happened sadly for CH4.
