Numbers don't always lie: Blame Berman and Braga

Have you ever studied the viewer numbers related to Enterprise over the four seasons of its existence?

They tell an interesting story.

Now, the source for my viewer information is Wikipedia, so this info might not be entirely trustworthy, but it's the best I've got. And I also don't know the scheduling history of the series so I don't know if issues such as time slots had the same kind of impact on the number of viewers for Enterprise as they did for The Original Series.

Those disclaimers in place, here are my thoughts in relation to Enterprise's viewer levels.

First, the facts (as presented by Wikipedia):

• "Broken Bow", the two-hour pilot, earned strong viewership of 12.5 million viewers;
• "Fight or Flight", the first regular episode, was watched by 9.2 million Americans;
• The next six episodes each attracted more than 7 million viewers, from a high of 8.4 to a low of  7.1;
• Viewership for the remaining episodes in Season 1 bounced up and down between 4.3 and 7.5 million viewers;
• Only 5.3 million Americans tuned in for the Season finale, part 1 of "Shockwave", and that number dropped to just 4.9 million for "Shockwave" Part 2, Season 2's premiere;
• Viewership continued to fade over the course of Season 2, with many episodes failing to attract even 4 million viewers;
• Season 3 saw viewership continue to settle, with averages dropping into the 3 million range; and
• Season 4 continued the trend, with more and more numbers below 3 million cropping up; and
• Even the finale, "These are the Voyages", the last episode of Star Trek broadcast on television, attracted fewer than 4 million viewers.

For any new television show, the first half of the first season is usually critical to its success. Sure, you might expect a slight dip in viewers from pilot (which gets a lot of hype) to second episode but you also hope that, as the season progresses, existing viewers will grow attached to the show and new viewers will be attracted.

TNG followed that kind of a trajectory when it came onto television in the 1980s. According to other online sources, the first new ST franchise since the Original Series debuted to solid ratings in the 9-million viewers-per-episode range, then slowly built its audience to 11-million or so for the better part of several seasons. Only after about four years did its ratings start to slide.

Those first six to 12 episodes, then, are critical. This is especially so with a Star Trek series where you have to grab and hold the core fan group with those first several shows and do everything in your power to avoid turning them off.

It is interesting to note that Enterprise seemed to have worked in exactly the opposite way. Enterprise's viewership numbers mean that 3.3 million viewers decided, after watching the first episode, not to watch episode two. That's a loss of more than 20%. Between episodes two and three, another 1.4 million viewers jumped ship. Then, by episode 7, 0.6 million more were gone and were never recovered.

I plan to watch all of the Enterprise episodes in order (and to watch the "Commentaries" and "Extras" that come with the DVD set) to explore what happened -- what was it about the series that caused it to lose viewers so rapidly and so irretrievably?

It seems, based on the numbers above, that Enterprise was given a unique opportunity to build on the work done by TNG, DS9 and Voyager, to take the core audience of those and TOS and to create a hit. Instead, for a variety of reasons I have already begun to suspect, it failed.

Let's remember: Enterprise's premiere episode attracted more viewers than did TNG's premiere or, apparently, just about any other TNG episode over its seven-year run. Why did it then fail so miserably to solidify its viewership?

To be honest, I think the problems lie almost entirely at the feet of Berman and Braga and the creative decisions they made. They were responsible for developing the premise of the show, they worked with the network to establish the main dramatic arcs of the series and they wrote the crucial first six episodes.

And let's remember: over the course of those first six episodes, Enterprise lost about 5 million (accounting for 40%) of its viewers.

Am I being unfair to Berman and Braga? I guess I'll find out.