Reception
Although DS9's ratings remained solid, it was never as successful as the syndicated Star Trek: The Next Generation, with approximately 6% versus 11% of US households watched during sweeps months. However, it continued to perform better than its network sibling Star Trek: Voyager which averaged around 5% according to the Nielsen ratings. One factor was the increasingly crowded syndicated marketplace which provided viewers with a number of alternative shows to follow (Babylon 5, Xena, Earth: Final Conflict). Another factor was the minimal promotion for DS9, as Paramount focused its efforts on its flagship network show Star Trek: Voyager. Finally, from 1995 onwards, most of the independent stations joined new networks (UPN and WB), and these primetime shows gradually pushed syndicated programming into less favorable time slots as the US television market expanded from four networks (in 1987 when TNG premiered) to six.
Read more about this topic: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)