Save Lucifer campaign: Bonus episodes, ratings thresholds, and what all fans can do
The reason we raise this question is simply with the following in mind: We and others at times have spoken about the concept of getting good ratings in relation to saving a show. It certainly helps, after all, in a wide array of ways!
With these two upcoming episodes, we do think that it’s more valuable than other from one standpoint more than any other: Fan loyalty. We don’t foresee this so much as an issue of viewers bringing a potential future home ad revenue (especially if Lucifer ends up on a streaming home), but rather viewers getting a chance to prove further to whoever this home will be that they will be as passionate a supporter of it there as they have been on Fox over time.
Still, if you want to quantify the success of Lucifer Monday, we will say this: The dream would be to finish with a 0.7 rating in the 18-49 demographic and around 2.9 million viewers. These are about the ratings that the episode “Quintessential Deckerstar” got earlier this month. While it would be great to see Lucifer draw a 0.8 live rating and around the 3.2 million viewers that it got for the season 3 finale “A Devil of My Word,” that may not be altogether realistic of a number to hit for a wide array of different reasons. For starters, these two bonus episodes are airing on Memorial Day, a time in which there are a number of viewers who are off doing other things. To go along with that, it’s not like Fox is putting all that much time into promoting them. It’s almost a miracle that they even released promotional photos for them.
It may almost be too lofty a goal to think they could even match “Quintessential Deckerstar” given that there may be plenty of casual fans who aren’t even aware there are episodes coming on the air Monday. The Lucifer finale was promoted as simply that and if you’re someone who watches the show on TV and doesn’t read up about it, you may not have any idea at all that these episodes are coming up. Even if you do see one of them in passing, you may be confused as to why they aren’t directly addressing the finale. (Read more on that here.)
What we are ultimately saying here is simply this: The deck is certainly stacked against Lucifer just when it comes to all of the different hurdles that it needs to tackle to get good ratings. That’s why you can’t get discouraged if they don’t end up being what you want. What every LuciFan can do online is rather simple when these air: Tweet and share the heck out of these episodes and make sure the voice is big and loud. Think from the vantage point of a streaming provider: It’s not so much about total viewers for them as it is subscribers gained. If a show like Lucifer can get them a significant boost in that particular department, the individual ratings don’t matter as much. Think about Twin Peaks when it aired on Showtime last year: Its ratings were pretty poor, but ultimately that didn’t matter because they brought a huge amount of subscribers to the network. That’s why passion, tweeting, and a commitment to supporting the show matter. These are the factors we can control.
Remember, we’ll have more updates on Lucifer when we have them — you can also like CarterMatt on Facebook to get even more scoop regarding these shows. (Photo: Warner Bros. TV.)