Ratings: ‘Fringe’ series finale up slightly from previous weeks

While we’re still waiting for some more official numbers to come in for the series finale of “Fringe,” we thought it best to already report a little bit on what is currently out there.

According to the great man of mystery known as the Masked Scheduler (who is really some Fox executive and apparently also an avid “Fringe” fan), the finale drew 3.2 million viewers on Friday night. This is a nice jump of nearly a million people from last week’s show, and early indications also suggest a 1.0 rating in the 18-49 demographic, an increase of 25% from the week before.

Ultimately, these ratings are still not good by Fox standards, and would probably get a new show canceled in a heartbeat. However, that almost seems beside the point to us in a way since there is something that is often not taken into account when we sit here and blab on and on about ratings: viewer loyalty. The people who watch “Fringe” live do so glued to their TV screens, which thus means they are likely to pay attention to the commercials more than someone who has “Two and a Half Men” on just because it airs after “The Big Bang Theory.” This is one of the reasons why AMC has been able to make good money off of its advertising for “Mad Men,” even though this show is far from a ratings beast in its own right.

It’s nice to see the show end on what is some good news by its own standards, especially following what has to be in the top 10% of series finales that we have watched over the years. We know there are a small percentage of people who are disappointed, but the fact that over 81% of our readers gave the finale an “A” grade (and almost 12% gave it a “B”) in our poll shows that it was very well-received.

Photo: Fox