I don't know if anyone is interested in House schedule disruptions this far out, but just in case, Futon Critic has a list of dates each night of Fox programming will be preempted by baseball playoffs. Here's the (relatively short) list for Mondays: -October 19 (ALCS Game #3) -November 2 (World Series Game #5, if necessary)

I'm voting for a clean sweep by someone in the World Series. And forecasting nationwide heavy rain for Oct. 19. :-)

Not so heavy as to interfere with my satellite reception.

UK Ratings for June 7 and June 14
UK television ratings for June 7 and 14. Sunday, June 7, 9-10pm House-The second week of House on Sky1 attracted 563,000 viewers, a 2.4% share of multichannel viewing at 9pm. The follow up episode at 10pm was seen by 516,000 viewers, a 2.6% share. source Sunday, June 14, 9-10pm Sky1's new US drama import House continued last night with 604,000 viewers in the 9pm hour. source

Those numbers strike me as not very good. Not that it really matters, U.S. television is made to get U.S. audiences, the rest of the world is basically gravy. Unless you're Baywatch. :o On a nicer note there was also this, At 9pm, a new series of the Stephen Fry drama Kingdom was watched by 4.9 million viewers, a 19% share, on ITV1 Well done Mr. Fry. :)

I'm pretty sure Sky1 is satellite/cable and not available in every household.

Yes but wasn't that because it was "demoted" from a larger channel, was it Channel Four? It's not really a draw in Britian, I believe Jonathon Ross alluded to that in his interview w/ Hugh.

But I seem to recall complaints by UK members of this board that Channel 4 isn't widely available either. (It's a free broadcast channel, but not broadcast everywhere.) Correct me if I'm wrong.

House used to be on Five, which like Channel 4 is a terrestial channel - should be available in every household in the UK. As you say Namaste, Sky 1 is a satellite channel and not generally available.

In comparison with Germany, where new House episodes have pretty consistently had a whopping just about 30% share average, the UK numbers don't look too hot. For some reason I thought that the switch from Five to Sky in UK was considered a good thing. I didn't know that even fewer people would get it. Shame.

I've read in some site (sorry I don't have a link) that House would probably loose the viewers at the beginning, just as 24 lost when it moved to Sky last year. Here in Japan, a terrestrial channel has started showing finally. (It was on FOX Japan, a cable channel.) It airs in the middle of night, from 1:00 AM or so, but it seems that it gained a good number of new House fans, combined with the timely release of House DVD Season 1 in May. Now we can watch Season 4 on a cable, and Season 1 on a terrestrial channel. (and I'll manage to watch Season 6 in ...:P) So maybe the terrestrial channels are still good for gaining the viewing rates, but I suppose the changing to the saterite channel is a good move in a long run. I hope House cultivates the new field of viewers on Sky One. :wink:

Premium channels have more prestige even if they have fewer viewers. An example in the U.S. would be The Sopranos. It was considered a huge hit despite the fact that it didn't get anywhere near the numbers that a broadcast channel would. Sky has to have good programs otherwise people won't want to pay to have it. They obviously think House is a draw. They must be paying Universal more than Channel 5 was willing to or else the change wouldn't have been made. Audience numbers matter to broadcast TV because they determine how much a show can charge for the commercials. But for cable or satellite TV, even for the channels that have commercials, there are other factors.

I wasn't sure where to put this, but this seemed like as good a place as any, so here it is. Tomorrow (Friday) morning at 8:30am (7:30c) marks exactly half way between the end of Season 5 and the beginning of Season 6! I suppose it's actually 8:31 since the finale ran two minutes over, and this is assuming that the two hour premiere starts at 8 and runs an hour late as opposed to starting an hour early and ending on time... but whatever. The point is that as of some time tomorrow, We are half way through the Houseless summer! :spin: :spin: :spin:

Do you think that there is any significance to Big Baby, which was a Cameron-heavy episode, having the highest ratings this year? One Day One Room had the highest ratings up until Frozen in Season 4 (and that was coming off of Super Bowl numbers). After OD, OR, the ratings slowly normalized back into the low 20s. That episode also kicked off the new H/W/C avenue the show was pursuing. Do you think they had planned to rid themselves of the old team entirely but were afraid, because they were worried the ratings bleeding might conintue? I really don't know much about ratings, but I'm going by the bigger is better conceptualization. I'm just wondering if the reason why, for instance, we got more Cameron in Season 2 was because Love Hurts did an 18-share. Cursed did a pretty decent, Heavy did ok, so I wonder if that them to believe that they could probably get some good off another All-Chase episode, which is why we had the Mistake in Season 2. You see kind of a marked decline in the ratings in Season 2, minus Daddy's Boy, up until Hunting, and then things take off. While Spin and TB or not TB did pretty poor ratings, and featured a decent amount of Cameron, I wonder if Wilson, Chase, or Foreman-heavy episodes would have done better. I guess you really can't know.

I don't have anything scientific to base this on, but I don't think who's featured in a specific episode affects the ratings. I think it's far more likely the preceding episodes influence whether or not someone will watch (except in a case like Frozen where viewership was reflective of being post-Super Bowl). That being said, I also believe a low-rated episode is reflective of the episodes that preceded it rather than the episode itself.