The show does have a couple of things in its favor, though. Van Helsing is now standing on that cliff as well. Dark Matter and The Expanse are two other recent shows not owned by the network that were cancelled after their third seasons because the ratings were not high enough. And Syfy doesn’t offer much in the way of streaming options apart from its website. If the ratings are low, then the network is not making much money. Since the network does not own it, the primary way they make money is on the advertising during the live broadcast. These are not good numbers for Syfy which has a very old-school mentality toward shows like this. But this past Friday, the show posted only a 0.11 rating for its premiere which is down by 13% from last year’s average. It numbers dropped in its second season by 20% and I only believe that it survived to a third year because the most of the rest of the network’s schedule was a disaster last Fall. It is a third season show that is not owned by Syfy and it is not performing well in the ratings. And even if Syfy does decide to cancel the show, I would bet that The Asylum would seek out other venues to pick up the show, or just go ahead and produce another season to push it over the syndication threshold.Īs for Van Helsing, that show is in a more precarious position, and this should serve as a Call to Action for the show’s fans. Z Nation is already a pretty inexpensive acquisition for Syfy (The Asylum–home of the Sharknado films and mockbusters like Triassic World–knows how to work on the cheap) and still pulling acceptable ratings. Syfy will likely not benefit from that syndication run because The Asylum owns the show, but I am thinking that the studio will make it worthwhile to the network to keep the show going for another season or two. One more season of thirteen gets the show over 80, and that makes it much more attractive to the syndication market (and a seventh season would be even better). But even if the ratings slip over the next few weeks, I still think it has a decent chance of coming back for at least one more year.Īssuming thirteen episodes for the current season, that would get Z Nation to a tally of 69 total eps. And since that will keep it as one of Syfy’s top-rated originals, I would say its chances of coming back for a sixth season are pretty good. If the show tracks like it did last year, then it will hold at about that number, or possibly drop just a little bit. But it was the network’s best performing show in Fall (not including Happy! which got a December start), and it returned this past Friday up slightly from last year’s average (a 0.18 rating vs. Z Nation has been one of the highest rated shows on Syfy for the past few years, but it did experience a notable drop in its numbers of over 30% last year. Syfy’s zombie-pocalypse series Z Nation and its vampire-pocalypse series Van Helsing returned for their current seasons just this past Friday, and even though we only have ratings info for one episode each I believe I have a good gauge of where they stand based on that and other information that I know about the shows.
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