Fringe Premieres in UK Tonight On Sky1

Fringe premieres in the UK tonight on Sky1 at 9:00PM.

Check out the Official Sky1 Fringe website, which has some exclusive Pilot promo photos, and behind-the-scenes photos from The Ghost Network.

Massive Dynamic Email

Massive Dynamic has begun sending out emails in response to filling out the Contact Us form on MassiveDynamic.com. The email, titled "Your Communication With Massive Dynamic," comes from massive@massivedynamic.com and legal@massivedynamic.com.

It's not much, but it just may be the start of something new. I think it is no coincidence that these emails are going out the day after Fringe got picked up for a full season. Bring on the ARG!

Fringe Interview with J.J. Abrams and Spike Feresten

Talkshow host Spike Feresten talks to J.J. Abrams about FRINGE!

Fringe Picked Up By Fox For Full Season

TV Week is reporting that FOX has picked up FRINGE for a full season!

The network has ordered nine additional episodes of the sci-fi thriller, for a total of 22. The Bad Robot/Warner Bros. TV-produced series has averaged a 4.2/11 in adults 18-49 and 10.7 million total viewers since bowing last month, making it the top-rated new show of the season to date in the key demographic.

“We're having a blast working on this show with this great team of producers,” said Fox Entertainment President Kevin Reilly. “The series has really taken off creatively, and it's exciting to see that the audience is responding. We believe this is the first full season of many years to come.”

Is Fringe Getting Better? What About the Science?

The crowd over at TVbytheNumbers thinks so. They're decidedly bullish on Fringe:

House dominated the evening in terms of the youth demos, and Fringe won the demos for its hour and was second in demo performance only to House, though the House lead-in is definitely helping as Fringe slipped by about 800K viewers and more than 10% in the demos from the first half hour to the second.

Viewers (Millions) 10.04, 18-49 Rating/Share 4.3/11, 18-34 Rating/Share 3.9/11

bob says:

fringe is getting better each week. fringe had its best episode last night, good to see it did well in the demo and hit also hit 10 million viewers, which it was unable to do last week. I think fringe will be fine, especailly with the demo it pulls in each week...

Meanwhile over at Popular Mechanics, Kate Schweitzer has filed another installment (her third) of Fringebusters, but makes no mention of Fringe's nod to fellow Popular Mechanics' Fringebuster, S.E. Kramer.

Fox Fringe: Walter's Lab Notes #4

There are a lot of allusions in this week's Walter's Lab Notes:

• Sioux City Sasparilla is a brand soft drink, similar to root beer, made famous by The Big Lebowski
• "What's the frequency Kenneth?" is a quote made famous by Dan Rather, then later by R.E.M. . The question was asked by a man who claimed that the news media was beaming signals into his head.
• The Fisher King was in charge of protecting the Holy Grail (and also a movie by Terry Gilliam)
  

Fringe Episode 104 - The Arrival

After a deadly explosion rocks a construction site in New York City, Broyles solicits the aid of our unlikely threesome to investigate a strange cylinder mysteriously found at the scene completely unharmed by the surrounding devastation...

What do you think of the procedural aspect of Fringe?

Set Your DVRs - Fringe's 'The Arrival' Arrives Tonight

Episode 4, The Arrival, airs tonight on FOX at 9/8c.

A few reminders:

We hold an open thread discussion for each episode beginning at 9 Eastern over at Fringe Episodes. As you can see, we also attach a weekly poll to each episode discussion. This week I'm taking suggestions as to what the poll(s) should ask. Comment in reply to this post with your poll requests.

For those of you who can't wait, you can catch up on spoilers for tonight's episode and brows Fringepedia.

Also at 9 EST, the easter egg hunt over Fringe Screencaps begins. The hunt is proving to be the most popular Fringe activity on Tuesdays. So much so, that we suspect it has something to do with making Fringe must see DVR TV.

For the week of September 8-14, the premiere of Fox’s Fringe had the largest audience via DVR viewing with 2.211 million viewers via DVRs. -- TV by the Numbers

Fringe Dwellers Podcast: Episode 5

In the fifth of the Fringe Dwellers Podcast, Jen and Adele gleefully discuss the details of the newest Fringe episode, The Ghost Network. We cover the ratings, question the whereabouts of Gene, religious symbolism, Astrid Farnsworth, Boston and new theories (our own and yours)and opinions including our pick for William Bell casting.

Listen now:


You can also subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.

If you have a comment or question for Adele & Jen, you can email them at fringedwellers@gmail.com. You can also leave a voicemail for them at (206) 333-0072, or reach them on Twitter as fringedwellers, or Facebook as Gene the Cow Worshippers

A.V. Club Interviews J.J. Abrams

Go to the A.V. Club to read article in its entirety or view Fringe specific excerpts here...

The A.V. Club: How do you generally feel when a new TV show of yours is about to première? Anxious? Confident?

J.J. Abrams: Well, it's a cocktail of excited for people to see it, terror that no one will watch it, and relief that something I've been working on for so long will finally be out there. Oh, and panic that I can't make more of the little changes we've been making all along. All the times I've been lucky enough to be a part of a show that's actually gotten on the air, it's always that same mixture of excitement and utter fear. Which is kind of what I hope people will feel when they watch Fringe. [Laughs.]

AVC: One thing about TV that's different than movies is that you can adjust as you go, and if you're on the air long enough, you can respond to the audience response. Do you pay a lot of attention to what critics and fans say when they write about your work?

JA: Oh, sure. I mean, the noise you hear after people see something you do—whether it's a TV show or a movie—that always makes you see that thing slightly differently. Without question. The ability of a television series to make adjustments is something you've got to take advantage of. And test-screening a movie can be helpful too. But the part that can be dangerous is when you take those notes as gospel, instead of taking them with a grain of salt. The key is to use the response as one of the tools in your box, as opposed to using it to determine what you do.

AVC: You didn't direct the Fringe pilot.

JA: No, I was directing Star Trek, and the studio didn't want me to put that on hold so I could go do my TV thing. [Laughs.]

AVC: Do you want to direct an episode?

JA: Well, I'm hoping. Maybe a season finale or a season opener or something. I've been wanting to do it since the pilot. We have great directors working on Fringe, but when someone else directs something that you're involved with, it's always their vision, and the director in my head is definitely wanting to get involved.

AVC: The pilot of Fringe opens up with an airplane in trouble, which is similar to the opening of Lost. Was that a conscious nod, or just a coincidence?

JA: What happened was, we were discussing what the opening of the show should be, and we talked about so many different things, so when the plane idea came up, the last thing on my mind was Lost. Later, we realized it sounded an awful lot like what we did on Lost, but by that point, honestly, I thought, "Who cares?" It's appropriately creepy, and large enough in scale to fit the bill for an opener.

AVC: If you look at a lot of the TV and movies you've been involved with, like Cloverfield or Lost or now Fringe, you seem to be trying as hard as you can for as long as you can not to reveal the trick.

JA: I think that that's partially true. Like with Cloverfield, the whole idea with the marketing and the quick release was for people to have an experience as it happened, instead of pre-experiencing it by reading all about it. But I feel like with Fringe, the mandate is to try to do something week-to-week that's a procedural like CSI, but a skewed procedural, that's as creepy as humanly possible. While with Lost, on the one hand, it is a show that seems to duck answering questions. At the end of the pilot, you have Charlie asking "Where are we?", and that's something the audience still wants to find out. But week-to-week, that show answers a lot of questions, just not always the ones people feel are the ones that matter.

I think that even if you're wondering if two characters are ever going to kiss, drawing out the inevitability is part of the fun. Whatever the genre happens to be. Now in a movie, you get all the answers by the end, except in Pulp Fiction, where you don't ever really get to know what's in that case. But even in movies—a great example is North By Northwest, where you don't really know what the microfilm is, but who cares? By the end of the movie, the answer that you get is not really the answer that you thought you wanted to know. The answer you get is: "Oh, they're in love, and now they're married, and these were the circumstances that led up to that. They almost died a number of times, but they survived and they found each other," I feel like in telling stories, there are the things the audience thinks are important, and then there are the things that are actually important.

Fringebusters - Science vs. Reality

Popular Mechanics has been running a per-episode series of articles (1, 2, 3) examining whether the 'science' on Fox's Fringe is reality based or factually challenged?

The Dapper Alchemist took a similar approach with his dissection of The Same Old Story. Update: TDA has posted a second dissection, this one of Episode 103 - The Ghost Network.

Fringe is of course science fiction, so separating out those elements of the show which are grounded in real science from those that aren't, isn't exactly criticism even though it may sound like it. Nevertheless, Fringe did raise the bar for itself when its creators--J.J. Abrams, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman--all confessed to turning to real science news for inspiration.

That said, we thought it might be fun to have our own weekly series on the science of Fringe. If you'd be interested in writing it up, putting it together or editing it (read: It would be your column, so it would be up to you how it was written), drop me a note () or leave a comment with your proposal or suggestions.

FOX, Fringe and the Demographics that Matter

Having never followed a television show's ratings week to week before, I'm happy to leave the analysis and pontification of how Fringe is fairing to the experts. In this case the experts would be the crowd over at TV by the Numbers:

With real competition, Fringe shed 28% of its audience from last week. It also lost 19% of its 18-49 demo and 11% of its 18-34 demo. Still, it won the 18-34 demo for the hour by a wide margin, and was competitive in the 18-49 demo.

Fringe | 9.651 Million Viewers | 4.2/10 18-49 Rating Share | 4.0/11 18-34 Rating Share

Polly says:

Amazing numbers for Fox in the demo. Fringe held up pretty well against DWTS. (All those 18-34 yr olds are probably too young to see the similarities with the X-Files.) Actually last nights episode was the first one that made me want to watch again next week, so good job. Now if it could just make me want to watch it live!

Andrea says:

Maybe I’m not getting the “amazing numbers” for Fringe. It did just a bit better than the pilot, and the 28% decline from last week is a bit alarming.

Also those 18-34 year olds know it’s ripping off X-Files. They watch because Abrams’ name is attached.

I do see FOX probably giving it a full season order, however. FOX has to stop the bleeding on the other nights.
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Holly says:

FOX’s numbers are amazing, but not in a good way. It’s amazing how much House has dropped and that Fringe lost more than 3 million viewers week-to-week.

Outlander says:

What’s interesting to me is that Fringe lost 1 million viewers from 9:00 to 9:30. While a few other shows lost maybe 150k or 100k viewers during their episode, none lost as many as Fringe.

Robert Seidman says:

Outlander, House did run over into 9pm slightly (accordingt to my DVR). It could be that when that’s factored out of the final numbers the drop for Fringe won’t be as steep — but still will likely be steeper than it was for other shows.

Robert Seidman says:

Bob, you used the word “disastrous”. House is certainly still printing cash for Fox. I’m not sure about Fringe only because of the limited commerials, but I will not be surprised if Fringe’s numbers drop off even from where they are. …

Andrea says:

“CBS wasn’t Fox among 18-49 year olds either. Or ABC, and was just barely better than NBC (but better is better).’

Robert,

You’re right, but at least it wasn’t a 2:1 drop in that demo. Also, you have to look at drop in the demo for House and Fringe. The total audience loss is affecting the demo. (Of course I’m not saying anything you don’t already know.)

If ABC actually had a hit in the 8pm hour, it might actually compete with FOX in the demo.

Robert Seidman says:

Andrea, the week over week drops in viewers and demo for House and Fringe were as surely expected by Fox as they were by us as last week was not yet a full landscape of new competition. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think CBS’ numbers were bad at all — I just don’t view them as great relative to the demo competition. I agree CBS won’t be Fox and isn’t looking to be among 18-34 year olds, but that they had not even one half hour of a 2.0 or better in that demo can’t be deemed great even by the brass at CBS.

FrankJ says:

I think FOX should be concerned about the million viewer drop-off after the first half hour of Fringe. It’s basically shed all the House viewers. By the end of the night it was back to it’s premiere numbers.

FOX may have another stand-alone show on their hands. They really need to find a better way to pair these shows together.

Robert Seidman says:

Frank, all I can do is speculate.I think it’s MUCH too early to even speculate easily about Fringe — last night was it’s first airing against full competition and it held 80% of the House lead-in. If it continues to perform in the demos as it did last night, I don’t think Fox will be displeased.

Realm Reader says:

This may be pure conjecture but wasn’t the mid-season finale of Eureka on at the same time as Fringe? Think maybe some of the hardcore sci-fi fans may have decided to let the DVR pick up Fringe that night.

Holly says:

Robert,
I think you’re comparing apples to oranges a bit. House and Fringe are the best Fox has to offer. Tonight’s ratings are head and shoulders above what Fox will get any other night (in demo and viewers). On the other hand, NCIS has always been one of the oldest skewing shows on CBS.

If you compare House to NCIS, yes, House wins in the demo. But if you compare what each network expects out of these shows, I think Fox is way more concerned about House’s numbers than CBS is about NCIS’s

Robert Seidman says:

Well if your take on CBS is “when you ain’t got nothing (in the demo), you got nothing to lose”, I agree CBS is less worried.

But I doubt the Fox programmers are clueless and had to expect some drop off simply by changing timeslots for a show with already diminished ratings post-writer’s strike.

Whether it’s wise to try to build a new franchise with Fringe I can’t say and time will tell. But I don’t buy analysis that says “Fringe is back to its premiere numbers and House is doing it no good.” Its premiere was heavily promoted and aired against zero competition (unless you count the CW).

dave says:

Fox should be encouraged by House pulling in a 5.0+ in the demo in its fifth season in a new weaker time slot. This is still a home run for the network.

Fringe is a hit, not a homer which is what I’m sure fox was hoping for, but I doubt their upset. The network would kill to have Fringes numbers on their Monday night shows.

Cookson says:

Obviously it’s nice to have really high “overall” viewers, but we all know that the 18-49 and 18-34 numbers are more important. Nice for Fringe… even though I’m about to just watch the rest on DVD..

Cameron says:

What did I tell you about Fringe? I said to wait and see how it did against some strong competition and sure enough it came off second best. That didn’t surprise me, what did surprise me was NCIS beating House by a considerable margin!! Neber saw that one coming at all.

I personally found that conversation both fascinating and an education. I hope they're right about the importance of the 18-34 and 18-49 demographic. If Fringe needs anything--and this is my opinion--it needs time.