Star Trek: Lower Decks Canadian Viewership Plummets After Premiere Episode

John F. Trent |

Aug 26, 2020

Canadian viewership for Star Trek: Lower Decks plummeted after the series premiere earlier in August.

Canadian data website Numeris recently released their Top 30 most viewed shows in the country for the week of August 10th to August 16th when the second episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks debuted.

The show did not chart in the Top 30 shows. The 30th ranked show was FBI: Most Wanted with 484,000 viewers.

The premiere episode of the show premiered on CTV Sci-Fi+ and had viewership of 527,000. That was good enough for 25th on the Canadian charts for the week of August 3rd to August 9th.

While it’s unclear what exactly the episode 2 numbers were for Lower Decks, the show lost at least 43,000 viewers which accounts for over 8% of its original audience.

Just to give some perspective, Season 23 of South Park’s lowest viewed episode in the United States according to TV Series Finale was 657,000 viewers. The season had an average viewership of 817,000.

The Simpsons Season 31’s lowest viewed show had 1.348 million viewers. The season averaged 2.582 million viewers per episode.

A rumor from Midnight’s Edge earlier this month indicated that the Lower Decks Canadian viewership would be bad, and these actual numbers from Numeris appear to confirm that.

Midnight’s Edge source had originally told them that the first episode premiered with a total of 404,000 viewers. It’s quite possible that number might only include the overnight numbers from the first episode and not viewers who might have taped the program and watched it later.

The over 100,000 viewer bump is not unheard of when including viewers who watch after the program was originally scheduled to air.

For example, Doctor Who’s The Timeless Children was watched by 3.78 million viewers according to unofficial overnight figures as reported by Doctor Who News.

However, when the full figures were released the episode was watched by 4.69 million people. That’s a difference of 91,000 viewers.

Review: Star Trek: Lower Decks Episode 1 - Second Contact - Should You Be Happy With Any Job You Can Get?

Midnight’s Edge’s source would go on to claim that the second episode had an abysmal 219,000 viewers, a drop of 46% from the premiere episode.

What do you make of the fact that Lower Decks’ second episode did not chart in the Top 30 shows in Canada? Are you surprised by the show’s performance?