You guys are always so witty in your posts. It kills me, haha.

Ah poo. I just realised if the finale is on May 12th I’m going to miss it due to being away and internet free for a few weeks. I won’t get to see it until the end of May probably. Bummer. How am I supposed to see the episode before it and then wait like a month to see the last one!! I’ll go mental!!

I just read that DVR and download figures are not being counted in the ratings. A lot of people work during the week so I guess it’s to be expected that ratings fluctuate, but didn’t they count DVR and download figures for Season 1????

Also, ‘American Idol’ seems to have hurt the ratings a lot since they moved it to Wednesdays and Thursdays (seriously, why can’t they just put it on the one night i.e. Wednesday???). If they did that then the ‘TVD’ ratings wouldn’t be affected as much as they have been.

However, I have also read that a lot of CW shows don’t return until April 18th, but I’m still hoping that the show returns to somewhere higher than around the 3 million mark, as it’s such a compelling show.

I’m not worried about it being cancelled, though, as it’s still the highest-rated show on the network. If it did get cancelled, I predict a lot of angry letters/e-mails heading in the direction of The CW network.

I’m sure (or at least I really, really hope) that next episode will pull in more than 3 mill viewers again, since it is clearly more Delena centric and it has a lot of action in it (judging by the promos)! However, the rating system is absolutely ridiculous, it doesn’t even come near the real number of people that watched an episode all over the world. Networks completely neglect the internet… I know so many people in my school alone here in Germany who watch VD over the internet on fridays (time difference) and all of these views do not even count…my advice to the CW: upload each episode on the official webside immediatly after it aired on tv in really good quality, make it available for EVERYBODY and then count these views and add it to the regular ones…only THEN you have a number that roughly represents how many people watched it (for TVD they must be really high all over the world, I’m sure of it)!

Whoever use to watch the show and stopped, shame on them. They missed one hell of a ride last night. I gained, they lost.

iTunes finally uploaded it!

This is seriously unacceptable we’re strong in numbers, we make noise everywhere we go, why the fallout? the hiatus should be enough reason to come back much stronger and bigger in numbers than ever before!

All shows fall in the ratings in the spring. It’s the norm.

Hi Georgia Peach, completely agree. I don’t normally watch idol. But, the thing of it now is…there down to the final 10 or 12 (from what people tell me) because of that there ratings will go higher, unfortunately. I do think that the cw should advertise the vampire diaries. I live in Toronto…zero advertisement here.

I think Idol is down to 8 contestants. Thursday night is the results show, which I never liked anyway. I found it annoying. Besides I could read the next day to see who was eliminated.

They definitely need to get the hype for the show back on track. I don’t understand why “the powers that be” don’t have Nina, Ian and Paul out there promoting it. Those three were great together and could really get the excitement going. Just a suggestion…

I don’t understand i watch the show my Daughter watches the show and my mother which she’s 64 so and we love it! Instead of American Idol so please everyone Don’t miss a great show . me and my family are hooked .

you guys seriously, who ever missed last night’s episode (or this show ever really) missed out BIG TIME =(

I do think that AI and the looong second hiatus had something to do with it though =/ last years second hiatus was only four weeks, this one was 6 I believe, and I know a couple of people who kinda said they didn’t really feel the show anymore after not seeing it for so long.

The die hard fans will always come back, but the casual viewers may not =/

but then again other shows also go on super long hiatuses do I don’t really know if that’s all there is, maybe the CW’s advertising?? I mean someone mentioned that those billboards that simply said “Catch VD” were completely inadequete, people who aren’t already fans of the show would have no idea what on earth that means =S IDK, maybe this show needs some better marketing because the product itself is amazing IMO.

I’d say there were 3 problems with viewers.
1) Spring always sucks. People are busy and its nice out so less people sit inside and watch tv.
2) Hiatus return episodes are tough because a lot of people don’t realize the show is back.
3) Every other CW show doesn’t come back for 2 more weeks. Nikita was down too and while I will blame a little on Idol, I think most of it was that a lot of people probably thought all CW shows came back on later.

I have a question, where do the Nielsen Ratings fall into all this? I thought the TV stations used the Nielsen system to estimate how many viewers were watching which shows. An example is that for one household with a Nielsen system, that households viewing habits count as the opinion of 1,000-10,000 viewers.

As I do not have a Nielsen system, I am grouped in with someone else’s viewing habits, even though I watch Vampire Diaries live on my TV, I do not count as a viewer because I do not have a Nielsen system in my home. This is one of the reasons I purchase the episodes online after they air; so that I can be counted on the downloads/sales of the show.

Now, I may be incorrect in the above statement about how the TV stations handle their ratings, so please correct me if I am wrong, but after the whole Moonlight CBS debacle, this is my understanding of how they collect their ratings (only from Nielsen households).

So I guess we all should be bugging those WITH a Nielsen system to watch the show live and not use their DVR, so that Vampire Diaries gets the awesome ratings they deserve.

Personally I wish CW would make an App that would allow their viewers to conect to their show during viewing, to prove that they were watching the show live (hopefully that would give more accurate viewer ratings). Syfy sort of has one for Being Human.

You’re very much entitled to your opinion but I personally don’t think the appeal of the show has decreased majorly as I still hear of it gaining new fans all the time (even ones who initially believed nothing could out-do ‘Twilight’). It has always been a complex show, which can really be related to various aspects of any person’s life. I’m glad it doesn’t solely focus on the high school aspect and in that way I think that’s part of the reason why so many people in their 20s, 30s and older enjoy watching it.

I also don’t think it’s all about shock value and who dies next (it’s probably best to leave that to ‘True Blood’) and the emotional depth is still VERY much present. I don’t normally cry at TV shows but I have been in floods of tears several times, so it’s still very much working its magic.

The largest problem with the decreasing ratings is that FOX decided to move ‘American Idol’ to both Wednesday AND Thursday, so that there would be more competition with other networks, as even its ratings dropped significantly last season. I’ve also heard that a lot of people work during the week when each new episode of ‘TVD’ is shown and DVR it so that would also contribute to the drop in ratings.

I also mentioned in an earlier comment that most of The CW’s shows don’t return from the hiatus until April 18th, so a lot of people may not have been aware that it was already back this week. If you look at the viewing figures for ‘Brave New World’, that was slightly over 3 million when it first aired but after that the ratings managed to climb as the other CW shows started airing again.

I think it’s too much Damon, Damon, Damon, Ian, Ian, Ian for all freaking hour! Enesamble cast my rear!