Keeping in mind that live viewership is hardly the be-all, end-all determination of how well a TV series is doing these days, as many people now choose to stream episodes of their favorite shows at their leisure rather than watching them live, it’s still always interesting to keep track of live viewership numbers for new horror shows, “Chucky” being one I’ve got my eye on.
“Chucky” actually airs every Tuesday night on both SYFY and USA, so we’ve got two different sets of numbers on the ratings charts every week. For a little bit of context, the series premiere back on October 12 drew 0.457 million viewers on SYFY and 0.358 on USA, but the episode was actually a much bigger hit in the week that followed thanks to streaming. Reportedly, 4.4 million viewers watched the premiere in the first week of release, a number that combines USA and SYFY viewership with millions of streams on the YouTube channels of both networks.
This week saw the premiere of brand new episode “Cape Queer,” the sixth episode of eight total episodes in the first season. The previous week’s episode was a big one, finally confirming that “Chucky” is indeed a direct sequel to all the movies in the original franchise, with both Tiffany and Nica making their presence known, while this week’s “Cape Queer” went even further by bringing Andy and Kyle from the first two Child’s Play movies back into the mix.
CHUCKY — “Cape Queer” Episode 106 — Pictured in this screengrab: (l-r) Alex Vincent as Andy Barclay, Christine Elise as Kyle — (Photo by: SYFY/USA Network)
With just two episodes remaining in the debut season, how many viewers are now tuning in to see what “Chucky” is up to these days? We’ve been tracking the episodes week-to-week and it’s very interesting to note that “Cape Queer” actually drew far more live viewership than the show had drawn in recent weeks. For full context, here’s the episode-to-episode breakdown.
Episode 1, “Death by Misadventure”
- SYFY: 0.457
- USA: 0.358
Episode 2, “Give Me Something Good to Eat”
- SYFY: 0.390
- USA: 0.280
Episode 3, “I Like to Be Hugged”
- SYFY: 0.330
- USA: 0.352
Episode 4, “Just Let Go”
- SYFY: 0.282
- USA: 0.302
Episode 5, “Little Little Lies”
- SYFY: 0.252
- USA: 0.265
Episode 6, “Cape Queer”
- SYFY: 0.377
- USA: 0.278
Episode 7, “Twice the Grieving, Double the Loss”
- SYFY: ??
- USA: ??
Episode 8, “An Affair to Dismember” (Finale)
- SYFY: ??
- USA: ??
As you can see, “Cape Queer” jumped significantly in viewership on SYFY, from 0.252 million last week to 0.377 million this week. That’s a good 125,000 additional viewers from last week to this week, with the viewership on USA mostly holding steady. USA viewership did slightly uptick as well, however, from 0.265 for “Little Little Lies” to 0.278 for “Cape Queer.”
If you’ve been watching the show on USA you actually may want to switch over to SYFY, because there’s a fun little featurette attached to each SYFY episode that you don’t get on USA.
New episodes of “Chucky” air every Tuesday night on SYFY and USA, with just two more episodes remaining. And Fiona Dourif is promising a wild end game you won’t want to miss!
CHUCKY — “Little Little Lies” Episode 105 — Pictured in this screengrab: (l-r) Jennifer Tilly as Tiffany, Fiona Dourif as Nica Pierce — (Photo by: SYFY)