"V" Ratings Drop in 2nd and 3rd Weeks

Ratings on the new series of "V" have dropped significantly since the highly successful premiere episode . Viewership dropped a third between the first and third episodes.

After 13.9 million viewers tuned in to the first episode, 10.7 million viewers watched the second, and 9.3 million viewers watched this week’s episode.

One more episode will air in this initial grouping, followed by a long break before the season resumes.

"V" Returns to Primetime

Variety is reporting that ABC is developing a new adaptation of the 1980s science fiction miniseries V that is being written by Scott Peters, the co-creator and executive producer of The 4400. Warner Bros. Television, which produced the two original V miniseries and the V weekly series that aired 1984-1985, is behind the development of the new V as well.

The original V miniseries was an allegory of the holocaust and Nazi Germany, but Peters told Variety that he won’t be duplicating that concept, though “the new V will still focus on what happens when the masses have blind faith in their leaders,” and it will still open with shots of enormous fleets of alien spacecraft hovering over the world’s major cities.

The new series will center on a Homeland Security agent and her troubled son who becomes fixated on the aliens, though as was the case in the original V mini-series there will be a number of different plotlines revolving around various different characters both human and alien. Peters' new V series has nothing to do with the failed 2003 attempt to revive the property in a V: The Next Generation project that was created by Kenneth Johnson, the writer-producer-director of the original V miniseries.

The final episode of the first V miniseries scored a mammoth 40 share in the TV ratings and the series spawned a lot of merchandise ranging from an 18-issue comic book series from DC to lunch boxes, action figures, prop replicas and novels.