'Battlestar Galactica' Gets Fourth Year

SciFi Channel and NBC Universal are expected to announce Tuesday that "Battlestar Galactica" has been picked up for a fourth season, news that has been rumored for months. However, don't expect the series to return to the fall lineup.

The Los Angeles Times is reporting that the network will order at least 13 episodes (likely 20, according to industry sources) of the show to begin broadcasting in January. The move comes despite lower-than-expected ratings, even after the show moved to Sundays last month. While SciFi Channel officials confirmed the show is its most expensive to produce, money lost in viewership are offset by strong DVD sales where more than 1 million copies have been sold.

Also, more than 500,000 viewers between the ages of 18 to 49 -- a key advertising demographic, watch the show through digital video recorders, numbers which are tracked by Nielsen Media Research, but which advertisers don't exactly pay for.

"Who knows? This upfront season, you might find that we can monetize that DVR usage," Mark Stern, SciFi's head of programming, told the Times. "The important this is when you add in the DVR numbers, the audience is there."

When including the DVR statistics, the average 18-49 demo audience grows to 1.6 million, the highest numbers the show has seen since the beginning of the first season.

Executive Producer Ronald D. Moore said he knew all along there would be a fourth season."I don't think we every doubted doing another season," he said. "I design my season-ending cliffhangers with the hubris that we'll be back."

Fellow executive producer David Eick said that some of the ratings always will be limited by the show's title, which is the same as the Glen A. Larson-created series that aired on ABC in 1978.

"We just tell the best stories we can and hope that it will convince some peopele it's not a show just for Star Trek fans," Eick told the Times.

Eick and Moore recently returned from Las Vegas where they hashed out the general storylines of Season 4.

It is not clear whether the show will get a full 20-episode order as it has the past two season, or if it would return to 13 episodes with an option for renewal. "Battlestar Galactica's" first season had 13 episodes.

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