I’m sure you all remember about two weeks ago when I posted a challenge, saying I’d do wonderful and crazy things if RollBots got a certain level of ratings for its US premiere.  I’m here to give you the bad news.

First, I want to make a few things clear: this was our first episode, and honestly, none of our potential audience had any idea what we were going to be.  I know there’s been a lot of knee-jerk reaction to how silly the show looks, and I saw quite a lot of negativity around the web in advance of the premiere.

Now then: I got these numbers yesterday, but the thing is, they were broken into age groups (because we’re really mostly interested in 6-11 year old boys).  And what’s more, I wasn’t explicitly told I could publish the numbers (which have to be paid for, and I don’t want to make anybody angry, or I won’t get any more numbers).

So my stats were the wrong type, and they were potentially secret.  I needed the ratings from the same source I had set the challenge to.  And it didn’t look like they were going to release them.

That is, until last night.

So, let’s recap the conditions of the Challenge:

• If we hit 0.5/4, I will release my next book, Typhoon, for free on the web, under a Creative Commons ShareAlike Noncommercial license;
• If we hit 0.9/5, I’ll release Typhoon under a Creative Commons ShareAlike license (so you can resell it if you like).  I will also donate 25% of my first episode scripting fee (for a hopeful season 2) to the EFF;
• If we hit 1.1/5, I’ll release Typhoon under a Creative Commons 0 license, which means it’s public domain.  I will also donate 50% of my first episode scripting fee (for a hopeful season 2) to the EFF;
• If we hit anything above that, I will CC0 Typhoon and donate 100% of my first episode scripting fee to the EFF.

0.5/4 is average for the timeslot.  All we needed to do was hit that, and I’d call it a success.  Hoping for more was fun, but unlikely.

What did we get?

1.1/7

Hold on, let me go through the… oh my goodness!  That’s right!  I guess we beat all expectations!  Look at that!

So yes.  Not ONLY will Typhoon be written in 3 days, it will also be my first CC0 production!  And I’ll also be donating 100% of my first episode scripting fee (minus the required miscellaneous fees for my agent etc) to the EFF!  I am SO happy to be able to do that.  SO happy.  In so many ways.

So I need to say a big thank you to everyone that tuned in last Saturday, and I hope you’ll do the same this weekend.  And tell your friends.  And your friends’ friends. And so on and so forth.  The more good ratings we get in the US, the more likely it is that YTV will decide to renew us for another season.  So break out the teevee and get a-watching!

Added bonus: the ratings for last Saturday morning on the CW were:

Gogoriki 0.2/2;
Winx Club 0.6/5;
Rollbots 1.1/7;
Dinosaur King 1.2/6;
Yu-Gi-Oh 1.1/5;
Sonic X 0.9/4;
Sonic X 1.0/4;
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 0.8/4;
Chaotic 0.5/2;
Kamen Rider Dragon Knight 0.4/2

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