This post is over a year old now and Sky have still shown no signs of broadcasting series 7.

I’ve posted a few other articles about it since, you can see them by clicking on the Sky category (or click HERE).

Currently Sky do seem to be showing series 6.

I’ve managed to find a few audience figures for Cold Case on Sky One from November 2008 which put it around the 400,000 viewer mark. Even the biggest shows on the channel only get around 1m viewers. The lists were only top 10s so it doesn’t take much to put Cold Case outside that.

In Cold Case’s early days, when it probably had the largest audience (by percentage of those with access) fewer people had the required dish. In recent years the channel has become more popular.

Sky One has a sister channel, Sky Two, which is largely a rerun channel, often showing repeats a day after the original broadcast on Sky One. Cold Case is regularly on that.

A step-sister channel, Sky Three, also has Cold Case, albeit older ones, on a regular basis. The channel mostly carries repeats of older Sky One shows. Sky Three is a free-to-air channel available via an aerial and digital set-top box. These are available very cheaply these days and everyone without cable or satellite will need one in the next year or two to continue to get TV at all. Their popularity is increasing rapidly. Even the top watched shows on Sky Three only get around 200,000 viewers.

So to answer your question: not very, in real terms. Though it’s put in some reasonable viewing figures over the years.

I last posted about this at the end of January (here). Since then I’ve been keeping an eye on Sky’s regular releases for news.

Sadly there has been no sign of Cold Case series 7. My best guess was they were waiting for the other shows (Bones, Lost, 24, Fringe etc.) to finish before using CC to fill in over the summer. Plus, if CC was not renewed in the US they may be able to get a better deal on it.

Repeats of CC make up quite a lot of the Sky (1, 2 & 3) schedule still so it is not as though they have abandoned it completely.

Sky adverts on other non-Sky channels tend to focus on the major sports (Premiership football), Hollywood movies and the big US TV shows like 24 and Lost. Sky has a habit of poaching such shows from other networks after they been found to be popular.

When CC first hit the UK I did see quite a lot of promotion on the Sky1 channel itself (I had acces to it back then). I decided to give it ago but completely forgot to watch it. I only just remembered the second episode. Clearly certain aspects, cute blonde aspects, had quite an impact. The rest as they say… well it resulted in this very site.

Cold Case in the US is one of the big networks. An equivalent channel here in Blighty, ITV, gets around 10m for the biggest prime time soap operas. It wasn’t so long ago that 20m would not have been uncommon though. The increase big in the number of channels, Internet usage and computer games has really hit the audience numbers.

In the UK new seasons of Cold Case are on a subscriber only satellite channel, Sky1 (and 2). Even the likes of Lost and Bones on that channel only get around 1 million viewers. In some top 30 lists I’ve found from this year Cold Case does not figure. The lowest rating shows in that top 30 are getting around 650,000 viewers. In that 30 from earlier this year only 5 shows (Lost, Bones, 24, The Simpsons and Fringe (which took CC’s normal slot) are from Sky1. That gives an idea of the relatively small audience the channel gets.

So, to answer your question LII2: I don’t know. I’d be surprised if the show gets more than 300,000 viewers. Sounds small, tiny even, but it would still be way ahead of hundreds of other shows.