Reception
The Earth 2100 premiere garnered an audience of nearly 3.7 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research.
Response to the broadcast was mostly confined to online comment boards, which soon buzzed with debates about the validity of Earth 2100's predictions, and the show's overall effectiveness. Many commenters were annoyed by the show's apocalyptic, dystopian tone, accusing ABC of fear-mongering. Thomas Fuller, writing for Examiner.com, accused ABC of portraying "science fiction" as fact, and claimed that:
. . . when people realize (as they are realizing now) that temperatures are not going to climb every year, they are not going to remember what sober scientists say. They are going to think of Earth 2100 and other scare stories about catastrophe, and realize that they were lies. They will then completely tune out science and it will be impossible to even do the sensible things we can and should do.ABC made sure, however, to post annotated transcripts on the Earth 2100 website, outlining the scientific sources for the program's various predictions, scenarios, and statements.
Some commenters found the Lucy/motion comic storyline a very effective way of depicting the various predictions. Posts also congratulated ABC for devoting a two-hour, prime-time spot to the issue, and asked when the program would be re-aired, made available on DVD, or posted online.
Read more about this topic: Earth 2100
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (18581915)
“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, I hear you spoke here tonight. Oh, it was nothing, I replied modestly. Yes, the little old lady nodded, thats what I heard.”
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)