The first two episodes of Steven Spielberg Presents Taken have garnered the highest ratings in the history of the Sci-Fi Channel.  The success of the 20-hour mini-series has been so striking that Dreamworks and the Sci-Fi Channel are considering bringing the show back as a regularly scheduled series.  The special effects, production values, and period touches are all exceptional in this $40 million production, which follows the stories of three generations of alien abductees.  The first 2-hour segment of the series reached over six million viewers, leading all cable networks in both the number of households and in the all-important 18-49 demographic.

 

The Tuesday installment suffered only a modest drop in viewership and may well have been responsible for a 36% decline in ratings for the second weekly episode of that cable juggernaut, The Osbournes 'reality sitcom.' 

 

For retailers the success of Taken should serve as a reminder of the potent power of the entire UFO phenomenon, which spawned not just the flying saucer movies of the 1950s, but also the governmental conspiracy-laden dramas of the 1990s (X-Files).  While this latest mini-series has a relatively small amount of merchandise tied to it -- Dell has published a mass market novelization by Thomas Cook (srp $6.99) -- there are lots of generic UFO items available, and if Stephen Spielberg Presents Taken does return as a regularly scheduled series next year, it might be time to start searching out those generic UFO items that did so well when the X-Files was in its heyday.