The
television docudrama Cosmos: A Space-time Odyssey is in
free-fall, having dropped in the ratings for the third straight week
after a somewhat tepid debut. TV By the Numbers reports that
only 3.91
million people watched the fourth episode of the series, down
from (an already mediocre) 5.77
million who watched the pilot.

This
might seem like a problem for Fox Entertainment. After all, it’s
devoting timeslots on multiple channels to the show. The company
won’t disclose exactly what the production cost, but it had to be a
pretty penny – the New
York Times reports the network tapped over a dozen other
companies just to handle the visual effects.

You
could be forgiven for thinking the executives are banging their
foreheads on their desks right about now over the huge risk they
took.

But
you’d be wrong.

The Crab Nebula, the
remnants of a supernova, featured prominently in the fourth episode
of Cosmos - A Spacetime Oddysey. Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Hester and A.
Loll (Arizona State University). Some
rights reserved.

Chances
are that the ratings mean very little. Take the original Cosmos,
hosted by astronomer Carl Sagan and aired by PBS. It may have been
one of public television’s most successful series, but no one
really knows how many people watched the show when it was first
broadcast. PBS
didn't subscribe to full Nielsen ratings reports until as late as
2009, in an effort to justify its worth to underwriters.

What
PBS did do was rerun the series constantly, making deals to show it
on stations around the planet. Many, many more people have seen it in
one of these subsequent broadcasts, on DVD or online than saw the
episodes when they went live for the first time.

And
that was in the age of appointment viewing. Fox knows the youngish
(and probably tech-savvy) audience to which the reboot is directed
doesn’t feel the need to watch anything live anymore. Nielsen
ratings generally only capture that initial viewing. If you watched
Cosmos via DVR, on Hulu, or through any of the myriad other
venues and times it's available, you won't be counted.

Ratings
are still important for a network's ad revenues, of course. To that
end, Fox probably is losing out a little by putting Cosmos in
prime time and pushing it so hard.

But
Fox always expected different kinds of benefits from Cosmos.
As far back as 2012, head of
entertainment Kevin Reilly told
Forbes
that the show was “not going to be the biggest money earner. But it
could have a cultural impact.”

Cosmos
has been a headline-maker in the press now for a few years. Heavily
promoting a science-themed show like Cosmos is likely to
challenge long-running perceptions, perpetuated mainly by the
national news division, that Fox is anti-science. That can help it
retain the younger and more liberal audiences that might otherwise be
put off from tuning into Fox altogether because of Fox News. It is
indeed about changing the conversation.

Fox
carefully crafted its strategy to maximize this cultural impact while
minimizing corporate risk. Seth MacFarlane, the show's executive
producer, already has a proven record of creating successful TV shows
(think Family Guy). Host Neil deGrasse Tyson was perhaps the
best-known science communicator in the world long before he signed
onto the project.

The
Cosmos imprimatur itself already carries a huge amount of
clout that guaranteed Fox an enthusiastic fan base.

These
three factors alone demonstrate how modern media conglomerates can
appear to be taking a big risk when, in fact, much of the risk has
already been taken by others. Tyson built his reputation through many
years of hard work and deft media exposure. He and MacFarlane are
known quantities, each with his own fans and followers.

It
was PBS, not Fox, that took the most risk with Cosmos when it
spent millions of dollars to film the original series in the late
1970s. It is only now that its success is proven that Fox has
appropriated it.

This
kind of risk reduction through appropriation is how all successful
media conglomerates operate. It's why Disney
acquired Pixar. It's why Facebook
wanted Instagram. It's why the film industry has been producing
an unending stream of films about popular comic book heroes.

To
be fair, this is usually a reciprocal relationship. Start-ups want to
be acquired – few aim to compete directly against established
players (Fox itself was one of the rare exceptions to this rule, when
it went up against the “big three” networks in the 1980s).

And
no bet, no matter how well hedged, is entirely without risk.

Overall,
this model works well for media oligopolies. Fox, for instance, has
been able to promote what looks like an innovative initiative while
keeping any actual danger to the company at a minimum. Even if Cosmos
had been a complete flop, it wouldn't have made a dent in the
conglomerate's long-term outlook.

There's
another reward for Fox in this deal, as well. As a broadcaster using
public airwaves, Fox must remain in the Federal Communication
Commission's good graces in order to maintain its broadcast license.
The network was briefly a target of calls
to revoke that license in 2012, after parent company News Corp.
was caught up in a U.K. phone hacking scandal. Though the FCC almost
never denies a license renewal, Fox has every reason to demonstrate
that it is using its privilege for the public good. How better to do
that than to emulate a show created by public broadcasters?

Whether
Cosmos ultimately meets any of these goals remains to be seen.
Whatever happens, though, the last place anyone should be looking for
answers is in the ratings.