According to the Los Angeles Times, "The Crossing" was watched by 3.85 million people--the second smallest audience yet for any episode of the prequel series and the second lowest for season two. "The Crossing" managed to stay above the pre-Thanksgiving underperformer "Vanishing Point," which was viewed by 3.78 million people last November. The third spot belongs to January's "Dawn," with 3.99m viewers. ENTERPRISE was watched by a significantly larger number of people than the WB's DAWSON'S CREEK last week, however (3.26m), putting the STAR TREK series in the 94th spot overall.

In the overall ratings, "The Crossing" scored a 2.6/4, actually a tenth of a point higher than both "Point" and "Dawn," even though the latter had a larger audience. The Adults 18-49 demographic rating for the episode was 1.8/5, matching both "Dawn" and "Canamar."

ENTERPRISE traditionally struggles immediately following a prolonged period of reruns. Season two's premiere, "Shockwave, Part II," was the first TREK cliffhanger conclusion to register less overall viewers than its counterpart with 4.89 million viewers on September 18th. Rick Berman later said this may have been due to the show's early premiere before the other fall series, and a lack of promotion by UPN. Following six weeks of repeats in season one, "Silent Enemy" debuted on January 16th, 2002 to 6.11 million viewers, after "Cold Front" had scored 7.33 million watchers on November 28th, 2001.

This year's "Stigma," which began a four-episode run of February Sweeps installments, received enormous coverage in the press and managed to stave off major declines after three weeks of repeats following "Dawn," beating the sole January episode's audience of 3.99 million by a significant margin to deliver 4.40 million on February 6th, 2003. However, the audience for the last repeat preceding "Stigma" ("The Seventh," 2.44m) was significantly lower than the last repeat preceding "The Crossing" ("Precious Cargo," 3.16m). Compared to "Stigma," "Crossing" received relatively little or no press coverage or special promotion from the network.

MediaWeek did report on Friday that UPN took the bottom spot on Wednesday with an average of 3.02 million viewers compared to rival WB's 3.41m on the night. Household averages were 2.0/3 vs. 2.3/3.

To reach the MediaWeek story visit this page. For the L.A. Times rating round-up for the week of March 31-April 6, visit this page. Thanks to 'Cyrus' for providing the archival data.