Dylan here with one of the first opinionated posts on the DF main page. I'm not sure how many of these we'll do, but this one is important. Now, Day of Black Sun is airing Friday at 8:00 PM EST on Nick in the USA. First of all, everyone in the US who is reading this has to watch it. It is vital. As we have reported several times, no new episode of Avatar for the 3rd season so far has made the Cable Top 40. All 9 episodes have been under 3.52 million viewers. Now, 3.52 million is still a ton for Cable, but we don't know how high each episode has exactly been. If what I am thinking is correct, the Season premier and the last 3 episodes have been at about 3 million, just missing the Top 40. If that's the case, then Avatar's been doing fairly well for season 3, just not good enough.

Now, a question many people have is how will the online hack and it airing in the Netherlands and possibly other countries first effect Day of Black Sun's ratings? The answer is they shouldn't. A minimal viewing audience is exposed to those. Day of Black Sun is possibly the first episode expected to make the Top 40 by Nick. And I think Nick expects even higher. I know I do. I expect Day of Black Sun to be in the Cable Top 20 at least. If it does not make it in the top 20, it will probably be considered a failure by Nick. With Atlantis Squarepantis hitting almost 9 million viewers last week in around the same time slot on Friday, the pressure is on for Avatar.

Also, the normal 8:00 time slot show on Nick, Barnyard, has been doing fairly well, better than Avatar. Since Day of Black Sun is an hour long, Avatar will be getting Barnyard's viewers along with Avatar's. This could make for the highest rated Avatar episode of all time, beating out the Season 2 finale which had 4.4 million viewers. If Day of Black Sun can do that, and maybe even hit 5 million, Avatar will be in a very good position going into the 2nd half of Season 3. Even if it doesn't it still better make the top 20, or else we're in trouble.

Now, at this point, Nick is not going to take Avatar off the air, but there are still several things on the line including the time slot for the rest of Season 3, the series finale's time slot, and most importantly, the still ever possible new series in the Avatar universe in several years.