I love television
ratings. I love what they tell us about
individual shows, the networks, and the industry in general. My intention with this weekly article is to
take a look at the week in ratings and prognosticate about their future and the
health of each network. Ratings
presented here are the Adults 18-49 rating, which represents the percentage of
adults between 18 and 49 watching a particular program.
Well that was close.
We almost made it an entire week without any renewals, cancelations, or
pickups being made and this was going to be a very short article. Thankfully, Friday brought with it a flurry
of activity, including a bunch of back-nine orders for CBS and a pair of
cancelations at NBC.
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| This picture really makes me wish Margo Martindale was still on "The Americans" |
CBS –
As always, we’ll start with the good news, and there was
plenty of it to go around at CBS. All of
the network’s comedies that are still airing (RIP We Are Men) received full-season orders. That means we’ll be getting full seasons of Mom, The Millers, and The Crazy Ones. None of the orders are particularly
surprising, given the relative performance of the shows, though it’s weird to
see a pattern developing of not just bad news, but all news about renewals and
cancelations coming out on Friday afternoons.
Typically Fridays are reserved for news you want to bury over the
weekend. CBS should be shouting these
pickups from the rooftops, but instead they’re whispering it in the corner.
On the side of the bad news, CBS is still struggling a bit
overall. The big move of Person of Interest has thus far been a
half-success. That Person of Interest has stabilized a previously problematic timeslot
is obviously good. But the 8:00 comedies
put on in its place haven’t been able to replicate its ratings on
Thursdays. They also might be having a
slight negative impact on Elementary,
though I’m willing to bet its struggles are its own.
The biggest problem CBS is facing right now, though, is on
Sunday nights, where The Good Wife
and The Mentalist are falling to
incredibly low numbers, to the level of Hostages,
even, which everybody knows is going to be canceled before the end of the
year. Both of those shows have been kept
alive in recent years because of syndication economics, but it’s going to be a
tough argument to keep them on the air past this season. CBS Sunday has been falling for several
years, no matter what shows have been on, so it will be interesting to see how
the network tries to fix things on Sunday next year.
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| It just wasn't meant to be for Blair Underwood and "Ironside" |
NBC –
With the good news out of the way, it’s time for the bad
news. NBC announced on Friday that Ironside and Welcome to the Family have both been canceled. They’ll be replaced in January by Chicago PD (the Chicago Fire spinoff) and the return of Community, respectively.
Furthermore, NBC
appears desperate to save Sean Saves the
World and The Michael Fox Show,
as it’s pulling Parks and Recreation
for most of the rest of the fall in order to run a number of The Voice and SNL specials. There was a
lot of sturm und drang among Parks and Rec fans lamenting the crazy
scheduling, but it really shouldn’t be a concern. At this point in its life, the show is
scheduling spackle for NBC that they can air at any time with little fanfare or
promotion and still draw a decent (for them) rating. NBC is obviously going to sink is resources
and efforts into saving its new shows.
But if they can’t beat Park and
Recreation’s numbers, it will be back next year.
With the exception of that bit of chaos, NBC was fairly
stable this week. Sunday and Monday are
still doing spectacularly. Tuesday is
pretty good. Wednesday is struggling but
not nearly as much as Thursday. The big
questions now are whether The Blacklist
and Chicago Fire can maintain their
ratings as The Voice enters its
annual downturn and what Grimm and Dracula can do when they return Friday.
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| "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" is turning into one of my favorite comedies. |
Fox –
The last bit of news announced on Friday was actually good
news. Brooklyn Nine-Nine was picked up for a full season and was chosen as the other program (along with New
Girl) that Fox is going to air after the Super Bowl. It’s obviously good news for Nine-Nine, though I question how much of
a boost the show will get from the Super Bowl.
The last time a network aired a pair of comedies after the Super Bowl, American Dad lost more than a third of The Simpson’s audience. Obviously, people will watch. But I don’t think Fox can expect the kind
ratings for Nine-Nine that it got
last time they aired the Super Bowl, when Glee
drew almost 27 million viewers and an 11.1 rating.
In other news, Fox’s Tuesday comedies continued their
decline, with even New Girl falling
under a 2.0 rating. I’m not sure how Fox
can continue airing two hours of comedy on Tuesday nights, though I’m also not
sure what else they could air instead.
The MLB playoffs have given Fox a slight boost over last
season, but it’s really not a lot at this point. They’ve got a legitimate hit in Sleepy Hollow, but it will end in
January or February. If The Following doesn’t come back strong
and Almost Human stumbles out of the
gate, they could be facing some serious problems in the spring.
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| No real news for ABC, but Kerry Washington is hosting the next SNL, so Scandal gets the pic. |
ABC –
There wasn’t much
news out of ABC this week, which is both good and bad for the network. While it means that nothing other than Lucky
7 has had poor enough ratings to merit cancelation, it equally means that
nothing other than SHIELD has had
good enough ratings to merit a full-season pickup.
ABC’s biggest problem so far has been stability. None of their new shows have stabilized at
ratings that are really worthy of back-nine orders. The
Goldbergs has been dropping 15-30% every week, Super Fun Night has fallen about 20% in the last two weeks, and Wonderland fell almost 30% from its
already weak launch. The shows that have
stabilized, have done so at either low (Back
in the Game), really low (Trophy Wife),
or abysmal (Betrayal) ratings levels.
Probably, and unfortunately, the biggest news for ABC was
the big drop in viewers for the second week of Wonderland. Its debut was
already soft, but dropping 30% from there to a rating just barely better than Betrayal’s second week (1.2 versus 1.1)
does not bode well for the freshman show.
I guess it’s still possible that ABC could try to salvage Wonderland by moving it to Sunday nights
to try to boost that flagging lineup (where it would have a more natural
companion with its parent show). But
other than that, I don’t see any way to save the show.
Fortunately for ABC, the network hasn’t seen too much
erosion in its returning shows. Sundays
are struggling (as they were last spring), but pretty much every other show has
returned above where it was last spring and, in Scandal’s case, higher than it ever was last season. ABC is still tracking for fourth place (owing
mostly to a lack of sports or singing programs), but it’s not entirely a
disaster.
Season to Date
Network Rating Averages (Adults 18-49) –
NBC – 2.77 (Down 1.8% YTD)
CBS – 2.14 (Down 6.2% YTD)
ABC – 2.10 (Down 1.4% YTD)
Fox – 1.92 (Down 3.5% YTD)
New Renewals,
Pickups, and Cancelations –
Mom (CBS) –
Full-Season Order
The Millers
(CBS) – Full-Season Order
The Crazy Ones
(CBS) – Full-Season Order
Brooklyn Nine-Nine
(Fox) – Full-Season Order
Welcome to the Family
(NBC) – Canceled
Ironside (NBC) –
Canceled
So thoughts?
Comments? Just want to tell me my
blog sucks? Let me know in the comments
or on Twitter @TyTalksTV.
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