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| The biggest news this week was Undateable's renewal for an all-live season |
Network upfronts –
where the networks all come together to announce their fall schedules and pitch
their new shows to advertisers – are here, which means the 2014-15 television
season is quickly coming to a close.
I’ll probably have a season wrap-up post at the end of May, but I wanted
to take a quick look at each network and its shows before upfronts hit. First up is this season’s almost certain repeat
champion: NBC.
Let’s start with the positives. For the second consecutive year, NBC will
walk away with the season Live+Same Day and Live+7 ratings crowns. They currently lead CBS by a quarter of a
point in the Same Day ratings and by .2 in the L+7 numbers. They have the highest-rated program on
network television in Sunday Night
Football and a big two-night performer in The Voice.
But look past the surface and the network’s numbers get very
ugly very quickly. Another year has gone
by without developing a sitcom hit or a hit at all. In fact, NBC is likely going to cancel every
single new show it debuted during the 2014-15 season.* That is ridiculous. The last time that happened was more than
forty years ago during the 1973-74 season when, again, NBC canceled all of its
freshman series. At least then the
network had the excuse of devoting more than a third of its schedule to
primetime movies and it had one of the finest nightly lineups in television
history with All in the Family, M*A*SH*,
The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, and The Carol Burnett Show. Even last year’s big hit, The Blacklist, has cratered in the last
few weeks after getting the post-Super Bowl timeslot and initially surviving a
midseason move to Thursdays.
* I guess that’s what
I get for writing this piece in the middle of renewal and cancellation
week. NBC somewhat surprisingly renewed The
Mysteries of Laura late last night,
guaranteeing that at least one of their freshman shows will get a second
season.
For those wondering just how dire the straits are, consider
this: NBC aired only three scripted hours this season that beat the non-sports
average for the five broadcast networks.
By comparison, that’s fewer than half the above-average hours of CBS and
ABC and fewer even than the four above-average hours of last place Fox, which
also shows seven fewer hours of primetime programming than the peacock network.
The Questions
The biggest question, then, is how long can NBC stay on top? Frankly, the answer is probably “about three
weeks.” The truth is, sans Super Bowl, NBC would currently be
in a neck-and-neck race with CBS for the ratings titles. Considering that CBS gets the Super Bowl next
year, it’s not out of line to predict that, barring stunning ratings reversals,
CBS is the favorite to lead the pack in 2015-16.
In the micro sense, NBC really needs to figure out its
comedy plan. Only summer transplant Undateable, which hasn’t officially been
renewed yet, seems likely to return and, in fact, the dearly departed Parks and Recreation is going to wind up
as NBC’s second highest-rated comedy of the year. The network abandoned Thursday night
comedies, on which it made its name in the 90s and seems to have really lost
any kind of brand identity in the genre.
Given that they’ve only ordered four new comedy series to date, it
wouldn’t be surprising if the closest thing to comedy on NBC’s fall schedule is
Best Time Ever, the new variety show
from Neil Patrick Harris.
The Numbers
NBC’s Live+Same Day average currently sits at 2.00. Given their recent trends, I estimate that
they’ll finish somewhere around 1.95, representing about a fifteen percent
decrease from last year and down even from the network's 2012-13 average, when
it finished in second place behind CBS.
Sports and The Voice continue
to drive NBC’s ratings, though, and their scripted series ratings continue to
struggle. For the second straight year,
the network will finish with the worst comedy average of the four major networks. I said last year that there are building
blocks on the NBC schedule, but I’m beginning to wonder if that’s true, as The Voice again fails to create any
momentum, The Blacklist dies when it
moves off of Monday, and the network's highest-rated series all seem to end up
in the 9:00 timeslot.
The Schedule
(Titles in BOLD have already been
renewed for next season; titles in strikethrough have already been
canceled)
Monday –
7:00pm – The Voice (3.28 average rating) – Celebrity
Apprentice (2.04)
9:00pm – The Blacklist (2.44) – State of Affairs (1.28) – The
Night Shift (1.31)
NBC made a big move this year by
moving its hit show, The Blacklist
out of the prime The Voice leadout
and pitting it head-to-head against last year’s highest-rated drama, Scandal, on Thursday nights. At first, the plan didn’t seem so bad for the
James Spader-helmed series. Sure, there
was a bit of drop-off from fall to spring, but it still gave the network a
strong showing on a valuable night that had recently been generating little in
terms of ratings. Recently, however, the
move seems to have not been playing out so well. The Katherine Heigl drama State of Affairs bombed post-The Voice and summer carryover The Night Shift only did slightly
better. Meanwhile, The Blacklist has cratered on Thursday nights, drawing a sub-1.5
average over the last six weeks and fairly regularly finishing third in its
timeslot. Add in the fact that the
network was unable to draw even acceptable ratings out of the two spring dramas
paired with The Blacklist (The Slap and Allegiance), and NBC spent pretty much the entire season just
praying for Sunday once Thursday came. I
don’t expect a great deal of change here when NBC announces its schedule
tomorrow. The Voice will likely retain the 7:00pm timeslot with the most
promising new drama placed behind it.
Tuesday –
7:00pm – The Voice (2.91) – Parks and Recreation (1.33) – The
Voice (2.91)
8:00pm – Marry Me (1.19)/About
a Boy (1.04) – Undateable
(1.44)/One Big Happy
(1.17)
9:00pm – Chicago Fire (1.83)
The Dick Wolf Chicago series continues to provide steady, if unspectacular
ratings for NBC in the ever more difficult 9:00 hour. The big question on Tuesdays is what NBC will
decide to slot in-between The Voice and
Chicago Fire. Sitcoms have mostly struggled in that hour
for the past year-and-a-half, though Undateable
has done reasonably well and was just announced to be airing all live episodes
next season, so NBC has a few options.
It wouldn’t be surprising to see Neil Patrick Harris’s variety show end
up here as a slightly more compatible leadout than yet another drama. On the other hand, Fire has generally been the best overall post-Voice performer, so maybe the network should be less concerned
about finding the right show and just make this a home for their most-promising
series.
Wednesday –
7:00pm – The Mysteries of Laura
(1.19)
8:00pm – Law & Order: SVU
(1.63)
9:00pm – Chicago PD (1.59)
Prior to yesterday’s surprising
late night renewal of The Mysteries of
Laura, I had this pegged as the easiest night to predict. A new drama fits in at 7:00 and SVU and PD stay put. I still think
that makes the most sense, since Laura,
while it draws a fair number of viewers, has dreadful demo ratings and isn’t
really bringing anything to the fall schedule.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see it held until midseason, perhaps to fill
a slot on Sunday night once the NFL season ends.
The only potential hiccup to that
plan are the ratings from a couple of weeks ago when SVU and PD swapped
timeslots for a night during a crossover event with Chicago Fire. Both shows saw
increases of 15-25% on the night with the bigger jump coming for SVU.
It’s likely this was mostly due to the special event nature of the
episodes, but it’s possible that both series might be better off in different
timeslots, should NBC decide to experiment.
Thursday –
7:00pm – The Biggest Loser (1.20) – The
Slap (0.76)
8:00pm – Bad Judge (0.94)/A
to Z (0.75) – The Blacklist (2.39)
9:00pm – Parenthood (1.29) – Allegiance
(0.86) – The Slap (0.76) –
Dateline (1.02)
What an utter disaster of a night
Thursday was for NBC. The network ended
up airing 26 hours of sub-1.0 new programming on Thursday nights – a solid
quarter of its total output for the night.
Sure, some blame can be put on the competition these shows faced, what
with the NFL on CBS during the fall and ABC’s Shonda Rhimes dramas on ABC all
year long. But even that can’t account
for how bad this turned out. Even The Blacklist, which had been performing
perfectly fine on Monday nights, sank heavily on Thursday nights, falling as
low as a 1.2 rating in recent weeks.
I don’t know the answer for NBC on
Thursday nights in 2015-16. Presumably
they’re going to put in a couple of new dramas (and I wouldn’t be surprised to
see Chicago Med earn the 9:00pm slot,
which was held down for so long by another Chicago hospital show, ER) but I think it’s going to take a lot
more than just nibbling around the edges to bring Must See TV back to NBC
Thursdays.
Friday –
7:00pm – Dateline (1.19)
8:00pm – Grimm (1.16)
9:00pm – Constantine (0.92)
We’re running on four solid years
now of Grimm and Dateline pulling perfectly acceptable ratings on Friday night while
nothing else can. There’s not much else
really to say at this point until NBC decides to try something different. Frankly, I think The Blacklist would actually make for a solid pairing with Grimm, but there’s no chance in hell
that NBC sends its top drama and the show to which it gave the post-Super Bowl
timeslot to Friday nights. Odds are,
we’ll see some variation of this same schedule next year, just with a new show
in place of Constantine
Sunday –
7:00pm – Sunday Night Football
(7.30) – Dateline (0.96)
8:00pm – Sunday Night Football
(7.30) – A.D. The Bible Continues
(1.48)
9:00pm – Sunday Night Football
(7.30) – American Odyssey (0.68)
Once again, Sunday Night Football dominates in the fall while everything fails
in the spring. This
marks the umpteenth-consecutive year that all scripted programming has failed
on Sundays. In fact, since NBC won the Sunday Night Football contract, no
Sunday scripted series has been renewed.
There’s a chance that the network will order more Bible programming, since it’s quite uncommon for network execs to
decide not to be in the Mark Burnett
business, but clearly something has to change here. The
Apprentice has worked well in the past on Sunday nights, but NBC decided to
use it to bridge The Voice this
year. I wish I had a better idea of what
they should do, but the problem is the same it’s been for almost a decade: find
spring programming that isn’t terrible.
If NBC hasn’t fixed it yet, I don’t know what will work.
NBC is still the two-time reigning
ratings champion. But that title is on
very rocky foundation at the moment and they don't seem to have any real strategy beyond just plugging the many holes the schedule currently has. NBC will walk into upfronts holding the title belt aloft, but don't be surprised if this time next year sees them pinned to the mat.
Tyler Williams is a
professional library and amateur television critic. You can reach him at tytalkstv AT gmail DOT
com or on Twitter @TyTalksTV.
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