Ratings Roundup - Looking Ahead

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, we’ve reached the doldrums of the season in terms of ratings news.  What shows are going to be pulled from the schedule have been.  The shows that are going to receive back-nine orders have received the orders.  And everybody is just kind of going about their business, waiting for midseason shows to debut in the spring.  But, at the very least, the networks are starting to announce their schedules for January and February, so I figured I’d take the time to look ahead at the coming months.

Fox is hoping "American Idol" will be its savior once again

Fox –

Fox is easily the network most looking forward to the spring and their American Idol savior, because this has just been a dreadful fall for the network and things are only getting worse.  After flirting with the bottom for a couple of weeks, Fox finally slipped below ABC into last place on the season and for the first two weeks of sweeps (the most important time of the television season), Fox has averaged less than a 1.5 rating for its shows and only had three shows (Bones, Sleepy Hollow, and Family Guy) break a 2.0.  Fox needs its top show back and it needs it badly.

Luckily for Fox, January is right around the corner when Idol will hopefully storm the schedule once again.  While the show was undoubtedly down last year, losing to Modern Family and Duck Dynasty in some weeks, it still finished the season in seventh place (fifth if you don’t separate The Voice’s two airings or Sunday Night Football from its pregame show).  In fact, last spring’s finale out-rated anything Fox has aired this fall with the lone exception being the World Series.  And with Idol taking up three and sometimes four hours of scheduling each week, Fox will receive a much-needed boost. 

What’s more interesting for Fox is the moves it’s making around Idol.  Enlisted, originally intended to debut this past Friday with Bones and Raising Hope, has had its debut pushed back to January 10^th.  This was the best-reviewed Fox sitcom this season and part of me wants to think that Fox is holding Enlisted back to replace Dads should it slide any further.  While Dads has received a full-season order, that same situation didn’t stop Fox from pulling Ben and Kate from the schedule last year. 

I’m also curious to see what happens with Almost Human, which is being expected to last the season with The Following, which returns in January.  I don’t see that as a particularly fruitful pairing, but Sleepy Hollow is definitely going to end its run on January 13^th, so the only option there would be to bring Bones back from Friday nights.  There’s also the question of Rake, which is getting Fox’s biggest push this spring, airing first in the coveted post-NFC Championship Game timeslot and then following Idol’s results show on Thursday nights. 

Fox has had a lot of holes in the fall, but it also has a ton of spackle for the spring.  Despite a terrible year so far, we can’t write them off just yet.

There are about three production stills for "Intelligence," so expect to see this photo a lot in coming weeks

CBS –

CBS is the last bastion of stability in the sea of chaos that is network television at this moment.  CBS has pulled only one show from its schedule this year and its only other show obviously pulling in cancelation-worthy ratings was only ever going to air 15 episodes anyway.  And so it is that CBS only has one move planned for the winter and spring and it’s a move that was announced last May.  On January 13^th, Intelligence will debut in the timeslot currently occupied by Hostages. 

There are a handful of other series still on CBS’s bench, and they’ll likely make their ways to air sometime in March and April.  But the real strength of CBS is its ability to generate modest, but acceptable ratings for repeats, especially for its trademark series: NCIS and The Big Bang Theory.  This allows them to fill several hours in the winter and spring with cheap filler. 

The second week of sweeps was a good one for CBS, as it got a big boost from last Saturday’s Alabama-LSU game in primetime and pretty much every show rose from the week before.  After a brief week flirting with last place, CBS is no comfortably in second once more.

NBC's biggest spring question: "whither 'The Voice'"

NBC –

The big question for NBC’s winter and spring still hasn’t been answered: when will The Voice return?  Last year, NBC waited until late March to bring the show back and it and Revolution both suffered by airing into June.  I believe that decision was made to accommodate the schedules of the judges but I doubt NBC makes the same mistake again.  The Voice has to return by February in order to keep NBC relevant during the winter months.  Nothing else the network has will work.

The question of The Voice aside, NBC’s spring schedule is looking much the same as they planned in May.  The Sing-Off will debut in December for a brief run on Monday nights.  A trio of new shows will replace Sunday Night Football in February.  The Voice will move to 7:00 on Tuesdays, leading in to a pair of new comedies at 8:00.  Chicago PD will fill in for Ironside on Wednesday nights, starting January 8^th.  And Community, the show that will not die, will return, once again, in its Thursday at 7:00 timeslot on January 2^nd, leading in to Parks and Recreation. 

In current news, NBC’s plan to give its Thursday comedies a boost from SNL and The Voice specials has proven to be a massive failure.  While Sean Saves the World and The Michael J Fox Show managed to not shed viewers while following the bigger lead-ins, once Parks and Rec returned, they crashed, with each pulling in only a 0.9 rating Thursday night.  NBC doesn’t really have any choice but to continue airing more episodes, but Thursday nights are just a complete disaster for the network right now. 

As with the fall, NBC’s success in the spring will depend almost entirely on when The Voice returns and what ratings it brings. 

ABC was hoping Betrayal would last longer than 13 episodes, but it won't

ABC –

I’m going to preface the following by pointing out that the following announcements were actually made in August and are likely to see some change in the next couple of weeks.

That said, ABC has long had plans for its dramas in the winter: take them off the air.  Wonderland was meant to end in December, giving way to The Quest’s two-hour premiere on January 2^nd.  I’m not sure how that’s going to work, though, since Wonderland is unlikely to air more than 10 episodes before the end of the year.  Likewise, Betrayal will likely run until its stable of episodes is empty. 

As for ABC’s successful dramas, the plan was to take them off the air in January and most of Feburary, with Nashville returning February 26^th, Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal coming back the next night, and the Sunday dramas (along with new show Resurrection) returning to air on March 9^th.  ABC still has not announced its intentions for what to air in January and February, though, so I would generously refer to these plans as “tentative.”

It has not been a good fall for ABC, with most of its new dramas tanking and only Scandal stepping up as a legitimate hit.  Even its big success SHIELD has refused to stop falling.  The entire network is losing ground fast and likely to end up in last place once again.

Season to Date Network Rating Averages (Adults 18-49) –

NBC – 2.69 (Down 5.3% YTD, Down 2.0% Week-to-Week, Down 16.8% from Premiere Week)

CBS – 2.08 (Down 8.6% YTD, Up 2.4% Week-to-Week, Down 29.6% from Premiere Week)

ABC – 1.97 (Down 7.1% YTD, Down 3.0% Week-to-Week, Down 26.2% from Premiere Week)

Fox – 1.97 (Down 3.8% YTD, Down 3.8% Week-to-Week, Down 10.2% from Premiere Week)

New Renewals, Pickups, and Cancelations –

None

So thoughts?  Comments?  Just want to tell me my blog sucks?  Let me know in the comments or on Twitter @TyTalksTV.

Ratings Roundup - The Walking Dead

No, not The Walking Dead, though there is definitely a story to be told about how it became the number one show on television-not just on cable, but all of television.  No, this article is about the Walking Dead, those shows that have pretty much no chance of being renewed for next season and are pulling in terrible, cancelation-worthy ratings, but are being allowed to play out the string for the remainder of their initial episode order.  There are myriad reasons for why these shows don’t get canceled, but the most common is that the networks simply cancel everything, and networks would rather save their replacement shows for the spring, when they can give them a properly marketed launch.

CBS –

The most obvious dead show walking this year has been Hostages.  Launching at 9:00 on Mondays (a timeslot that got Hawaii Five-0 shipped Fridays), Hostages was likely always doomed.  But the speed at which it reached the point of no return was remarkable.  It debuted to a low, but passable for 9:00, 1.8 rating before quickly plummeting from there.  Hostages is, at this point, the lowest rated show on CBS, which is pretty remarkable given how much the network is struggling on Friday and Sunday nights.  And yet it still limps along, pulling in ratings that would make even NBC blanch.

There are a couple of reasons, it seems, that CBS is allowing Hostages to keep airing episodes, but the most important is that CBS already has that timeslot earmarked for another show, Intelligence, in the spring.  You see, CBS decided to get into the timeslot-sharing business this year with a pair of limited-run series both occupying the same slot.  Hostages was intended to run for 13 episodes in the fall and winter, with Intelligence taking over in February to run for 13 episodes of its own.  It’s a model adapted from cable and something many people had been clamoring for for a while.  But Hostages shows the problems with that model: namely, that it becomes logistically difficult to pull a struggling show from the schedule.

When We Are Men had problems earlier this year (though as I mentioned earlier those problems were less about Men and more about 2 Broke Girls), CBS was able to pull the plug and slot in Mike and Molly without really skipping a beat.  But with Hostages, CBS doesn’t want to debut Intelligence early (without the support of the NFL playoffs for promotion) and it doesn’t have any shows that can fill in for eight or nine weeks this winter.  So Hostages will lumber along, earning weak ratings until its 13 episodes are done, after which few will talk about it ever again unless CBS decides to commit Emmy category fraud and submit Toni Collette for Best Actress in a Miniseries or Movie. 

In other news, the first of week of sweeps is in the book and it was a rough one for CBS.  They were down 25 percent from the first week last year, though it’s important to note that the LSU-Alabama football game was on in primetime during the first week of sweeps in 2012 and the second week this year.  Factoring that in, the network would have been down only nine percent.  The good news is that it looks like CBS’s slide has slowed in recent weeks with the network actually ticking up this week in the year-to-year ratings.  Most of its shows were also up week-to-week, with only Mom showing significant declines owing mostly to the loss of its The Big Bang Theory leadin. 

ABC –

While Hostages is an example of a network unable to cancel a show because of future scheduling plans, Once Upon a Time in Wonderland and Betrayal are perfect demonstrations of the mantra that “they can’t cancel everything.”  As I’ve mentioned before, just being a bit below average is typically enough to get a show renewed.  But these two shows are well below average and are two of the three lowest-rated shows on the network (The Neighbors is the lowest but gets a great deal of leeway airing on Fridays). 

So why are they still on the air?  To put it simply, ABC can’t cancel everything and they’ve already given the axe to Lucky 7.  There’s also been a hesitancy in recent years to launch new series in November and December without much promotion, meaning networks are reluctant to replace a failed new series with a series that doesn’t have an established audience.  CBS can put Mike and Molly on to replace We Are Men without any trouble because it knows, roughly, what the show will bring in demographically.  Likewise, if one of ABC’s comedies had failed, they could have brought back Suburgatory in its place (which it appears will likely be happening with Back in the Game).  But without any returning dramas on the bench, ABC is forced to let Wonderland and Betrayal continue pulling in terrible ratings.  Neither is likely to be pulled from the schedule at this point, but nor are they going to air any more episodes beyond their initial order.

As I mentioned last week, ABC’s ratings dropped temporarily owing to the Country Music Awards airing one week later this year and those awards provided a huge boost to the network this week, putting them up 17 percent from 2012's first sweeps week and keeping ABC just below last year’s ratings.  The network still has issues (especially with half its new shows bombing and the other half now struggling a bit), but there are definitely signs of life at ABC.

NBC –

Thanks to Sean Saves the World receiving an order for five more episodes, NBC doesn’t technically have a walking dead show.  Perhaps it’s because the network has enough versatile shows (specifically The Voice, Dateline, and Saturday Night Live specials) that the network can just put a troublesome show on hiatus for a few weeks (hello, Parks and Rec) without it seeming like the beginning of the end.  Then again, given what’s happening with Sean and The Michael J Fox Show right now, it wouldn’t surprise me to see Community and Parks and Rec once again standing atop the sitcom rubble come May.

NBC won the first week of sweeps this season, though it can’t be seen in an entirely positive light.  The Voice has entered its semiannual swoon, now that the show has switched from its game show format to its singing competition.  The ratings are still pretty great, with the show putting up a 3.6 and a 3.4 in its four regularly-scheduled hours this week, but NBC has only had one week so far this season when its ratings increased from week-to-week, and it’s known for struggling during the slow winter months, so it needs to end 2013 on a high note. 

Fox –

Can we talk about The X-Factor for a minute?  Because we need to talk about The X-Factor.  I wrote in my season preview for Fox that I believed the show was in serious trouble, but even I wasn’t willing to predict that the show would drop as far as a 1.2 rating.  Yes, it is entirely possible that having The Voice air a new episode opposite the show this week is responsible for much of that incredibly poor rating.  But The Voice doesn’t explain the 1.5 X-Factor put up on Wednesday.  If Almost Human is a hit (which I’m skeptical about) I see no reason for The X-Factor to be on next season’s fall schedule.  If Human fails then, at best, I see The X-Factor scaling back to one night per week, like Fox did with So You Think You Can Dance or ABC did with Dancing with the Stars this year.

Without the MLB playoffs offering ten nights of very good ratings for Fox, the network is suffering once again.  After a brief jump into second place last week, Fox is teetering on the edge of last place after just one week of terrible ratings.  At this point, I have a hard time seeing even the NFL playoffs saving FOX this year.  I was certain they would win the season among adults 18-49, but they’re going to need a big boost from The Following and American Idol to pull that off.

Season to Date Network Rating Averages (Adults 18-49) –

NBC – 2.69 (Down 4.4% YTD, Down 2.0% Week-to-Week, Down 16.0% from Premiere Week)

Fox – 2.05 (Down 0.1% YTD, Down 4.6% Week-to-Week, Down 6.6% from Premiere Week)

CBS – 2.04 (Down 8.1% YTD, Down 0.5% Week-to-Week, Down 31.3% from Premiere Week)

ABC – 2.03 (Down 5.4% YTD, Up 2.6% Week-to-Week, Down 23.9% from Premiere Week)

New Renewals, Pickups, and Cancelations –

Sean Saves the World – Five Episodes Ordered

So thoughts?  Comments?  Just want to tell me my blog sucks?  Let me know in the comments or on Twitter @TyTalksTV.

Masters of Sex Review: "Brave New World" - It's a Man's World

Allison Janney shines on this week's "Masters of Sex"

           The alleged reason for the bill is to enhance patient safety.  But what they really do is create provisions that treat women as though they are not capable of making their own medical decisions.

                                                                                                                                                            Wendy Davis

On June 25^th of this year, Texas state senator Wendy Davis launched an eleven hour filibuster in opposition of Senate Bill 5, a bill that would have put stronger restrictions on abortions and the availability of procedures and medications designed to end pregnancies.  One of the themes that kept coming up during the filibuster and its aftermath was the idea of men (the Texas senate is 77% male) thinking that they know what is best for women’s health.  The issue is not one unique to abortion, as the Texas legislature also overturned Governor Perry’s executive order mandating the vaccination of school-aged girls against HPV.  What we saw in “Brave New World” is that patriarchal control of women’s bodies is not a phenomenon unique to the twenty-first century, but that men have for decades (if not centuries) thought they knew best when it comes to women, their sexual behavior, and their bodies.  And for decades (if not centuries) they’ve been dead wrong.

Freud’s idea that there were different types of orgasms, that one was a sign a maturity, and that the failure to have a vaginal orgasm is a sign of arrested development to be cured through therapy is laughable now.  But then, as the adage goes, when your only tool is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail.  I guess the same can be said of psychoanalysts.  What’s more remarkable than the idea that Freud thought he was master of the female sexual response, is that nobody thought to test his hypothesis for fifty years.  It’s a recurring theme in Masters of Sex: that part of what makes Masters’s and Johnson’s research so important is that so many people are unwilling to talk about sex.  Freud’s wife even is squeamish when Johnson raises the prospect of testing orgasms to see if there is any actual physiological difference between the two.

The same squeamishness is evident in Masters’s surprise that the elderly are capable, not just of having sex, but of enjoying it as well.  That doctors have been unwilling to research the sex lives of older people is yet another sign that, for all they claim to know about women, most men are still clueless because they don’t want to want to ask questions.  The idea that women have sexual agency is still anathema to many, even today.  It’s a shame that more people don’t watch this show because it offers one the most frank discussion of sex in all of American culture.  I’m not going to say this is a show people could “learn” from, but it certainly could help increase discussion of sensitive topics, which is apparently still necessary since we live in a world where the STD rate among the elderly is skyrocketing because people still don’t want to acknowledge the idea that old people have sex.  Masters of Sex could be a culturally important show, if we’re willing to listen to what it has to say.

And what makes it all the more gripping to watch is just how great everybody involved with the show is.  Last night’s standout was clearly Allison Janney, giving a riveting performance as the Provost’s wife, Margaret.  Her pre-interview with Bill and Virginia, as she lays out the details of her non-existent sex life and the complete lack of pleasure her husband can give her is just brutal to watch.  And her breakdown in the elevator…  I’ve come to accept that the men in this show are pretty much universally awful people, but it doesn’t make it any easier to see the impact of their actions on the women in their lives. 

The same can be said for Libby, who’s left wanting by her husband who is more interested in timing the escapades of their next door neighbors in a Miami hotel than in her.  But this is a show about women’s agency, so it was nice to finally see her stand up and demand to get what she needed, even if what she needed was for Bill to just leave her alone for a while.

The biggest part of the episode was its conclusion, when Virginia begins to reconsider Bill’s request that they participate in the study themselves (and obviously takes her top off and puts his hand on her breast).  That she does so almost immediately in response to his offering her a promotion is a little distasteful, however.  Their relationship has constantly been riding the line between acceptable and unacceptable and there have clearly been indications – as pointed out by Dr. DePaul – that Bill doesn’t exactly think entirely with his brain when it comes to Virginia, but they’ve largely managed to avoid the prospect of a quid pro quo relationship thus far, for which I’m grateful.  It’s tough not to extrapolate where this is all going from my knowledge of the real Masters and Johnson, but I have to try.

A couple of spare thoughts –

Dr. Langham is just being super creepy right now and I’m really hoping his fling with Margaret will let him put Jane in the past. 

Dr. DePaul’s comments about the standardization of the Pap smear and how often it would be used if it detected cancer in men is just another example of how well Masters of Sex can make modern social commentary, considering the same argument has been made about the HPV vaccine.

“My clitoris beat my vagina?  That’s crazy.”

So thoughts?  Comments?  Just want to tell me my blog sucks?  Let me know in the comments or on Twitter @TyTalksTV.

Ratings Roundup - ABC Gets Off the Fence and the World Series Bump

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. 

Every Friday afternoon I sit down to think about what I want to write in this piece and every Friday afternoon I get desperate because there hasn’t been any news to discuss.  Then, late in the day, the good and bad news starts flowing in and I breathe a sigh of relief.  This week it took until 8:15 Friday for any reports to come out, but that’s when ABC finally climbed off the fence with respect to its comedies and finally made some hard decisions. 

"Trophy Wife" is great and earned a back-nine pickup, which is also great.

ABC –

As the network with the only real news this week, ABC gets the lead spot.  Some of it was expected, as The Goldbergs earns a full-season pickup.  Some was a surprise, with the low-rated but more critically-enjoyed Trophy Wife earning a back nine order over the higher-rated Back in the Game and Super Fun Night. 

What is really interesting for ABC is where the network takes its comedy lineup from here.  Back in the Game has been effectively canceled, though it will air its remaining episodes.  It seems exceedingly likely that Suburgatory will take over that spot sometime in January or February.  Super Fun Night merited an order of only four additional episodes (compared to the Tuesday comedies’ nine) which makes me think that at some point this spring either The Goldbergs or Trophy Wife will move to that post-Modern Family timeslot, which will make a much more compatible pairing than Super Fun Night does now.  The other option for ABC would be to leave both shows on Tuesday and put a new comedy on after Modern Family, but they’ve tried that each of the last three seasons and haven’t found a good match yet.

Decisions like these are when I would really like to be a fly on the wall of network executives, because the cancelation of Back in the Game is slightly baffling to me.  The show had stabilized at a level at or above either of the Tuesday comedies and it actually beat them both in each of the last three weeks despite SHIELD providing a substantially better lead-in than The Middle.  One interesting suggestion is that ad rates for Back in the Game were surprisingly low this fall, owing in part to its focus on the lower class and single motherhood.  There’s an entire book to be written about the treatment of class on television, but if Back in the Game was canceled because people don’t want to see poor people on television, that’s really a shame.

There’s one last caveat to note about ABC’s ratings.  The network is down this week almost nine percent year-to-year (compared to 3.5 percent last week), but that’s merely an aberration due to the Country Music Awards airing a week later this year.  ABC will bounce back next week.

The 2013 World Series brought good news to Boston and to Fox

FOX –

What a difference a week with two World Series games makes.  Last week Fox was down almost five percent, year-to-date.  After a six-game series (as opposed to last year’s four-game series), Fox is down less than one percent from last year and, more importantly, up to second place for the season.  The Major League Baseball playoffs may not be the ratings juggernaut that the NFL is, but it’s pretty obvious why Fox continues to devote two weeks per year to them.  Even the Saturday World Series game, by far the lowest-rated, was the highest-rated Fox show of the season outside of Sleepy Hollow’s first few episodes. 

This is going to be a make or break week for Fox.  All of their shows return with new episodes for the first time in several weeks.  The network really needs to build some momentum during sweeps.  They still have Idol, the NFC Championship Game and the Super Bowl to look forward to, but with the spring lull in their future, Fox can’t afford to have its shows bottoming out in November too.

"Dracula" had a good start for NBC

NBC –

The ride was fun while it lasted.  For most of the year, NBC has managed to keep its head above water, running at or above last year’s numbers.  For the first time in the 2013-14 season, NBC is putting up negative numbers year-over-year.  Part of me wants to call it an anomaly because the network aired three hours worth of repeats this past week, compared with two hours in the comparable week last year.  But one of those repeat hours this past week was SNL’s Halloween special, which brought in better ratings than the comedies that aired before it. 

We finally got a look at NBC’s Friday lineup last week, with both returning Grimm and new show Dracula debuting to 1.8 ratings.  Grimm is a virtual lock for renewal, since it will be only one season away from syndication after this year.  Dracula still has a ways to go to earn renewal (and struggled a bit in its most recent episode – more on that next week), but this was definitely a good start.

This coming Thursday is going to be a big test for NBC since it will be the first time that The Voice airs a new episode outside of Monday and Tuesday.  The Parks and Recreation replacements thus far have been a mixed bag, with a Voice repeat pulling equal ratings and an SNL special drawing about 30 percent better.  As I’ve noted before, NBC’s comedies have been dreadful this year, and it could really use a good week at some point.

Never doubt the power of "The Big Bang Theory"

CBS –

A repeat of The Big Bang Theory was the fourth-most watched show of the week on CBS.  It was also the single highest rated sitcom on all of television (though Modern Family was also in repeats).  I don’t what it is about that show, but it appears to be everybody’s favorite backup.  When nothing else is on, people gravitate to The Big Bang Theory.  Even its second repeat on Thursday night (airing in place of Two and a Half Men) was tied with The Millers for the second-highest rated show of the night for CBS.

I don’t know that there’s a great deal more to say about CBS this week, so I’ll use this space to offer a warning for the next few weeks.  We’re getting into sweeps and the winter months, so networks will increasingly be airing specials and repeats over the next three months.  In other words, don’t be surprised if a show makes a big jump or drop from week-to-week simply because it’s facing different competition.  For example, this year the Country Music Awards are airing this coming Wednesday.  Last year the Awards drew a 3.8 rating, so it’s likely that other programming that night will have lower ratings.  It’s not a guarantee, necessarily, but a possibility.

Season to Date Network Rating Averages (Adults 18-49) –

NBC – 2.74 (Down 0.3% YTD, Down 0.2% Week-to-Week, Down 12.7% from Premiere Week)

Fox – 2.15 (Down 2.4% YTD, Up 8.8% Week-to-Week, Down 2.1% from Premiere Week)

CBS – 2.10 (Down 8.3% YTD, Down 2.7% Week-to-Week, Down 29.0% from Premiere Week)

ABC – 1.98 (Down 8.7% YTD, Down 3.3% Week-to-Week, Down 25.8% from Premiere Week)

New Renewals, Pickups, and Cancelations –

The Goldbergs – Full-Season Pickup

Trophy Wife – Full-Season Pickup

Super Fun Night – Four Episodes Ordered

Back in the Game – Canceled

So thoughts?  Comments?  Just want to tell me my blog sucks?  Let me know in the comments or on Twitter @TyTalksTV.