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.

The Good Wife Review: "Hitting the Fan" - How to Kick Ass, Take Names, and Reboot

Will is not pleased with Alicia's decision in "The Good Wife"

“Hitting the Fan” may have been the 94^th episode of The Good Wife, but it was a pilot in every way, shape, and form.  Within the fabulous first 15 minutes, most of the characters and conflicts are established, and the show sets out on a thrilling hour of twist and turns, crosses and double-crosses as two law firms try to kill each other in one of my favorite episodes of this television year.  And the most amazing part?  I had never seen a single second of the show before Sunday night.

It’s not that I hadn’t wanted to watch The Good Wife.  After all, it is the last, real “prestige drama” on network television.  And though it has been a few years since the show was the last broadcast series nominated for a Best Drama Emmy, it still has that air of being the last of its kind, from a time when shows like Boston Legal and The West Wing dominated the awards discussion.  But there’s a lot of great television on these days, so it’s difficult to pick up a show in its fifth season that seems always to be on the brink of cancelation.  But last night’s episode received a lot of hype as a reboot of the show, so I tuned in and it was worth all of the hype.

Warning: I’m going to get deep into the plot here for a few paragraphs, even discussing some parts beat-by-beat, but it’s important because I’m trying to demonstrate how well this show takes an existing world, opens it up for new viewers, and completely envelops them.  It is really fantastic work.

What stands out in “Hitting the Fan” is how quickly the writers and director James Whitmore (more on him later) are able establish the action and the relationships.  We open with a publicist trying to pitch a campaign of “stability” to Will, the main focus of the first act.  It’s a wry bit of dramatic irony for the longtime viewer who is probably well aware that things are about to, well, look at the episode’s title.  But this is just a brief apéritif before the meal begins when another lawyer walks in and lays everything out in one sentence: “Alicia and Cary are leaving the firm and they’re taking clients our with them.”

Bam!  Not ten seconds in and the entire conflict is laid out.  Will and Diane versus Alicia and Cary.  We don’t yet know who to root for or if there are good guys and bad guys in this equation, but everything is put out on the table. 

Then, in a marvelous bit of visual storytelling, as Will walks through the office we get two brief (less than a second each) flashes of a brunette woman – first, smiling at the camera under bed covers; second, just smiling at the camera.  In less than a second, the show has told us that Will and Alicia are-or at least were-lovers.  This is not just a professional betrayal, but a personal one as well. 

Remember, I’ve never seen this show before and yet, within the first two minutes, I know all of the major players and what they have at stake in the story.  If only more actual pilots could be structured this way.

When Will finally reaches Alicia’s office he asks such a simple, mild question that it actually made me laugh: “You’re leaving?”  It’s such an understated query and Josh Charles underplays it so well that Alicia’s naïve response, “What?  No I just got here” is on point and hilarious as well.  The terror and confusion that slowly spreads across her face as she absorbs the true import of Will’s question tells me everything I need to know about why Julianna Margulies has been nominated for three Emmys for this role and won once.  You see every question that crosses her mind in those brief few seconds.  “Oh God, does he know?  He can’t know.  What does he know?  Who told him?  Who else knows?  What do I do now?”  All of that is right there in a few wordless seconds.

What follows (at least after Will’s tirade seen above) is a classic caper, as the firm settles on two sides, the departing lawyers try to take what they can with him and Will tries to ferret out the opposition.  We get dueling restraining orders, a pair of double-crosses, and the bitchiest bitch hand in the history of bitch hands.

The only part of the episode I struggled with was Alicia’s husband, Peter, and the ways in which he enters the story.  Obviously, there’s a lot of back story here that I don’t know, but for the purposes of the episode, he kind of comes in as a deus ex machina to solve the new firm’s new problems and win them the big client they need to succeed.  It would have been nice to see Alicia build this on her own from the start, rather than require her husband to save the day for her, but that’s such a minor quibble in an otherwise fantastic episode.

What amazes me most about “Hitting the Fan” is how much it trusts the viewers.  This is clearly designed as a reboot of the series or a second pilot.  Names are stated or repeated a few more times than you would normally see an episode that’s not trying to draw in new viewers and the episode is entirely self-contained.  But they still drop us into the middle of the action and basically say “keep up.”  Characters are introduced quickly then brought back later.  Past events are referenced in a way that might slip by somebody not paying attention.  For example, Alicia gets her restraining order from a judge Will apparently pissed off in a previous episode.  They don’t lay out the whole situation, but enough information is given so that the new viewers understand what’s going on. 

More television pilots should be like this.  So many pilots today are so obsessed with establishing their premise or making sure viewers don’t get lost that they sometimes forget to be interesting or entertaining.  Sleepy Hollow is another good example of pilots that get it right.  There’s less than five minutes of exposition and then we’re on to the action.

If you’ve been wavering about picking up The Good Wife or wanting to catch up on Netflix first, let me assure you, “Hitting the Fan” is an excellent time to get on board.  I can’t say that it’s a show that will enter my regular rotation, simply because Sunday nights are already stuffed with quality television, but I’m certainly going to try to keep up, because it really is a great television show and one of the best on broadcast television.

A couple of spare thoughts –

You may not know James Whitmore’s name but you’ve undoubtedly seen his work.  He’s a journeyman director whose work I first saw during his stint on the third season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer but he’s directed for dozens of series over the last three decades including 21 Jump Street, Quantum Leap, 24, Dawson’s Creek, NCIS, and a host of others.  He hasn’t gotten the attention that some of the acclaimed cable directors like Michelle McLaren and Rian Johnson have.  Nor has he gotten the opportunity to transition into feature film work like the Russo brothers or Alan Taylor, who are directing the upcoming Captain America and Thor movies, respectively.  But he’s got an immense résumé of really good work and this just might be his best (though I’ll always have a special place in my heart for “The Zeppo”).

“We’re coming after you: all your clients.  Every single one we worked to make happy while you swept in at the last minute to take credit.  We’re taking them.  And then you know what you’ll have?  A very nice suite of offices.”

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