First Two Weeks, Awake

AWAKE (NBC)

WEEK ONE
Awake premiered with a 2.0 demo. As I said at the time, this was very much a good news/bad news thing. Good: big build from lead-in (1.6 from Up All Night), massive timeslot improvement vs. previous occupant The Firm and most episodes of Prime Suspect. Bad: no real competition, drop in each 15 minutes. Another piece of bad news: no big-four weeknight scripted show has premiered this low and gotten a renewal. The current record-holder is Better Off Ted (2.1 on 3/18/09). I'm sure something will eventually premiere to 2.0 and get renewed, and it'll probably happen on NBC, so that's more a piece of historical trivia than anything.

WEEK TWO
In week two, Awake dropped 20% to a 1.6 demo, now a bit lower than Up All Night (which upticked to 1.7). The timeslot did get tougher as The Mentalist (2.8) returned to action, plus ABC had a decently-viewed repeat of GCB (1.3) that handily outdid last week's offering.

PROGNOSIS
My usual philosophy with these things is that if you're on the bubble in week two, you're probably not gonna make it. If Awake could maintain its 1.6 into perpetuity, NBC is pathetic enough that I think it'd have a decent chance of survival, but the odds are historically against a genre show stabilizing at its week two number. I've picked renewal for a lot of serialized/genre shows this season that appeared to have a lot of cushion at the week two number but just kept dropping and dropping and dropping: hello, Terra Nova, Pan Am and Alcatraz! So I don't think I can pick renewal for one that doesn't have that kind of cushion. It may benefit in the short term from no Mentalist for the next two weeks, but I think it'll eventually end up too low. No season two.

"First Two Weeks" is my look at... the first two weeks of a new scripted broadcast show's ratings. I also line all of these numbers up to do an objective analysis in what I call "the system."