The War of 18-49, Archer

ARCHER (FX/FXX)

Scheduling history: Archer aired its first four seasons on Thursday at 10/9c, with two exceptions: a special sneak preview in September 2009 before the show's official premiere, and a three episode run at 10:30 in fall 2011. It moved to Monday for season five but returned to Thursday in season six.

See (who saw) how it all began: FX first previewed Archer about four months before the official premiere after It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia on 9/17/09, in an oddly promoted airing that didn't give away the name of the show (or really anything about it). That got 0.91 million viewers and a 0.5 demo and is not included in the season one average below. Then its official premiere on 1/14/10 about doubled that audience, scoring 1.82 million viewers and a 0.9. And a repeat of the preview at 10:30 had a 0.7. It dropped fast from there, to 0.7 in week two, 0.5 in week three, 0.4 in week four and 0.3 in week five! But after that it finally steadied, getting back to a 0.4 for most of the rest of the season and even perking up to a 0.6 for the season's penultimate episode.

The best of times: In seasons two through four, not only was Archer growing every year, but it was growing faster every year. In season four, it finally became a legitimately strong program in 18-49, breaking through with its first ever 1.0 for the 1/17/13 premiere and hitting a 1.1 three times later in the season.

The worst of times: After a seemingly ill-advised move to Monday in 2014, Archer finally sniffed at its season one ratings again, hitting a couple 0.4's in the second half of the season. It had a couple more 0.4's in the return to Thursday for season six, but the 0.3 in the series' fifth week remained a series low out of the entire FX run. It finally dipped into the 0.2's in its first FXX season in 2017.

Then vs. now: Most of the truly legit comedies on broadcast don't peak right out of the gate, and FX has recognized that. Both of their biggest comedy hits Archer and It's Always Sunny have blossomed after several years of tiny ratings. These shows have always skewed extremely young, so there's probably been some value in them even at their lower levels. But now, FX has built a really strong property, and they don't want to let it go; therefore, it wasn't initially announced as one of the comedies bound for 18-34-centric FXX. If it were all about maximizing 18-34, Archer would certainly be FXX-bound. But clearly the mothership network wanted to keep one of the hottest draws in that demo for itself. However, as the franchise has softened a bit in the last couple seasons, FX finally did announce that Archer would head for FXX. That happened in 2017.

Adults 18-49 info by season:

Seas	Year	Slot	Avg	y2y	Lo	Hi	Results	Grade
1	Winter 2010	Thursday 10:00	0.53		0.3	0.9	detail
2	Winter 2011		Thursday 10:00	0.55	+3%	0.4	0.7		detail
3	2011-12		Thursday 10:00	0.68	+24%	0.5	0.8		detail
4	Winter 2013		Thursday 10:00	0.93	+37%	0.7	1.1		detail
5	Winter 2014	Monday 10:00	0.61	-34%	0.4	1.0	detail	D+
6	Winter 2015	Thursday 10:00	0.55	-11%	0.4	0.8	detail	B
7	Spring 2016		Thursday 10:00	0.40	-26%	0.3	0.5	detail	C
8	Spring 2017	Wednesday 10:00	0.26	-36%	0.2	0.4	detail	C+
9	Spring 2018		Wednesday 10:00	0.18	-29%	0.1	0.3	detail
10	Summer 2019		Wednesday 10:00	0.13	-27%	0.1	0.2	detail

Historical-adjusted ratings by season:

Seas	Year	A18-49+	Label	Now19	y2y	Lo	Hi	Premiere	Finale
1	Winter 2010	19				10.66	32	32	14
2	Winter 2011	21				15.73	28	28	20
3	2011-12	29				23.17	34	30	33
4	Winter 2013	44				34.41	53	48	51
5	Winter 2014	33				21.87	54	54	22
6	Winter 2015	33				24.38	46	46	28
7	Spring 2016	28				23.35	37	37	26
8	Spring 2017	21				13.88	33	33	19
9	Spring 2018	17				12.78	26	26	14
10	Summer 2019	14				9.47	21	21	14
AVERAGE:		AVERAGE:	26

The War of 18-49 chronicles the ratings history of veteran primetime series. For more, see the Index.