ABC premiered its latest post-The Middle newbie Back in the Game to a 2.2 demo, down a few tenths from its 2.5 The Middle lead-in. This was a slightly better number than anything The Neighbors or Suburgatory ever did in the 8:30 half-hour last season (though The Neighbors' series premiere was at 9:30, so that may not be totally fair). It faced off against a fairly underwhelming set of competition, from The X Factor (2.7 at 8:30) to Survivor (2.4) to Revolution (1.8).
WEEK TWO
In week two, Back in the Game dropped 14% to a 1.9 rating. The gap barely widened with its The Middle lead-in, which fell 8% to 2.3 in week two. This left it at about where The Neighbors rated for most of last fall.
PROGNOSIS
This is the Mom pick all over again; modest premiere after an OK lead-in, and a normal or slightly less week two drop. So once again, it's pretty much a toss-up. In Mom's case, I said renewal because I saw its situation getting a little better once CBS cleaned things up on Monday. In Back in the Game's case, it's more about whether ABC will collapse on other frontiers - namely Tuesday and Super Fun Night. The Neighbors and Trophy Wife already look dead. The Goldbergs dropped into BitG territory this week with a much better lead-in (one that may still drop more)... and it's not like Goldbergs and BitG are mutually exclusive anyway. I'm fairly confident Back in the Game will at least get an episode extension and be in the conversation at season's end, so I'm gonna cross my fingers and say this ekes out a "slow but steady wins the race" Renew. If nothing else, it might be a decent option to take the post-Last Man Standing slot for a year while they get that show to syndication. I could see "The Tim Allen/James Caan Yelling Hour" being a better marketing angle than whatever they did to try to get people to watch The Neighbors on Friday.
"First Two Weeks" is an ongoing experiment to see how often a new scripted show's fate can be predicted by the very earliest data. Here are the picks and lineups for every show this season.
14 comments:
I agree with you especially because I agree with you that it can be thrown on fridays easily. I do think however that ABC was a bit overly ambitious with so many comedies. They should have stuck with the compatible goldbergs after the middle and trophy wife after mf. I get that they were trying to "replicate" wednesdays on tuesdays but it was too much to ask of those shows. Back in the game got somehow saved due to that IMO, but I think ABC would have been better served with another drama on tuesday such as big thunder that would have also been more compatible with shield. Anyway, enough rambling. Renew it is.
By the way and out of topic, will we get end of october best case/worst case for stuff like mike and molly, almost human, raising hope (wherever it airs), etc?
I think so, though I will probably wait as long as possible (likely November 4) just to make sure I catch everything and none of the current plans change.
That is very wise, yeah. Glad to hear it, thanks!
"The Tim Allen/James Caan Yelling Hour" ads might work, ABC might be able to reel in some New Girl fans that way.
If The Goldbergs and Trophy Wife were doing better, I could have seen Back in the Game moving at midseason to Fridays to replace The Neighbors. But with Goldbergs still not finding a bottom and Trophy Wife's 1.4 a weak bottom, I think Back in the Game will get to play out its season in one timeslot while Suburgatory could head to Tuesdays.
I say renew.
I'm getting a feeling that the entire Tuesday comedy block gets blown up again. If Super Fun Night can stay afloat they might have to keep some comedies on Tuesdays, but if it dies before 2014 then I think they can axe TW, SFN and The Neighbors, and keep all their comedies within three hours.
If the neighbors stops the bleeding at 1.0ish, I suspect they let it there until the end of the season and that it's not as easy of a cancellation as we are suspecting. I don't see how can they fit everything on wednesdays though. What they did last year and the year before was a terrible idea of airing comedies amidst repeats on wednesdays, they should know better. I say that unless it gets super ugly with SFN, which judging from its premiere it won't, they will let it roll, probably replacing trophy wife with suburgatory and then not giving a complete season to either super fun night or back in the game or the goldbergs and plugging in mixology
Ugh, I just think it's such an ABC thing to do to cram as many shows around The Middle and Modern Family as possible. I agree that The Neighbors will likely just live out on Friday (I don't see anything else they move there doing much better), and I think that the location of the rest of the comedies rests on how well SFN and The Goldbergs hold up.
Also, I have a really bad feeling that Mixology will get the ol' 'post Modern Family April premiere'. A very bad feeling.
SHIELD/Big Thunder/Killer Women would have been a very splashy All-New Super Tuesday. The back end of the one they actually did was horribly short on buzz, and it showed.
I agree that a Middle/Goldbergs/MF/TW lineup would have made sense (although SFN has done well enough so far to make me think they had half a point doing what they did with that - can't wait for that show's First Two Weeks post!).
I am not sold on Killer Women at all, I think it will be a big flop, so I wouldn't have gone for that exact lineup, but it would still be way better than what they had. That's the main issue I have with their tuesday. While the idea of an all new tuesday is awesome, the execution, apart from shield, was terrible, they just threw stuff together that made no sense being together (or being greenlighted in the first case as lucky 7). I am always puzzled with situations in which we ALL can agree that it will be a flop but the networks cannot see it and waste money on it! (We Are Men, Lucky 7, Betrayal, Welcome to the Family, Ironside, etc... We all called this! How come they didn't?!)
Yeah it's an ABC thing to do but I hate it, I hope they don't go for it!
I've said it before, Lucky 7 should have been done as a 7-ep limited series, because that would have fitted right in with the original format of the UK show it's based on, and been used as a quick fill-in wherever necessary. It does well enough for renewal? You renew it and do it again with a whole new syndicate (a bit like how American Horror Story has the self-contained seasons). Having a 7-ep show on the bench would have allowed ABC to quickly cancel their worst drama and have a clean fill-in to take them to the winter break. Instead, Lucky 7 is the one they had to cancel.
Personally, I actually like 10pm DWTS results shows on Tuesday now. They can plug those in real fast, they can't cost much, they'd outperform Scandal repeats, and dead-skewing DWTS is a better lead-in for the local news than it is for anything else.
Cancel. It will bleed out through November.
Looks like we both got the first wrong one of the season here!
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