Dads was one of the season's worst-reviewed new shows, but that didn't stop a somewhat reasonable audience from showing up for the premiere. It averaged a 2.2 demo on pre-premiere Tuesday, though it faced virtually nothing: a rebroadcast of Iron Man 2 on ABC (1.0 in the 8:00 hour), CBS' NCIS repeat (1.4) and NBC's The Million Second Quiz (1.1). Though its newbie teammate Brooklyn Nine-Nine built by a few ticks at 8:30, Dads was not the weakest comedy of Fox's lineup. It did outrate weakling The Mindy Project (1.9).
WEEK TWO
In week two, the competition onslaught came. CBS got over two points stronger with the premiere of NCIS, and ABC/NBC each added over three points with their respective premieres of Agents of SHIELD and The Voice. And Dads took a huge tumble, dropping 32% to a 1.5. This time, it could only tie Mindy as the two-hour Fox block's weakest program.
PROGNOSIS
I feel pretty much the same way about this show as I did pre-season; that is, of the critically-savaged shows, this one may have the best chance to stick around longer than people think. Raising Hope or another newbie is not a clearly better option (yet), and it may have a chance to pick back up as the competition logjam dies down. I also still have an inkling it might end up getting tried on Sunday after Family Guy (Fox actually already did this with a pilot encore on pre-premiere Sunday). But while it might last the fall, making it all the way to season two seems like a stretch at this level. Cancel.
"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.
11 comments:
Agree with it, 100%. I think the show could last more episodes than we think and, as I've said upon reading your Best Case/Worst Case analysis, it does make sense that it would end up tried out on Sundays at some point. But I don't think it survives, so my verdict is also a cancel!
This is a case where I thought you'd defer for a week. Yes, the second week isn't great, but a 1.5 Dads against three shows that were mid-3's or greater isn't as bad than a 1.5 Mindy Project that has the best lead-in it could have and in a slightly easier timeslot. If Dads can keep steady or uptick this week (assuming SHIELD furor has died down somewhat), it bodes well for the show since the slot will get easier in future weeks with The Biggest Loser in place.
Cancel
In Best/Worst you said "no season two, but no early hook either," and that seems viable from here. Depends where it settles. More drops and it might indeed be gone after baseball.
This could definitely be another The Neighbors where I incorrectly say "Cancel" after a huge drop that was exaggerated by the conditions. But what I always ask myself on the deferrals is "Is there a reasonable range of results that could lead me in both directions?" I'm not sure I could actually pull the trigger on "Renew" here even if it gets a 1.5/1.6 tonight. If it manages to go 1.7+, I may be regretting it!
I think if there is one thing that will end up saving Dads (and Mindy for the record) is the 18-34, which I am convinced FOX uses more than the 18-49 that we discuss here. It may be worth noting that FOX (at least in prelims) actually BEAT CBS in this demo group last Tuesday. This got absolutely no attention in any ratings site that I frequent but I think it should. This is the factor that gave the mindy project such a safe (as in early, far away from any bubble) renewal last year and it is also likely to be the factor that makes fox keen on renewing glee for two years when we all don't understand it. It would also explain sending bones to fridays. I think it is worth letting it sink in that FOX weak line-up as we see it BEAT the NCIS twins and POI in this demo last week. Last year we saw when the ad estimates came out how much New Girl was "overrated" - it was priced even higher than TBBT! Part of that was due to its early inflated numbers from season 1, yes, but I believe most of it was due to the 18-34 which FOX is selling the shows based on. If that's the case, all bets are off here and we can't predict what FOX will do with its comedies until actually seeing these demos.
I completely agree with the principle here and have written about it before.
I do believe that in lieu of the actual 18-34 numbers, looking at the 18-49 skew is a pretty decent way of projecting those. Looking at the skew, it is evident why New Girl/Mindy seem stronger than their 18-49 numbers suggest; they skew like 65% 18-49, which is incredible.
Dads is more like 50%... still very good for a primetime program but not THAT far ahead of other Fox shows (X Factor and Sleepy Hollow are low-mid 40's, Glee upper 40's). So I'm not sold it's young-skewing enough to make up a large 18-49 gap the way Mindy seems to be able to.
Somebody needs to take 'em out back and play "Here Comes The Boom". And then the woodshed explodes and the show gets impaled on a convenient piece of shrapnel.
(whoops, slipped into my "crazy man" persona for a minute. Oh, well, no point in aborting now...)
Thanks for the answer. I actually (and this is dumb) didn't check the skews before commenting, I was just making a general remark. Your argument makes total sense. I still believe that Dads will be cancelled, I was just saying that if anything could save, that would be it. But your numbers clearly show that is unlikely to be enough, so yeah, still cancelled!
It certainly explains the Mindy renewal, not to mention the all-out effort (post-SB episode!) for New Girl when everyone else thinks it's a textbook four-year flameout. NG might be one of the top shows on television in the CW demo, and there will be specific advertisers who'll pay a heck of a premium for that ...
I have to say that I don't understand why we don't see 18-34 ratings anymore, at least on TVBTN
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