Other February True Power Rankings: ABC | CBS | NBC | Fox | CW
| The CW | True | A18-49 | Skew | y2y | Counted Eps | ||
| The Big Four | |||||||
| 1 | The Vampire Diaries | 1.18 | 1.06 | 58% | -15% | 5 | |
| 2 | Arrow | 1.02 | 1.00 | 45% | -11% | 5 | |
| 3 | Supernatural | 0.99 | 1.08 | 57% | +18% | 5 | |
| 4 | The Originals | 0.96 | 0.98 | 57% | 5 | ||
The CW's decision to mess with its Wednesday success and send Supernatural to Tuesday has worked out pretty splendidly. Will they apply the same principle to mess with Tuesday success, creating a separate night around each one of their top tier shows?
It's not as clear right now. One of their top new shows (if not the #1 new show) should end up on Monday night. They don't need to surrender Monday night anymore, and it will be disappointing if they do, but anchor newbies like Arrow and The Originals are not that easy to come by. Because it had so many familiar faces, The Originals was set up very well even by spin-off standards. So what happens with the Tuesday duo will probably come down to their confidence in that newbie on Monday. Do they actually have something that can not only lead off a night but lead into another new show, or even a low-end returnee like Reign? Or does it need the help of a reliable veteran like Supernatural?
| The CW | True | A18-49 | Skew | y2y | Counted Eps | ||
| The Race for Returnee #5 | |||||||
| 5 | Reign | 0.57 | 0.60 | 47% | 4 | ||
| 6 | The Tomorrow People | 0.49 | 0.54 | 46% | 5 | ||
It's funny how thoroughly this race had flipped around by November. If you read my October post, I was basically treating The Tomorrow People as the show that would of course keep its timeslot all season and Reign as the wild card. (Just replace "Reign" with "The Tomorrow People" in that post and it ended up being a pretty decent analysis!) There was no doubt from the scheduling decisions even prior to yesterday's renewal that Reign has the lead in this race. TTP is headed for what will be a tough situation on Monday alongside Star-Crossed, while Reign got early-renewed yesterday and keeps its slot for all of season one.
Should it have been such an obvious decision? The TTP contingent will note that the difference between the two is less than a tenth, while Reign has the much bigger lead-in. And Reign does not really have that much of an adults 18-34 advantage. But the True formula treats these timeslots as of identical difficulty, or even gives Reign the slightly tougher timeslot. (Though much of that is because of Reign's last ep against the Olympics.) TTP has more competition, especially since the beginning of the year with Idol on Wednesdays and no Grey's on Thursdays. But Reign makes that up due to lead-in compatibility, a tweak to the formula from last summer. While Arrow and The Tomorrow People are attached at the hip skew-wise, Reign and The Vampire Diaries have over a ten percentage point difference. This means that Reign's "effective lead-in" is actually about 0.3 points lower than TTP's, even though Reign's actual raw lead-in is slightly larger. You're free to call BS on that whole adjustment, but the formula says that the raw numbers difference is pretty representative of the real difference.
A less technical way of putting it: I'm in Reign's camp here because it's done a lot better than I expected. The Tomorrow People has what should have been its very best possible timeslot, and that shows in the skew similarity with Arrow. That it can only produce this volume of viewership despite great compatibility is a real disappointment. To go inverse of Frank Sinatra: if it can't make it there, it probably can't make it anywhere. Meanwhile, Reign indeed isn't that compatible with TVD, as many expected, but it still has more volume. So Reign wins. And TTP needs to overachieve in what should be a less compatible situation on Monday to join Reign in season two. Long shot.
They could renew another one of The Tomorrow People or upcoming Star-Crossed or The 100, but they don't need to. The important point is that only one will get on the fall Monday-Thursday schedule as the fifth returnee along with the usual three newbies. Reign is the leader in the clubhouse, and if it wins it could reasonably keep its post-TVD slot; since TVD is not that much bigger than the other potential launch pads, I'd opt for stability. But for all the Reign defending I've done, this is not that high a bar to clear. Most likely (or least unlikely) to knock it off is upcoming The 100 because it's got a good timeslot.
| The CW | True | A18-49 | Skew | y2y | Counted Eps | ||
| The Low-Priority Candidates | |||||||
| 7 | America's Next Top Model | 0.49 | 0.42 | 46% | -16% | 5 | |
| 8 | Hart of Dixie | 0.42 | 0.43 | 48% | -28% | 4 | |
| 9 | The Carrie Diaries | 0.40 | 0.34 | 48% | -32% | 5 | |
As I said in October, I'm not in the "Hart of Dixie is a lock simply because of syndication" camp. The fact that "bubble show" Reign was renewed early while "lock" Hart of Dixie was not should drive home the iffiness of looking at things this way. Alas, it will not.
That being said, as I also said in October, Hart of Dixie likely gets renewed even without that much help from syndie. The network renewed seven scripted shows last year (though two of them kinda combined as one renewal). Hart of Dixie will likely end up ahead of The Tomorrow People, putting it at #6. It's also the only real candidate for the CW's beloved "announced final season" tendency. If The 100 succeeds and they hold at six renewals because of Whose Line Is It Anyway? or something, we might be able to have a talk, but all that best-case stuff happening seems unlikely.
Just want to throw this out there: I do not agree with labeling The Carrie Diaries as "de facto cancelled." We're increasingly living in a world where broadcast has to mimic cable's shorter orders in the name of creative integrity. Networks are wising up to the fact that certain shows are built for first-run/streaming and certain shows are built to pile up the episodes and become traditional syndication monsters. 13 episodes and done in the fall does not mean it's over; just ask Sleepy Hollow. (And Sleepy Hollow's early renewal does not mean that you're dead unless you have an early renewal. Some decisions take more time.) The bear will probably get away with this one, but operating under this assumption means you could get burnt at some point.
Isn't this just semantics anyway? Well, I also want to throw this out there; TCD may have actually overachieved on Friday. Its target audience wasn't supposed to be home. I gave it a 0.27 average during Best Case/Worst Case season and it finished with a 0.31. (Despite my best efforts, most shows still end up on the negative side of the predictions, so the winners are noteworthy.) Though it's behind most of its peers in 18-49 strength, it stacks up better in those 18-34 adults that the network loves... Carrie has averaged 0.33 A18-34 on Friday over the last couple months, while Hart had a 0.34 on a Monday and The Tomorrow People has mostly hung 0.4's in recent episodes with an Arrow lead-in. It's difficult to really dig into the meaning of numbers this small, and it's important to note that the size of the local programming lead-ins are meaningful here (and unknown). But it seems closer to the pack than you might think if you've considered it "de facto cancelled" for the last few months.
Look, this is a long shot. The Tomorrow People and the other two newbies have got to totally bomb out, and then the CW has got to renew more shows than expected. But it just might find itself in the exact same situation as last year, when the CW had five clear scripted renewals, plus Carrie and a so-called "syndication lock." (Nikita last year, Hart this year.) And what if Hart of Dixie becomes a 90210-style debacle with significantly sub-Carrie numbers on Friday? Could it actually pull ahead of that show, maybe getting the larger order of the two?
I'll shut up now, because there's no way I can actually predict this happens. Needs way too much help. But it's not as far off the reservation as the conventional wisdom would dictate. Let's see how we stand in April.
| The CW | True | A18-49 | Skew | y2y | Counted Eps | ||
| The Dunzo | |||||||
| 10 | Beauty and the Beast | 0.35 | 0.33 | 50% | -54% | 4 | |
| 11 | Nikita | 0.26 | 0.20 | 36% | -32% | 2 | |
There were a few... let's go with "surprising" things in the EW bubble article. Here was one of them:
"Beauty and the Beast: Not quite dead yet. Has a shot at a short-order, if only because The CW likes to give their multi-year shows some final seasons."
If the CDub actually gives Beauty and the Beast an announced third and final season, I will be happy to admit I was wrong for putting it in the dunzo division.
