Other February True Power Rankings: ABC | CBS | NBC | Fox | CW
| Fox Comedies | True | A18-49 | Skew | y2y | Counted Eps | ||
| The Animated Anchors | |||||||
| 1 | Family Guy | 2.69 | 2.70 | 63% | -14% | 4 | |
| 2 | The Simpsons | 2.34 | 3.00 | 57% | -7% | 4 | |
If there was a big winner in terms of Super Bowl promotional volume, it was definitely Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, the upcoming Seth MacFarlane non-fiction production. It'll push Family Guy out of the 9:00 slot on a regular basis for the first time since 2005. The Sunday 9/8c hour is going to be pretty crazy this spring, with relatively important newbies on ABC, NBC and Fox as well as the cable logjam. Will there be any winners here?
| Fox Comedies | True | A18-49 | Skew | y2y | Counted Eps | ||
| The Second Tier | |||||||
| 3 | American Dad! | 2.03 | 2.18 | 62% | -11% | 4 | |
| 4 | New Girl | 1.76 | 1.72 | 65% | -19% | 5 | |
| 5 | Bob's Burgers | 1.75 | 2.20 | 59% | -8% | 4 | |
| 6 | Brooklyn Nine-Nine | 1.56 | 1.56 | 54% | 5 | ||
I've been saying this for over a year: American Dad! has emerged as the clear strongest show out of Fox's second tier animation (at the time, this also included The Cleveland Show), and Fox could very well end up really missing it. The economics and logistics of animated shows are too tangled for us outsiders to comprehend fully, and that's probably what is sending it off to TBS next season. But I'd still want it on my schedule. Shrug.
A note on Brooklyn Nine-Nine: it's disappointed in its move to 9:30, I guess. But was it much of a timeslot upgrade, or really any of an upgrade? As a lead-in, New Girl only has two or three ticks on Dads in raw 18-49, and Brooklyn was actually a closer match with Dads from a skew standpoint than it is with ultra-young New Girl. This move won't suddenly get Nine-Nine killed after 15 episodes of respectable work at 8:30. The network has too much invested in it at this point. But unless Glee does OK on Tuesday and injects a little life back into New Girl, this midseason shuffle will end up looking pretty pointless.
| Fox Comedies | True | A18-49 | Skew | y2y | Counted Eps | ||
| The Tuesday Blues | |||||||
| 7 | Dads | 1.33 | 1.43 | 50% | 6 | ||
| 8 | The Mindy Project | 1.32 | 1.30 | 64% | -15% | 5 | |
Their adults 18-49 strength is roughly equivalent, but these two shows are clearly in different realms. We can argue about whether Fox should consider bringing Dads back. It's not really the bomb that it could've been, and getting into the multi-camera game for anyone not named CBS has been a real struggle. But it doesn't have that much of a leg to stand on ratings-wise. Low-1's are still low-1's. And from a "what will happen" standpoint, the tea leaves (namely its order getting cut) aren't in its favor.
The Mindy Project is obviously ahead of Dads on the totem pole because it skews so much younger. That makes a real difference in ad dollars, where this show (like New Girl) overachieves its adult 18-49 rating more than almost anything. But does that make enough of a difference to overcome another season of poor 18-49 ratings? I say it likely does make enough difference... to get it renewed as a midseason backup plan. Though I'm not that big a fan of exactly how Fox is scheduling this spring, the general idea of trying to do better at 9:30 while having Mindy still in reserve is sound. Stick with that, but leave less compatible Brooklyn Nine-Nine in the first hour of the night. And if Surviving Jack doesn't work out, it'd be a stretch to bring just two returning comedies into next season alongside all the newbies the network is ordering.
| Fox Comedies | True | A18-49 | Skew | y2y | Counted Eps | ||
| The Friday Fails | |||||||
| 9 | Enlisted | 1.01 | 0.75 | 39% | 2 | ||
| 10 | Raising Hope | 0.92 | 0.70 | 41% | -57% | 5 | |
Thrown away on Friday, Enlisted's True average actually outrates the last couple episodes of Rake. Speaking of which, that Rake hour may be coming open soon. Airing Surviving Jack after Idol seems like an idea they should stick with, but I'm not sure Fox will have the restraint to actually reduce the Idol results show to 30 minutes. Could this open the door to Enlisted taking the 9:30 slot? I don't necessarily think it's shown enough on Friday to "merit" it, but I'd rather take a flier on that over just airing repeats of something at 9:30.
| Fox Dramas | True | A18-49 | Skew | y2y | Counted Eps | ||
| The Only Definite | |||||||
| 1 | Sleepy Hollow | 2.17 | 2.24 | 44% | 5 | ||
This will be back on Monday at 9/8c in the fall. That seems like a pretty good bet, maybe the only pretty good bet out of the Fox drama department. Let's hope this "limited series" brings more interest back for season two than The Following has.
| Fox Dramas | True | A18-49 | Skew | y2y | Counted Eps | ||
| The Question Marks | |||||||
| 2 | The Following | 1.82 | 1.90 | 46% | -12% | 1 | |
| 3 | Bones | 1.81 | 1.62 | 34% | -16% | 5 | |
| 4 | Almost Human | 1.80 | 1.90 | 39% | 3 | ||
| 5 | Glee | 1.33 | 1.13 | 46% | -33% | 3 | |
Let's get the easy ones over with. Back when Glee got renewed for two seasons late in the 2012-13 season, I was thinking Fox was more likely to give it only one more (quite possibly shortened) season. It wasn't that hard to see at the time of the two-season renewal that things could easily get very awkward, and that appears to be where we're at heading into 2014-15. The show's 1.33 average at present may well come up somewhat on Tuesday, because two of the eps counted in this average were 1) Thanksgiving and 2) against The Sound of Music Live! These events may hurt this show more than the rigid formula accounts for. But even looking at it very optimistically, it has bubble ratings. And it can really only get worse at this point. The fact that Fox may have to cancel something like Almost Human to make room for what is effectively an expensive, low-rated mini-series is frankly kind of nauseating.
The other easy one is recently renewed Bones. Fox finally pulled the trigger on the Friday move and had some pretty legitimate success with it after a slow start. But now it's Monday-bound again, in what seems much less about Bones and much more about a desperation move to help out The Following. I don't know where Bones goes next year, but this year reaffirmed what has long been obvious: it can work in any situation. It's a question mark, but in a good way. (I also think it should be a bit higher than the other two dramas, so maybe it should get a little bit more credit for being on Friday.)
That leaves the current Monday pair. Both launched after the NFL with a good deal of fanfare. But in Almost Human's case, the fanfare disappeared fast. Just idly speculating here, but it doesn't seem that far-fetched that Fox pretty much gave up on this show after week four. It dropped multiple ticks for a third straight episode, hitting a 1.7 on December 2. The promotion seemed to fall off and the scheduling created a pair of three-week hiatuses. There was no back-order. In a world where shorter orders are becoming more commonplace, none of these things are a total smoking gun with respect to the show's fate. You could conceivably fanwank it all away and say the show's still getting renewed easily. But where there's this much scheduling/promotional smoke, there's likely a fire: Almost Human is on death's door.
And yet, the show has hung in the upper 1's. I don't buy that this is some huge upset that Fox could have never seen coming. Shows are usually settled by their second month, and Monday night in January is an easier situation than Monday in December; there's at least as much overall viewing, minus football and minus The Voice. The True scores have been remarkably consistent since early December. Perhaps that's a bit of an overachievement once you account for reduced promotion, but there's at least something to it.
The ratings merit appears to be there, so is this another Terra Nova situation where the costs were simply so overwhelming that the show had to be a bonafide hit? Though there weren't the widespread reports of that kind of situation coming in, it's possible, but I'd be surprised if the situation were as extreme. And here's the thing: from a pure ratings standpoint, an Almost Human cancellation would actually be even more of a reach than Terra Nova. Terra Nova had a 105 A18-49+, while Almost Human (projecting a 1.6 for the last three episodes) figures to settle at almost exactly the league average (100). But the difference is that Fox was a drastically stronger network in 2011-12 than in 2013-14. Their network average for originals was 119; The X Factor was looking like a long term player, American Idol was still a megahit only beginning to come out of its prime, and Glee and New Girl were still legitimate hits on Tuesday. In 2013-14, the network's originals will struggle to break the league average (100) even with football inflations. The X Factor is dead and Tuesday night is a dumpster fire. Terra Nova, while a slightly bigger player, was still a decidedly below average Fox show; Almost Human is roughly an average Fox show. Average usually means easy peasy renewal.
Meanwhile, despite a second pricey NFL injection (multiple lengthy Super Bowl promos), The Following has found no separation. In the two weeks since the Bowl, the shows tied once on February 3, then The Following had a single tick advantage on February 10. Still need more data on this show, but if The Following finds itself in the mid-1's by the second half of the season, renewing it (a serial that's basically all downside projecting forward) and cancelling Almost Human will look pretty egregious.
| Fox Dramas | True | A18-49 | Skew | y2y | Counted Eps | ||
| The Dunzo | |||||||
| 6 | Rake | 0.87 | 1.10 | 32% | 1 | ||
Just to reiterate: please don't continue airing this show on Thursday after the Olympics, Fox!
| Fox Unscripted | True | A18-49 | Skew | y2y | Counted Eps | |
| 1 | American Idol Wed | 3.53 | 3.85 | 38% | -24% | 2 |
| 2 | American Idol Thu | 3.49 | 3.15 | 36% | -30% | 2 |
| 3 | MasterChef Junior | 1.51 | 1.35 | 44% | 2 | |
| 4 | The X Factor Wed | 1.46 | 1.43 | 39% | -38% | 4 |
| 5 | The X Factor Thu | 1.40 | 1.28 | 37% | -42% | 4 |
The X Factor is gone. It creates a big scheduling hole, but this had to happen. It was only remotely justifiable if you could be absolutely certain the show would at least totally stop the bleeding. There was absolutely no way to be absolutely certain about that.
How much does it help the fate of Your Favorite Bubble Show? Unless you actually thought it was coming back, none! :-P But seriously, I'm pretty sure at least two of these hours will be filled with more unscripted (with newbie Utopia seemingly eying that real estate). So it's either one hour or no hours.
