First Two Weeks, Believe/Crisis

WEEK ONE Another NBC tandem on the same night gets combined into one post. Though Believe technically had a preview on Monday, March 10 (2.7), the official week one was the next Sunday, when Believe launched to 6.57 million viewers and a 1.5 demo rating. That was slightly ahead of its The Voice recap special lead-in (1.4). Then came Crisis, which surprisingly grew by another tick at 10/9c, posting 6.53 million viewers and a 1.6 demo rating. Not quite what I would call DOA, but close enough that the shows definitely needed to overachieve in the coming weeks.

WEEK TWO
They did not overachieve in week two, though they didn't really underachieve either. Believe was down 20% to a 1.2, while Crisis was down 19% to a 1.3. These are relatively typical drops, and Believe did trade out its Voice repeat lead-in for the even weaker American Dream Builders (0.9, and a 1.0 at 8:30).

PROGNOSIS
If they're still getting these exact ratings at the end of the season, it might be interesting. You could argue they're not really any weaker than Revolution and Parenthood right now, and NBC may want to renew something just to create the impression that this Sunday schedule was productive. However, the odds are against new shows in week two maintaining these levels to the end. I always say that if you're on the bubble after week two, you're most likely getting cancelled, and that theory has worked pretty well.

It might be nice to see if they benefit at all from The Walking Dead going away after next week. But I can't defer to week four, and the shows have skewed old enough (that is, far enough away from TWD) that I doubt it'll make a huge difference. The old skew doesn't exactly help the renewal prospects, either. Cancel and 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.