- FINALS UPDATE: The Mentalist (1.4) and American Idol (3.0) adjusted up; meanwhile, the new lows for Black-ish (1.9) and The Mysteries of Laura (1.0) got even lower.
- What seemed like a great moment last Wednesday now has the makings of something truly special. Fox's Empire (4.0) followed up a sensational premiere rating by actually building in week two. It's still early, but the opening returns make this look like nothing short of the biggest broadcast drama breakout in years. Could it actually be a Desperate Housewives-sized situation in the making? Stay tuned. The show saw its American Idol lead-in (2.9) slightly decrease week-to-week; Idol was down 28% year-to-year.
- ABC had a little more trouble with a strengthened Fox; ABC saw slight declines for The Middle (2.2), The Goldbergs (2.3), and the 9/8c hour got increasingly worrisome with Modern Family (3.0) and Black-ish (2.0).
- CBS crime dramas The Mentalist (1.3), Criminal Minds (2.2) and Stalker (1.5) were all back at fairly normal levels. That helped take a chunk out of NBC, where The Mysteries of Laura (1.1) hit a new low, Law and Order: SVU (1.4) tied its season low from December, and Chicago PD (1.5) inched down but tied for the lead at 10/9c.
FULL TABLE:
| Info | Show | Timeslot | True | |||||||
| A18-49 | Skew | Last | LeLa | Rank | y2y | TLa | Ty2y | |||
| The Middle | 2.2 | 36% | -4% | -0.1 | n/a | 2/11 | +22% | -4% | +22% | 2.1 |
| The Goldbergs | 2.3 | 40% | -8% | -0.2 | -0.1 | 4/11 | +28% | -8% | +44% | 2.2 |
| Modern Family | 3.0 | 40% | -6% | -0.2 | -0.2 | 11/12 | -6% | -6% | -6% | 2.8 |
| Black-ish | 1.9 | 37% | -10% | -0.2 | -0.2 | 12/12 | n/a | -10% | +27% | 1.7 |
| Forever (R) | 0.7 | 27% | -18% | -46% | 0.9 | |||||
| ABC: | -8% | +1% | ||||||||
| The Mentalist | 1.4 | 19% | +8% | +0.1 | n/a | 2/7 | n/a | +8% | +22% | 1.4 |
| Criminal Minds | 2.2 | 27% | +5% | +0.1 | -1.0 | 8/11 | -8% | +22% | -10% | 2.4 |
| Stalker | 1.5 | 24% | +7% | +0.1 | +0.1 | 8/12 | n/a | -21% | -25% | 1.5 |
| CBS: | +2% | -9% | ||||||||
| The Mysteries of Laura | 1.0 | 21% | -23% | -0.3 | n/a | 12/12 | n/a | -20% | -23% | 1.1 |
| Law and Order: SVU | 1.4 | 27% | -18% | -0.3 | -0.3 | 10/11 | +0% | -18% | -3% | 1.7 |
| Chicago PD | 1.5 | 28% | -6% | -0.1 | -0.3 | 6/11 | +0% | -9% | +3% | 1.7 |
| NBC: | -15% | -7% | ||||||||
| American Idol Wed | 3.0 | 35% | -6% | -0.2 | n/a | 2/2 | -36% | -5% | -32% | 2.8 |
| Empire | 4.0 | 49% | +5% | +0.2 | -0.2 | 1/2 | n/a | +5% | -19% | 3.8 |
| Fox: | +1% | -25% | ||||||||
| Arrow (R) | 0.2 | 32% | -20% | -79% | 0.2 | |||||
| The Flash (R) | 0.2 | 26% | -43% | -64% | 0.3 | |||||
| CW: | -33% | -73% | ||||||||
| Big5: | -5% | -19% | ||||||||
KEY (click to expand)
A18-49 - Adults 18-49 rating. Percentage of US TV-owning adults 18-49 watching the program.
Skew - Percentage of adults 18-49 within the show's total viewership.
Last - A18-49 difference (percent and numerical) from the show's previous episode.
LeLa - A18-49 difference between the show's lead-in and its lead-in for the previous episode.
Rank - The A18-49 rating's rank among the show's episodes so far this season.
y2y - Percent difference between A18-49 and the show's rating a year ago.
TLa - Percent difference between A18-49 and the network's rating in the timeslot one week ago.
Ty2y - Percent difference between A18-49 and the network's rating in the timeslot one year ago.
True - A metric that adjusts the A18-49 rating for overall viewing levels, competition and lead-in. PRELIMINARY CALCULATION. For finals, see SpotVault.
(R) - Repeat.
Much more detail on these numbers at the New Daily Spotted Ratings page.
Skew - Percentage of adults 18-49 within the show's total viewership.
Last - A18-49 difference (percent and numerical) from the show's previous episode.
LeLa - A18-49 difference between the show's lead-in and its lead-in for the previous episode.
Rank - The A18-49 rating's rank among the show's episodes so far this season.
y2y - Percent difference between A18-49 and the show's rating a year ago.
TLa - Percent difference between A18-49 and the network's rating in the timeslot one week ago.
Ty2y - Percent difference between A18-49 and the network's rating in the timeslot one year ago.
True - A metric that adjusts the A18-49 rating for overall viewing levels, competition and lead-in. PRELIMINARY CALCULATION. For finals, see SpotVault.
(R) - Repeat.
Much more detail on these numbers at the New Daily Spotted Ratings page.
More Spotted Ratings in the Index.
51 comments:
Just wow at Empire.
MF is still OK but Blackish hitting a new series low is not good. Looks like Blackish is the one hurting it badly. Middle with the lowest drop from last week among the comedies
After seeing premiere half-hours, I was optimistic about Empire holding well in next episodes. But this? Holly Molly, it actually could stay above 3.0 for all of episodes (13, I think).
And if I'm not missing something, Empire is a lock for Wednesday 8 PM timeslot next fall. Why 8 PM is obvious - to be good lead-in for some show. And Wednesday is only logical day: Monday has Gotham, on Tuesday it would be wasted on mediocre rated comedy block, and there's no reason Fox would put it on Thursday against so strong TGIT.
Empire is legit.
Black-ish is going from biggest comedy hit to disappointment quickly, Empire has hit it hard. CBS got no january bounce for wednesdays, the only night featuring a legit contender for now.
How much does Laura being a renewal contender tell us about NBC?
Not including today, Modern Family is at 3.38 A18-49, and Black-ish at 2.53, which is great retention of 75%.
What do you expect, 100% retention out of 2nd strongest comedy across all networks?
Holy shit. Did anyone see this coming? But it's a shame seeing Modern Family and Blackish getting hurt.
To be megahit drama in Plus, Empire needs to do a 3.3 in Plus for the next 11 episodes. Seems possible, so fingers crossed.
SVU's numbers are worrying me. I'm happy for Empire but if it's the reason SVU gets to cancellation territory I'll be very unhappy
If FOX doesn't insist on a 22 episode season 2 (like they did when expanding formerly limited Gotham), they're shooting themselves in their own foot. A shorter summer hiatus with lots of summer repeats is what the doctor ordered
Fox better not be so dumb as to make Empire a limited-series show. This needs to be a full-season, 22+ episode show in 2015-2016. And a move to 8:00 makes sense: the lead-in power would be great for a new show and the 8:00 hour is very meh overall so Fox could run over the networks. I wonder if we could see Empire/American Idol next season.
It seems Empire is "robbing" crossoverish Black-ish for 3 tenths, at least. Modern Family, i would say 3 tenths at most.
They'll weather it out, there's only 10-11 weeks more of Empire, and comedies will be in repeats some weeks, plus Black-ish is preempted for Fresh off the Boat one week. All in all, it should hurt both shows' season average by only about a tenth.
But real problem comes next season. If Empire remains big hit, it will hurt ABC Wed 8 PM block for entire season. And if lead-out (Scream Queens or whatever) will be strong too, entire ABC Wednesday lineup could suffer unusual big drops.
I had the same thought re: Empire | Scream Queens next Fall. The only other possibility would be Scream Queens | New Girl | The Mindy Project, but that doesn't fix Tuesday's problem and just creates a new one since it's a Fall-only show.
As for Thursday, I wouldn't be surprised to see them go Reality Show | Sleepy Hollow. If they could get longer runs out of MasterChef Junior then that's an idea. Other than Tuesdays at 8:00, Fox doesn't have a weekday slot for a reality show since Gotham and Empire should be leading into scripted shows; going 100% scripted in the Fall would be out of character for the network.
Given that Empire is still in production, I wonder if it's possible for Fox to expand its order for this season.
Big question is what Black-ish can maintain going forward now Empire is in the mix.
When was the last broadcast drama megahit, Spot?
Possibility for Thursday: Empire reruns until the World Series, then MasterChef Jr. through late fall, Thursday Idol in the winter and MasterChef Jr. again in the spring.
Empire's audience won't watch Scream Queens. Fox needs another diverse drama or comedy to pair with Empire so that they can have their own "Scandal/HTGAWM" pairing.
Scream Queens should be paired with the Tuesday comedies.
I'm hoping NBC has the decency to at least give SVU a farewell season as they've done for Parenthood and P&R.
Grey's (218) and House (215) in 2007-08.
Yes, Empire / Scream Queens is most logical at this moment.
Simply because Scream Queens looks like their most promising new show. If situation would change in period until upfront... then they would simply put that other high-profile drama at Wed 9 PM, and Scream Queens gets Tuesday 8 PM.
Here I exclude genre shows (and God knows they have a ton of those in development: Minority Report, Global Frequency, Lucifer...) Most promising out of that pack should go to Monday 9 PM. While most promising "not-genre" should get Wed 9 PM.
I would have both Thursday 8 PM and Friday 8 PM reality: Masterchef Junior and a new show. If that new show would be high expectations show, then it would go to Thursday, with McJ on Friday ((premiere in November because of baseball).
And if new reality is some low priority show it goes to Friday, with McJ Thursday (in September already, there's no baseball on Thursdays).
Empire's predominately black audience won't watch Scream Queens. That would be a bad pairing.
It is what is. Bad luck, Empire hurts Black-ish. Silver lining being it's for only around 8 of 24 episode. So it will merely cause season average won't be around 2.30, but 2.20 instead. Still 130 in A18-49+ , still a hit.
And this actually helps ABC schedulers. Now they know they can't put Black-ish against Empire, so now there's only two options left
for next fall:
1. Black-Ish stays at Wednesday 9:30 PM.
2. It goes to Tue 8 PM if ABC wants to launch new show out of MF.
It shouldn't be that much of a problem, it's at least in the low to mid 1 range so a possible final season would at least be reasonable.
I never heard of a broadcast show with predominately black audience. Would you care to provide link where someone claims Empire is the first ever broadcast show with over 50% Afroamerican audience?
I did read that Scandal and How To Get Away with Murder viewership consists of 30% to 40% Afroamericans. But those are only two cases in recent broadcast history. Maybe Cosby Show had higher percentage, or some UPN comedies,
In any case, I really don't see why would Empire audience specifically reject Scream Queens. I mean, more than any other Fox current / in development drama. I do think Fox should have their most promising new drama leading out of Empire next fall.
And just like that the megahit broadcast drama has returned :)
I agree... If TMP gets renewed I can see Scream Queens being paired with NG/TMP
Fox hasn't released data for Empire's demographics that I know of, but regardless of that the show was targeted at African American audiences from the beginning.
Aside from demographics, Empire and Scream Queens are completely incompatible with each other. Empire is a dark serious soap opera. Scream Queens is supposed to be a lighthearted dramedy. That's another reason why I doubt Empire would be a good lead in for Scream Queens.
Thanks
.
In the meantime I googled it, and one site says Episode premiere episode was 57% Afroamericans (total viewers, but A18-49 is surely similar percentage).
Wow, I owe you thousands apologies. If it's true, and probably it is.
They will renew The Mindy Project. Only question is if it stays on Tuesday, or it gets Raising Hope treatment - quick Friday burn off of show's final season. Probably it mostly depends on if they need TPM timeslot for trying new show, or not.
At this point, though, that 2.53 is front-loaded. In the "what have done for me lately" department, Black-ish is starting to lose steam.
That being said, I do think there are many who expect Black-ish to do just that. I have only one word to describe these people.
It's still too soon to say since I haven't seen an official press release from Fox on Empire's demo skew, but even so, a 57% African American viewership would be extremely high.
Fox needs to go back to the drawing board and develop another African American program to pair with Empire, if they really want to use Empire to launch another hit.
I think you have more to fear from Criminal Meyends than Empire.
What if they don't watch anything? What if Empire is one of those shows where people watch it and then turn off the TV to go talk about it? (I know that usually the bag of sci-fi and not a show such as this, but still...)
Probably not, because midseason dramas usually start production of the post-pilot episodes later in the year but still end at the same time as fall dramas for contractual reasons.
If Fox has a new female-leaning sitcom in development, I'd rather bump New Girl to Tuesday at 9:30 and bump TMP to Fridays. There's more upside to launching as an anchor than being weighed down by New Girl's overall weakness, especially if Fox chooses to put Scream Queens on Tuesdays.
Empire related tweets were trending globally on Twitter during and after the show.
But IMO another African American targeted show would hold Empire viewers regardless of social media. Fox needs to make Wednesday an event night for the African American community with two programs.
That's precisely what ABC did with Scandal and HTGAWM and it's a successful night of television.
I get the logic: if CBS has Thursday Night Football it and ABC have the night's audience pretty much on lock. But this may be a moot point anyway; the MLB is probably going to stick with its strategy of avoiding the NFL by making Mondays and Thursdays the travel days.
I would like I can say you're overreacting a bit. But I can't, because you're overreacting a lot.
So what if Black-ish isn't around 2.5 anymore? At 2.0 it's still a hit, it only isn't a big hit. And it's actually impressive against the biggest drama launch since Desperate Housewives. More so as it's a highly overlapping one, so Black-ish probably will recover when there will be no more Empire in its timeslot.
Yeah, of course. But it's really too early to tell anything, because there's so many moving pieces.
Zooey Deschanel is pregnant. Does that mean New Girl will have shorter order and/or will not premiere in September?
Will they add one more comedy block Mon-Thu? They absolutely should... if they can find a good timeslot for it. But they have no timeslot for it, let alone a good one. Then again, Fox schedulers are always creative.
Bordertown is pushed to fall. Does that gives them enough time to produce more than initially ordered 13 episodes?
All in all, I'm refusing to guess what exactly Fox will do with comedies next fall. That is, until they will pick new series in May. Number of picked pilots, and female/male-leaning distribution among those will tell us a lot.
Charmed and Angel were definitely the unsung/under-appreciated shows in this earlier part of the Plus era, improving the timeslot performance of whatever shows they replaced. The treatment of the shows kinda bares that out: Angel got unceremoniously axed after asking for a early 6th season pickup in February 2004 while Charmed's final few renewals came down to the wire.
Given how poorly Fridays have become for The CW, I'm a little surprised that they haven't made a run at getting something like Smackdown back. More of its programming now would be receptive to the wrestling's show audience (The Flash, Arrow, The 100) than the rich girl teen soaps of the Ostroff era. And The CW could take its Friday night programming (Whose Line, ANTM, Masters of Illusion, etc.) and instead deploy it over the summer as part of the year-round mantra they've been trumpeting. However, I'm guessing the licensing fee would be too high.
Ratings wise it would probably do great, but the CW is not all about first run. I think that's why they rerun Whose Line to death because it doesn't get any of those syndication/international sales for its first run ratings. I do wish they'd take a chance on it.
Fox was clearly as down on their comedy development as CBS if Mulaney was considered the cream of the crop and everything else got bumped to midseason with 6-13 episode orders only.
A Wednesday comedy block could come to pass if Fox wants to take the if-it-ain't-broke philosophy and leaves Empire at 9:00. I just don't want to see Empire leading into sitcoms next season no matter how they are to match the drama's demographic skew.
Maybe I wasn't clear. No Wednesday comedy block against ABC, absolutely no. But Thursday 9 PM against the weakest CBS block is a possibility. And Tuesday 8 PM is too.
So, no good options, only less bad and more bad.
On the other hand, to have Bordertown as only new comedy next fall is also not an option. Because New Girl will not suddenly be a hit again, even less Mindy and B99 that never were hits. They can not just stand and watch those ending after reaching 88 episodes (OK, New Girl after more than 88), they need to try and find some replacements in time.
Charmed is one of my all-time favourite shows so I am so glad it did better than I thought for the network.
The improvement that Smackdown would bring to Fridays would probably help in the upcoming negotiations with CW affiliates. The Tribute and Sinclair Broadcasting Group 10 year deals are up in 2016, and they reach the largest and/or most media markets for The CW. Having a growing network helps keep them in the fold.
What they really need is for the Flash to not fall apart, but I agree. They should grap up the rights. I'm sure it would be just as useful to them as say Sych
Saturday Night = Reign and Beauty and the Beast burnoff syndication theatre!
Probably you're joking, because he was very clear: "no immediate plans to expand."
But, summer may very well be Reign's neyt destination. And make no mistake, Jane the Virgin and The 100 are in the same boat, all 3 are in same tier regarding ratings. Whichever drops most in ratings, we'll be dumped to summer (unless this midseason / next fall rookies would do even worse).
Because with 8 renewed dramas + maybe iZombie + they will pick 3 or 4 new series among pilots, something is destined to air in summer next season. Relative ratings (among not big 5 shows) will tell whether entirely (like BatB this year) or partially (like iZombie / The Messengers).
I could see a degree of viability in doing that, although TGIT's success has also relied on the network hyping up the producer.
I did also say I found anyone who expected the 100% hold from MF to be insane, though. Or did you not play the music video I embedded?
And the concern is in the longer-term, whether or not it could hold up long enough to make it to syndication, or whether it flames out in 2.5 seasons like Suburgatory did. I certainly believe that a low 2 is going to get Black-ish renewed, especially if it can keep that number up through the spring as ratings slip. (in fact, a high 1 in the spring could probably get it renewed)
I figured a low 3 for this episode, which I would've still argued for as a win. This - well, I'm not sure what Reilly was smoking the day he picked this up, since that's the only explanation for him actually producing a hit TV show.
It was a joke, but I think that those dramas have so little first run income potential that a Saturday or summer quarantine (or Saturdays in Summer!) would be the best place for them.
LOL, yes. CW doing direct-to-DVD series. Only nowadays it's like direct-to-Netflix.
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