Cablemetrics: Fear the Walking Dead, The Detour, Outlander, Dice

These numbers are current through Monday, April 11.

WHAT MATTERS:

• The Walking Dead universe showed at least a little mortality as Fear the Walking Dead opened season two with a 3.08 in the 9/8c hour. It's still a massive number (would qualify as a megahit by A18-49+ standards), but down 38% from its series premiere late last summer, and 0.23 points behind its previous series low.
• Another interesting note about FTWD is the fact that the Fear edition of after-show Talking Dead had relatively bad retention: its 1.05 rating was just 35% of the Fear rating. Compare this to the most recent spring episodes of the Walking Dead mothership: Talking Dead averaged 40% retention, did much better than that (46%/44%) for the premiere and finale respectively, and never did worse than 37%. I'm probably reading too much into this, but it seems like a potential red flag for the engagement level in the show. We'll see if it improves going forward.

• TBS opened new comedy The Detour with a 0.52 at 9:00, dropping to 0.46 at 9:30. Though far from amazing, it has to be considered one of the more promising recent ratings for a TBS original, crushing what Angie Tribeca had been doing leading out of American Dad! and also beating where Clipped premiered last summer (0.42).

• A growth story worth watching on cable is Starz' Outlander, which opened season two with a new series high 0.39 and was 44% above the Season 1B premiere last year. At least so far, it's not exactly a success story on the level of fellow Starz series Power, which surged into the 0.5-0.6 range last summer, but it's another promising one to be sure.

• Showtime began its transition to the late spring, mixing the finale of Billions (0.32) with its comedy block of veteran House of Lies (0.17) and weak newbie Dice (0.11).

• Syfy also had a transitional Monday, wrapping up The Magicians (0.27) on the same night that it premiered newbie Hunters (0.16). Even on Syfy, a network that has been struggling to get any real scripted traction, 0.16 is a pretty bad premiere number: less than half of where The Expanse (0.33) and The Magicians (0.39/0.41) started, and even below most of the Friday filler like Dark Matter (0.31), Killjoys (0.26) and recently introduced Wynonna Earp (0.20).

• It was mostly an upswing week for the broadcasters, and there were some nice upticks on cable as well: WGN's Outsiders (0.32) and Underground (0.34) each hit their best ratings since the series premieres. And The Americans was up to a season high 0.32 on FX... as I said a couple weeks ago, this show usually falls hugely post-premiere, so that kind of number helps cut into its year-to-year deficit big-time.

FULL TABLE:

Name	Net	Ep	A18-49	Last	Seas	Avg	y2y	Proj	ProjPlus	Skew	Male
Fear the Walking Dead	AMC	1	3.08		2	3.08	-38%	2.43	164	59%
American Crime Story	FX	10	1.34	+21%	1	1.33		1.33	90	51%	50%
Talking Dead: Fear	AMC	1	1.05		1	1.05		0.78	53	57%
Better Call Saul	AMC	9	0.82	+1%	2	0.90	-44%	0.87	59	53%	67%
Vikings	HIST	8	0.66	-4%	4	0.67	-16%	0.68	46	39%	58%
Bates Motel	A&E	5	0.58	+2%	4	0.60	-25%	0.55	37	51%	39%
American Dad!	FOX	11	0.59	+5%	11	0.56	-7%	0.55	37	68%
The Detour	TBS	2	0.49	-6%	1	0.49		0.43	29	56%
Archer	FX	2	0.41	-24%	7	0.47	-25%	0.41	28	66%	67%
Shadowhunters	FREE	13	0.30	-6%	1	0.41		0.41	28	54%	30%
Outlander	STRZ	1	0.39		3	0.39	+44%	0.38	26	34%
Broad City	COME	8	0.34	-6%	1	0.37		0.36	25	75%
Awkward	MTV	16	0.28	+12%	3	0.35	-31%	0.35	24	66%	27%
Billions	SHOW	12	0.32	-3%	1	0.33		0.33	22	40%	60%
Underground	WGNA	5	0.34	+17%	1	0.31		0.31	21	37%	40%
The Magicians	SYFY	13	0.27	-4%	1	0.30		0.30	20	49%
Outsiders	WGNA	11	0.32	+19%	1	0.28		0.29	20	45%	56%
The Americans	FX	4	0.32	+33%	4	0.28	-25%	0.23	16	37%	58%
Young and Hungry	FREE	10	0.27	+17%	2	0.26	-30%	0.24	16	61%
Girls	HBO	8	0.27	-4%	5	0.25	-15%	0.25	17	59%	45%
Baby Daddy	FREE	10	0.28	+27%	2	0.25	-36%	0.24	16	59%
Vinyl	HBO	9	0.24	+20%	1	0.22		0.23	15	45%	61%
Faking It	MTV	14	0.19	0%	2	0.22	-40%	0.22	15	60%	24%
Motive	USA	2	0.22	+10%	3	0.21		0.19	13	37%
Damien	A&E	6	0.18	+50%	1	0.20		0.19	13	48%	36%
Wynonna Earp	SYFY	2	0.15	-25%	1	0.17		0.13	9	31%
House of Lies	SHOW	1	0.17		5	0.17	-48%	0.13	9	54%
Hunters	SYFY	1	0.16		1	0.16		0.12	8	38%
Stitchers	FREE	3	0.11	-39%	2	0.15	-63%	0.12	8	47%
Dice	SHO	1	0.11		1	0.11		0.09	6	55%

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