A18-49+ Update: The Network Race in 2015-16

Here's a look from several angles at how the big five networks fared in 2015-16.

Networks Compared to Previous Seasons

Year	ABC	CBS	NBC	Fox	CW
2013-14	96	106	103	94	34
2014-15	103	100	100	94	41
2015-16	96	102	103	99	41

Using only original, non-sports series, NBC barely eked out the season title, 102.59 to 102.14 over CBS. It's NBC's first season win since the final season of Friends in 2003-04. It also means that all four members of the big four have won the season within the last five years.

I feel like I say this every year, and it's getting kinda tiresome, but it's worth a reminder that all these networks are historically close together. There's a tendency (like with journalists at the press tour) to treat the first-place network like geniuses and the fourth-place one like utter morons, but we're talking about a seven-point difference from top to bottom here. And nowadays, seven points in Plus is like a tenth of a ratings point. This was even more of a convergence than the last couple years, as NBC was the weakest first-place network in the era and ABC the strongest fourth-place. Clearly, nobody is even remotely on the dominance level of NBC during the Must See TV years, or Fox during the peak American Idol years. On the other hand, even if you think the league average is declining more than it should be, it'd be hard to argue any of these networks are in as bad a condition as NBC circa 2011.

Will 2016-17 bring any actual separation? It's hard to predict that since it depends heavily on the new shows. However, it should be noted that Fox's growth this season really came from three places: 1) a strong final season of American Idol; 2) an extremely successful revival of The X-Files; and 3) getting an additional six hours of Empire at the same giga-hit Plus level as season one. The first two of those will be off the sked completely. And it's very likely to be all downhill from here for Empire, because that's just the kind of show it is. So Fox could be a candidate to separate from the pack in a bad way.

Networks Across the Season

Week	Ending	ABC	CBS	NBC	Fox	CW
1	9/27/2015	95	94	109	108	14
2	10/4/2015	96	90	113	106	16
13	12/20/2015	98	98	111	93	37
20	2/7/2016	94	102	103	102	39
23	2/27/2016	96	103	101	101	41
36	5/25/2016	96	102	103	99	41

I looked at this in some detail at the beginning of March (week 23) so you can read that for more. As predicted then, Fox fell off from the pack a bit in the last three months. NBC picked up a couple points in the first two weeks after The Voice's return, but a somewhat disappointing ratings season for Voice made the momentum tough to sustain. So the networks were all pretty much flat from there.

One funny note here is that NBC actually fell behind CBS in the un-roundeds through the second half of week 35. It was only in those last three days, with NBC's Voice finale up against a bunch of filler from CBS, that NBC was able to pull back ahead. CBS nearly treated this 36-week season like it was a normal 35-week one, wrapping up pretty much all its heavy hitters (even Survivor) during the next-to-last week of May sweeps.

A Deeper Look at Networks
 

Type	ABC	CBS	NBC	Fox
Overall	92	120	117	98
Original Series	96	102	103	99
Everything Else	83	160	143	97
Scripted	97	102	89	96
Comedy	108	143	65	77
Drama	91	95	93	108
Unscripted	96	99	119	106
Reality	104	107	140	106
News	74	89	68

A notable milestone here is that NBC won the season in originals despite finishing fourth in scripted originals, which is a first for the A18-49+ era. That might seem hard to do, but we've been very close several times in the past; the closest was in 2005-06 during the rise of American Idol, when season champion Fox was just a point ahead of NBC in scripted. And NBC's been within three points of the lead with fourth-place scripted in the last couple years.

It's also worth noting that this was the eleventh straight season that NBC has been fourth in scripted. They had clawed to within a point of Fox in 2013-14, but Empire's arrival the next season shut the door.

In fairness, NBC has, despite its fourth-ness, made a solid amount of progress in scripted ratings of late. This 89 was its highest average since 2007-08, when Heroes, SVU and the The Office-led comedy Thursday were all still in their primes. NBC went as low as sixty-six, meaning its average scripted original was a "flop" by the full big four standard, in 2011-12.

Real Estate

Genre	ABC	CBS	NBC	Fox	CW
Originals	68%	69%	63%	63%	69%
Repeats	14%	18%	16%	18%	21%
Sports	8%	7%	11%	11%
Specials	7%	5%	6%	6%	9%
Movies	3%	0%	2%	1%	1%

ABC and CBS were each down a touch from their 70% original peaks last year, but NBC and Fox both rose to 63%. That was enough to take the overall big four original percentage to a new A18-49+ era high 66.4% (up from 65.7% last year).

Here's the now updated A18-49+ Networks post.

Here's the now updated A18-49+ Deeper Networks post.