It's time for a journey through the Fox Monday schedule in 2015-16...
fall
| Year | 8:00 | 8:30 | 9:00 | 9:30 | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014-15 | Gotham | Sleepy Hollow | 122 | ||
| 147 | 97 | ||||
| 2015-16 | Gotham | Minority Report | 76 (-38%) | ||
| 104 (-29%) | 49 (-50%) | ||||
| VsAvg | -2% | -41% | -19% | ||
| Rank | 7/15 | 14/15 | 9/15 | ||
As much as Sleepy Hollow declined in season two, Minority Report showed that it's possible to do much, much worse as it shed half of the year-ago Hollow fall numbers. It was also a rather brutal fall for Gotham. It was compared against its early season one numbers, but -29% is still rough.
winter
| Year | 8:00 | 8:30 | 9:00 | 9:30 | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014-15 | Gotham | Sleepy Hollow | 104 | ||
| 126 | 83 | ||||
| 2015-16 | The X-Files | Lucifer | 146 (+40%) | ||
| 177 (+41%) | 116 (+39%) | ||||
| VsAvg | +37% | -11% | +13% | ||
| Rank | 3/15 | 8/15 | 4/15 | ||
But this night really woke up with the arrival of The X-Files in the winter. Its episode after the NFC Championship Game lifted its full season average to megahit levels, but it was still one of the top shows on TV even in its regular Monday timeslot. That provided a big launch-pad to the new drama Lucifer, which had surprisingly strong retention in the winter weeks.
spring
| Year | 8:00 | 8:30 | 9:00 | 9:30 | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014-15 | Gotham | The Following | 79 | ||
| 94 | 64 | ||||
| 2015-16 | Gotham | Lucifer | 84 (+7%) | ||
| 85 (-9%) | 84 (+30%) | ||||
| VsAvg | -13% | -13% | -13% | ||
| Rank | 12/15 | 11/15 | 12/15 | ||
The value of Lucifer became even more clear once it lost The X-Files lead-in, as it was still a considerable improvement on the last couple years of The Following's spring ratings. Gotham also quietly had a pretty decent return from hiatus, shrinking its Plus declines from the fall disaster all the way into the single digits.
The Shows
| Name | Lo | Avg | Hi | y2y | Plus | Label | Plusy2y | Results |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gotham | 1.2 | 1.40 | 1.6 | -36% | 96 | marginal | -26% | detail |
| The X-Files | 2.1 | 3.17 | 6.1 | 217 | megahit | detail | ||
| Minority Report | 0.5 | 0.71 | 1.1 | 49 | flop | detail | ||
| Lucifer | 1.1 | 1.47 | 2.4 | 101 | solid | detail |
Gotham: This one really displays the pitfalls of trying to grade sophomore shows. The raw trends are clearly in D territory or even worse, but it actually felt like a win to stabilize this well in the late fall and spring. Even the -9% for the spring portion is still like a C-level performance, so I don't think I can really go any better than Grade: C. But it has left at least some hope of a graceful aging for this show.
The X-Files: Sadly, I really don't know enough about this show's peak years to be able to give that much context. But I do know that even throwing out the post-football episode, the Monday run was like 65% above the original run's final season Plus!! Maybe it goes down as another Breaking Bad-esque example of some additional audience discovering the show via streaming? Grade: A.
Minority Report: Very nearly a The Mob Doctor-level disaster, and it may even be a worse blow than that for Fox since it seemed to come in with higher expectations.
Lucifer: Clearly inflated by the post-X-Files episodes, but even in those weeks its retention was a lot better than expected. And it was very much in line with Gotham's ratings in the spring. It deserves to get another crack at the Monday 9/8c slot, which it will!
The names in this last table link to the shows' War of 18-49 pages. Links with an asterisk(*) have been updated with the new info. Updates to younger shows will come later in the summer.
Check back tomorrow for this day's new Schedules Plus! Till then, you can refer to the old version.
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