It's time for a journey through the CBS Thursday schedule in 2016-17...
fall
| Year | 8:00 | 8:30 | 9:00 | 9:30 | 10:00 | 10:30 | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015-16 | The Big Bang Theory | Life in Pieces | Mom | 2 Broke Girls | Elementary | 125 | |
| 262 | 134 | 112 | 110 | 66 | |||
| 198 | 111 | ||||||
| 2016-17 | The Big Bang Theory | The Great Indoors | Mom | Life in Pieces | Pure Genius | 126 (+1%) | |
| 265 (+1%) | 123 (-8%) | 113 (+1%) | 106 (-3%) | 73 (+11%) | |||
| 194 (-2%) | 110 (-1%) | ||||||
| VsAvg | +11% | -35% | -33% | -17% | |||
| Rank | 4/16 | 15/16 | 14/16 | 14/16 | |||
Football ended and The Big Bang Theory made its move to Thursday, and its new lead-out The Great Indoors didn't waste much time before falling below 50% retention. After a middling season one following Big Bang, Life in Pieces made the move to 9:30 and had surprisingly solid retention out of Mom in the early going. Pure Genius premiered poorly but held up well enough to outrate Elementary's final Thursday fall.
winter
| Year | 8:00 | 8:30 | 9:00 | 9:30 | 10:00 | 10:30 | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015-16 | The Big Bang Theory | Life in Pieces | Mom | Angel from Hell | Elementary | 128 | |
| 258 | 140 | 120 | 97 | 75 | |||
| 199 | 109 | ||||||
| 2016-17 | The Big Bang Theory | The Great Indoors | Mom | Life in Pieces | Training Day | 122 (-4%) | |
| 251 (-3%) | 128 (-9%) | 123 (+3%) | 107 (+10%) | 61 (-18%) | |||
| 190 (-5%) | 115 (+6%) | ||||||
| VsAvg | +9% | -28% | -44% | -18% | |||
| Rank | 8/16 | 13/16 | 16/16 | 14/16 | |||
The winter months seemed to wake up some of Big Bang's lead-outs more than it did Bang itself, as both Great Indoors and especially Mom looked better in this period. But the 10/9c hour became even more of a problem as the Training Day remake stumbled out of the gate.
spring
| Year | 8:00 | 8:30 | 9:00 | 9:30 | 10:00 | 10:30 | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015-16 | The Big Bang Theory | The Odd Couple | Mom | 2 Broke Girls | Rush Hour | 114 | |
| 224 | 109 | 113 | 109 | 64 | |||
| 167 | 111 | ||||||
| 2016-17 | The Big Bang Theory | The Great Indoors | Mom | Life in Pieces | The Amazing Race Spring | 110 (-3%) | |
| 212 (-5%) | 106 (-3%) | 112 (-1%) | 93 (-15%) | 68 (+8%) | |||
| 159 (-4%) | 102 (-8%) | ||||||
| VsAvg | +3% | -31% | -32% | -18% | |||
| Rank | 8/16 | 16/16 | 15/16 | 14/16 | |||
CBS patched up the 10:00 hour well enough with reality vet The Amazing Race in the spring, but the comedies generally trended a little worse in this period. Overall, the night came pretty close to last year's numbers all season long, but that is not a good thing compared to the lofty historical averages.
Rating the Ratings
| Name | Lo | Avg | Hi | y2y | Plus | Label | Plusy2y | Results |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Big Bang Theory* | 2.5 | 3.10 | 3.8 | -17% | 253 | megahit | -1% | detail |
| The Great Indoors | 0.7 | 1.40 | 1.9 | 114 | solid | detail | ||
| Mom* | 1.2 | 1.43 | 1.7 | -15% | 117 | solid | +1% | detail |
| Life in Pieces | 1.0 | 1.26 | 1.5 | -37% | 103 | solid | -25% | detail |
| Pure Genius | 0.7 | 0.85 | 1.0 | 70 | marginal | detail | ||
| Training Day | 0.3 | 0.52 | 0.9 | 43 | flop | detail | ||
| The Amazing Race Spring* | 0.6 | 0.83 | 0.9 | -22% | 67 | flop | -7% | detail |
The Big Bang Theory: It is one of those shows that is tempting to bump up grade-wise because even though it's even in Plus, it's doing it at a very high level. But I will stick to my rubric, in part on the grounds that its trends got a little worse as the season progressed. Grade: B.
The Great Indoors: I'm still not sold that it was much weaker than the lowest renewals from the Monday lineup (Man with a Plan and Superior Donuts), and if not for CBS' early renewals, people probably would've still considered it very much alive until its last couple Monday episodes. But strength-wise, it was clearly a low-end bubble show at best. Score one for the retentionistas; maybe CBS actually learned something from the debacle with similar-performing The Millers? Grade: C-.
Mom: I thought it was kinda underwhelming in the fall, when it was a very easy 9:00 hour with Scandal sitting out. This is right on the fence between B+ and B for me but I will swing toward the more generous grade since Great Indoors was even weaker than last year's 8:30 show, and the performance seemed to improve later in the season. Grade: B+.
Life in Pieces: Its retention of Mom got worse as the season progressed, but I actually think this was more about Mom improving than LiP weakening. If it was purely a "relative to expectations" grade it would do better, because I thought it was gonna be more of a problem than this, but it's earned its way to what should be a syndication-length run. A True comparison vs. last year reveals a show that was just a teeny bit weaker than season one. Grade: B-.
Pure Genius: This is another one of those shows that everybody (correctly) left for dead after the premiere rating, but it held up OK from that point on. And I wasn't even aware that it outrated the year-ago fall episodes of Elementary. The fact that Doubt and Training Day did even worse later in the season may have vindicated it a little bit, but unlike with Code Black, that wasn't enough to actually make it look like a viable renewal. Grade: D+.
Training Day: At least it wasn't Doubt. RIP Bill Paxton. Grade: D.
The Amazing Race: It moved from Friday to Thursday at 10/9c, including a few hours in the summer, which is probably not much/any of an upgrade. It'll be back for some more filler duty next year. Grade: B-.
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.
Here's the now updated Schedules Plus for CBS Thursday.
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