The Breakdown: ABC Sunday in 2016-17 (America's Funniest Home Videos, Once Upon a Time, Secrets and Lies and more!)

It's time for a journey through the ABC Sunday schedule in 2016-17...


fall

Year	8:00	8:30	9:00	9:30	10:00	10:30	Avg
2015-16	Once Upon a Time		Once Upon a Time	Blood and Oil		Blood and Oil	Quantico		Quantico	91
	2015-16	108		108	66		66	100			100	91
2016-17	Once Upon a Time		Once Upon a Time	Secrets and Lies		Secrets and Lies	Quantico		Quantico	70 (-24%)
	2016-17	86 (-21%)		85.7175783650891	61 (-7%)		61 (-7%)	62 (-38%)			62 (-38%)	69.730569701759
VsAvg	-28%		-0.282376450027731	-58%		-0.581705090103631	-42%		-0.421732480598569	-44%
Rank	13/16		13/16	16/16		16/16	15/16		15/16	16/16

It was a really ugly fall for ABC Sunday, with anchor Once Upon a Time on a rapid decline and Quantico a mere shadow of the show that started so promisingly a year ago. The steadiest timeslot by far was 9/8c, but the return of Secrets and Lies was still a disappointment and still behind year-ago flop Blood and Oil.

winter

Year	8:00	8:30	9:00	9:30	10:00	10:30	Avg
2015-16	Galavant		Galavant	Quantico (R)				Quantico (R)	Quantico (R)	Quantico (R)	31
	2015-16	44		44	25		25	25		25		31
2016-17	To Tell the Truth				To Tell the Truth	To Tell the Truth	To Tell the Truth	Conviction		Conviction	62 (+98%)
	2016-17	79 (+80%)		78.9145959551614	71 (+184%)		71 (+184%)	37 (+46%)		37 (+46%)		62.360672091004
VsAvg	-26%		-0.257872115231442	-43%		-0.425428199521508	-58%		-0.5843707253928	-41%
Rank	12/16		12/16	14/16		14/16	15/16		15/16	14/16

ABC held up much better in the winter with something resembling a "regular" lineup, even if that lineup was game show filler and the final burn-offs of Conviction.

spring

Year	8:00	8:30	9:00	9:30	10:00	10:30	Avg
2015-16	Once Upon a Time		Once Upon a Time	The Family		The Family	Quantico		Quantico	66
	2015-16	79		79	51		51	68			68	66
2016-17	Once Upon a Time		Once Upon a Time	Match Game		Match Game	American Crime		American Crime	51 (-23%)
	2016-17	67 (-15%)		66.9413469136886	56 (+9%)		56 (+9%)	30 (-55%)			30 (-55%)	50.9251826114588
VsAvg	-34%		-0.339056547675784	-56%		-0.561632523752106	-68%		-0.684787974244386	-53%
Rank	15/16		15/16	15/16		15/16	16/16		16/16	16/16

But it was back to steep year-to-year declines when Once Upon a Time and friends returned for the spring. Time After Time was axed after four weeks, and the network again got some improvement in the 9/8c hour thanks to a game show. But Once was still down double digits, and American Crime was a debacle at 10/9c.

Rating the Ratings

Name	Lo	Avg	Hi	y2y	Plus	Label	Plusy2y	Results
America's Funniest Home Videos	0.7	0.94	1.2	-9%	76	marginal	+9%	detail
Once Upon a Time*	0.7	0.93	1.3	-32%	76	marginal	-19%	detail
Secrets and Lies	0.6	0.75	1.0		61	flop		detail
To Tell the Truth	0.7	0.89	1.1	-14%	72	marginal	+2%	detail
Time After Time	0.4	0.56	0.7		46	flop		detail
Match Game	0.6	0.85	1.3	-21%	69	flop	-6%	detail
Quantico	0.5	0.67	1.0	-45%	55	flop	-35%	detail
American Crime	0.3	0.39	0.5	-58%	32	flop	-50%	detail

America's Funniest Home Videos: Ultimately it seems that last season may have been the negative blip, since this season made it most of the way back to the Plus high from two years ago. But it was still a nice bounce-back season in the second year of the Alfonso Ribeiro era. Grade: B+.

Once Upon a Time: Like I said, it didn't collapse quite as much in the spring this time, and that plus its streaming deals were seemingly enough to pull it through for an attempt at this reboot. But it is still a rather ugly Plus trend, especially given the improved Home Videos lead-in. Grade: D.

Secrets and Lies: It went from a back-loaded 89 in spring 2015 to just a 61 this fall. A lot of this can be put on the network for leaving it off the air this long, but it's still a disappointment. Grade: D.

To Tell the Truth: It gets a Grade: B for its respectable filler duty during the regular season, but has been less impressive in its summer episodes in the 10/9c hour. Yesterday ABC put its slated fall run on the shelf in favor of America's Funniest Home Videos. I always assumed there was some production issue that was keeping AFHV on the bench, but since that's apparently not the case, I'd rather have this show in the fall than The Toy Box...

Time After Time: At least with newbies, the F grades are saved for shows that are DOA and then badly rejected after being DOA. Yeah, this one qualifies. Starting at a 0.7 was pathetic, and somehow ending up at a mere 0.4 two weeks later was almost unthinkable. Grade: F.

Match Game: Already updated.

Quantico: Already updated.

American Crime: This was a ridiculously bad timeslot, especially when Time After Time was in the mix. That should get a lot of the blame for Crime falling this hard, and it would've done better if it got the Wednesday 10/9c berth back. But it's still a thirty-two Plus, and still a -50% year-to-year from an already unimpressive average. Hard to offer too much forgiveness for that. Grade: F.

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 ABC Sunday.