Renewology: November Sweeps Bubble Watch (Comedy Edition)

It's time to talk about some bubble shows! Check out yesterday's drama post.

Name	R%	True	Proj	Target	Aired	Skew	Male
ABC Comedies
Speechless	82%	0.93	0.95	0.79	6	35%	41%
The Mayor	36%	0.77	0.73	0.79	5	36%	41%

The Mayor: The real killer for this show was its drop from 1.0 to 0.8 in week three. It's plausible that it and Black-ish were hurt more by the NBA opening night than was acknowledged back then, but it hasn't really offered any hope for a bounce-back in the World Series weeks. We'll see if it can make something happen now that Tuesdays will be a lot lighter on sports. But as it stands now, it really stings for ABC that the network had so much returning comedy strength and this was apparently the best newbie they could come up with.

Speechless: Just want to note that this has emerged as the lowest of the ABC returnees, stuck at very low 1's despite a great lead-in and great lead-out. I think it will still be fine, but it's been a weaker link in this lineup than it was last year. Doesn't want to get much weaker than this.

Name	R%	True	Proj	Target	Aired	Skew	Male
CBS Comedies
9JKL	40%	0.90	0.87	0.91	5	24%	41%
Superior Donuts	26%	0.85	0.78	0.91	1	22%

Superior Donuts: 26% seemed way low when I first saw it, but it's hard to deny that a 9:00 CBS Monday comedy getting an 80 Plus on premiere night in the middle of the fall is pretty deplorable. I would go higher than 26%, not because of this actual performance but because of the hope that CBS might fix things with Man with a Plan. I was down on Donuts and MWAP last year because they were nothing more than decent live retainers of the Kevin Can Wait audience. That's not really a compliment; surround them with flops and they will not bring their own audience to the table, as we saw on Monday. But maybe if decent retention of Kevin is all they're asked to do, we can reset to last spring's dynamic and they will manage acceptable numbers.

9JKL: This show stayed ahead of its lead-out comedies in R% mostly because its most promising point (the 1.4 two weeks ago) is still in the rolling average. That'll be gone next week, so look out.

Name	R%	True	Proj	Target	Aired	Skew	Male
NBC Comedies
The Good Place	79%	1.01	1.03	0.88	6	36%	41%
Great News	37%	0.80	0.82	0.88	5	32%	37%

Great News: The NBC sophomore has improved in raw numbers with a Will and Grace lead-in rather than double-pumping after The Voice. But there's still little evidence of a real constituency for this show; the premiere had a 1.33 Live+SD and just a 1.52 Live+3... a staggeringly low 14% bump! (Haven't seen DVR numbers since then, but let's just say it's not that staggering if you saw its season one ratings. It usually gained around 10% in Live+3 for the post-Voice eps.) Compare that with the other three NBC Thursday comedies which had 38% / 46% / 54% bumps in Live+3 on that night. This is supposed to be a 30 Rock successor with an affluent audience, yet nobody is DVRing it. The positive spin you can put on this is it's not that bad from a "retention" standpoint; Will and Grace's rating presumably has a lot of same-day DVRing. That's basically why Renewology is higher on Great News compared with last year when it was a big miss. But it'd be nice to see some evidence that people are seeking it out.

The Good Place: I'm virtually certain this is getting renewed, but I just wanted to include it here because, like Speechless, it's getting hammered by True due to its "hammock" situation between a good lead-in and good lead-out. (It's also hammered to some extent because the whole network is so strong.) Perhaps True needs to scale back on the lead-out component of the formula, because I don't really think it's being brought up by 0.06 to 0.08 points by Will and Grace. Shrug. Anyway, it could get into more marginal R% territory if it comes back a little weaker after the new year, as it did last year, but it's hard to imagine NBC actually cancelling.

Name	R%	True	Proj	Target	Aired	Skew	Male
Fox Comedies
The Mick	69%	0.90	0.90	0.82	4	44%	51%
Ghosted	57%	0.94	0.85	0.82	4	51%	61%
The Last Man on Earth	50%	0.81	0.81	0.82	4	52%	61%
Brooklyn Nine-Nine	22%	0.69	0.69	0.82	4	49%	52%

Ghosted: This is the reverse of what I said yesterday about Wisdom of the Crowd: we've gotten very little chance to see it in a good situation, because it keeps falling on non-NFL weeks. This Sunday will be the fourth time in five episodes that it's aired without the NFL... compare that with last year's Son of Zorn which had only three such episodes in its first ten! I'm pretty much in agreement with Renewology's decision to lean renewal here, but not by too much. Need some more info.

The Mick: Just want to quickly note why The Mick ranks so far ahead of Brooklyn Nine-Nine in this formula. A big reason is that it skews so much younger than its Lethal Weapon lead-in, and the formula gives it credit for that. I think some might be inclined to see just the raw 0.9 / 0.8 / 0.6 of the Tuesday shows and feel like the 0.8 and the 0.6 would pretty much reverse if you flipped the slots. Maybe, but I think Mick deserves a little more credit for doing the heavy lifting in bringing a younger audience to the slot. Still looks like a renewal so far, but there's not a lot of cushion here.

The Last Man on Earth: This is another one like Lucifer in that the surprising strength of the network, plus Renewology's increased harshness toward Fox put it on the bubble even though its own year-to-year trends have been quite good. I think it is going to be a close call in the end, and would lean renewal only because it seems a little much for Last Man, Brooklyn and New Girl to all end in the same season.