2018 Upfront Renewology: The CW

Welcome to Upfront Renewology! This is the SHOW-centric half of the upfront preview, digging into the merits of individual shows by network. The next round will be Upfront Questions, the SCHEDULE-centric look ahead to upfront week. The following week, the schedules come out, and with them come the Upfront Answers.

Averages up to date through Wednesday, May 2.

More Upfront Renewology: NBC | Fox | ABC | CBS | CW

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Name	R%	True	Proj	Target	Aired	Skew	Male
The Bubble
The 100	65%	0.37	0.36	0.33	2	39%	47%
iZombie	54%	0.33	0.34	0.33	9	41%	47%

My general advice is not get too wrapped up in the specific R% with CW shows, because the difference between each tenth is so huge that it can swing around a ton based on what happens to be in the rolling average. iZombie will probably head into the decision-making week right around the 50% mark because another 0.2 will add to the rolling average... unless of course it manages a 0.3. The only real takeaway here is that The 100 in the early going seems stronger than iZombie, especially since the 0.3 used for The 100's R% is probably a high one. But there could easily be room for both on a network that is adding a sixth night. iZombie is probably competing against pilots.

Name	R%	True	Proj	Target	Aired	Skew	Male
The Dunzo
Valor	48%	0.25	0.24	0.24	13	28%	48%
Life Sentence	12%	0.25	0.25	0.33	6	40%	33%

I'm just throwing these on here because it is a nice illustration of how important the studio factor is with the CW. You have two shows of equally low strength; Valor's 0.2's in the easiest part of the season after Supergirl originals are considered about equivalent to Life Sentence's 0.1's with 0.2 lead-ins in the late spring. But one is a toss-up and one is a huge long shot because it isn't eligible for a CBS Studios quota bailout. In Valor's case, it'd of course be nice to have a way to incorporate the news that it was not getting an extension, which should clearly knock it down a few pegs. But the formula did the right thing with what it had to work with in the fall, labeling flop newbies Dynasty and Valor as essentially toss-ups that were indistinguishable based on ratings, and indeed one of the two got renewed. (Whether Dynasty has gotten a bit too much boost in True since the move to Friday is another issue...)