It's time for a journey through the Fox Thursday schedule in 2017-18...
fall
| Year | 8:00 | 8:30 | 9:00 | 9:30 | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016-17 | Rosewood | Pitch | 66 | ||
| 63 | 69 | ||||
| 2017-18 | Gotham | The Orville | 85 (+30%) | ||
| 79 (+26%) | 92 (+33%) | ||||
| VsAvg | -1% | +34% | +15% | ||
| Rank | 8/17 | 3/17 | 6/17 | ||
Fox added a lot of drama depth in 2017-18, and this fall Thursday lineup was one of the clearest examples. Gotham and The Orville did not set the world on fire, but still represented a huge improvement on last year's Rosewood / Pitch debacle.
winter
| Year | 8:00 | 8:30 | 9:00 | 9:30 | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016-17 | Hell's Kitchen | My Kitchen Rules | 81 | ||
| 98 | 63 | ||||
| 2017-18 | The Four | 108 (+33%) | |||
| 108 (+11%) | 108 (+71%) | ||||
| VsAvg | -15% | +26% | +2% | ||
| Rank | 9/17 | 5/17 | 10/17 | ||
And Fox came up with another big dose of timeslot improvement in the winter months, thanks to reality competition The Four. It wasn't a huge amount stronger than the Gordon Ramsay shows from a year ago, but its two-hour nature allowed it to crush last year's 9/8c reality flops. (And the Gordon Ramsay shows got to stay on Friday, which bore a lot of fruit on that night.)
spring
| Year | 8:00 | 8:30 | 9:00 | 9:30 | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016-17 | MasterChef Junior | Kicking and Screaming | 63 | ||
| 80 | 47 | ||||
| 2017-18 | Gotham | Showtime At the Apollo | 58 (-9%) | ||
| 60 (-25%) | 55 (+18%) | ||||
| VsAvg | -35% | -20% | -28% | ||
| Rank | 13/17 | 11/17 | 13/17 | ||
The Thursday improvement couldn't last into the spring, as Gotham softened in its return from hiatus and got compared against a much stronger year-ago occupant in Gordon Ramsay. A regularly-scheduled edition of Showtime At the Apollo quietly improved upon the year-ago Kicking and Screaming by just enough to keep Fox's decline in just the single digits.
Rating the Ratings
| Name | Lo | Avg | Hi | y2y | Plus | Label | Plusy2y | Results |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gotham* | 0.6 | 0.77 | 1.0 | -29% | 70 | marginal | -20% | detail |
| The Four | 1.1 | 1.19 | 1.3 | 108 | solid | detail | ||
| The Orville | 0.9 | 1.25 | 2.7 | 114 | solid | detail | ||
| Showtime At the Apollo | 0.5 | 0.60 | 0.7 | 55 | flop |
Gotham: Moving from Monday to Thursday is a downgrade, but not a huge one. The run of 0.9's in the fall was actually fairly solid, but it underwhelmed somewhat in the spring (just hundredths away from falling to 0.5 on a couple occasions). Grade: C.
The Four: On a smaller scale, it actually kinda reminded me of American Idol in that the level of success was debatable early in the season, but it went on a nice run at the end that put it more clearly in the win column. Grade: B+. The grade is just for the winter run; it has been less impressive in the summer, but taken on the same kind of upward trajectory.
The Orville: Its averages are heavily inflated by early-season football exposure, but this was still a success up to the end; I would say when the dust settled it was about as strong as The Resident from the spring, and definitely a step ahead of The Gifted. I was wrestling between B+ and B for both this and Resident but gave this one the lower grade because it looked just a touch softer at the end of its run. After airing its last episode on December 7, not even making it on the fall schedule the next season is a pretty tough break. Grade: B.
Showtime At the Apollo: It didn't do much at all, but considering the incompatibility of its lead-in it was still a surprisingly decent improvement on Kicking and Screaming from last year. Not totally sold that was enough for a renewal, but Fox thought so. Grade: C.
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 Fox Thursday.
No comments:
Post a Comment