The Breakdown: NBC Friday in 2017-18 (Blindspot, Dateline, Taken)

It's time for a journey through the NBC Friday schedule in 2017-18...


fall

Year	8:00	8:30	9:00	9:30	10:00	10:30	Avg
2016-17	Caught on Camera		Caught on Camera	Dateline				Dateline	Dateline	Dateline	72
	2016-17	51		51	82		82	82		82		72
2017-18	Blindspot		Blindspot	Dateline				Dateline	Dateline	Dateline	75 (+4%)
	2017-18	61 (+19%)		61.2302799159366	82 (-1%)		82 (-1%)	82 (-1%)		82 (-1%)		74.8278782853092
VsAvg	+10%		0.0989618216826552	+20%		0.201065465092059	+14%		0.136463523127057	+15%
Rank	8/17		8/17	2/17		2/17	5/17		5/17	4/17

In its move to Friday for season three, Blindspot got thrown up against the weak year-ago Caught on Camera episodes and looked like a nice improvement by comparison. With a better lead-in, Dateline looked was easily at its best comparison-wise in the fall.

winter

Year	8:00	8:30	9:00	9:30	10:00	10:30	Avg
2016-17	Grimm		Grimm	Emerald City		Emerald City	Dateline		Dateline	64
	2016-17	64		64	59		59	69			69	64
2017-18	Blindspot		Blindspot	Taken		Taken	Dateline		Dateline	56 (-13%)
	2017-18	60 (-8%)		59.5917354534866	42 (-28%)		42 (-28%)	65 (-5%)			65 (-5%)	55.5235900811938
VsAvg	-6%		-0.0567225249841897	-35%		-0.354386427622876	-9%		-0.0909752850933296	-17%
Rank	10/17		10/17	17/17		17/17	10/17		10/17	15/17

Sophomore Taken finally returned at 9/8c (after NBC pledged at the upfront it would premiere in the fall) and bombed badly. This two-hour drama block was a lot weaker than last year's Grimm / Emerald City pairing.

spring

Year	8:00	8:30	9:00	9:30	10:00	10:30	Avg
2016-17	First Dates		First Dates	Dateline				Dateline	Dateline	Dateline	67
	2016-17	58		58	71		71	71		71		67
2017-18	Blindspot		Blindspot	Dateline				Dateline	Dateline	Dateline	58 (-13%)
	2017-18	49 (-16%)		48.7226350838102	64 (-10%)		64 (-10%)	62 (-12%)		62 (-12%)		58.3485998617809
VsAvg	-5%		-0.0543401369769362	+5%		0.0453465914882974	-5%		-0.0453140216962467	-2%
Rank	10/17		10/17	9/17		9/17	8/17		8/17	9/17

It took 11 episodes, but Taken finally got pulled, and Dateline improved just a teeny bit after that happened. But it was still the show's worst period trend-wise, getting little help from Blindspot which fell well behind the year-ago filler reality First Dates.

Rating the Ratings

Name	Lo	Avg	Hi	y2y	Plus	Label	Plusy2y	Results
Blindspot	0.5	0.62	0.7	-40%	56	flop	-33%	detail
Dateline Fri*	0.6	0.80	1.0	-14%	73	solid(Fri)	-3%	detail
Taken	0.2	0.38	0.5	-62%	35	flop	-58%	detail

Blindspot: After a roller coaster in 2016-17, Blindspot was a lot more consistent this season, but it was consistently pretty weak. It dropped a good bit more than would be expected for a steady show in a Friday move. And as I said once before the upfront, it even ended up 10% below the worst Grimm season. It's probably a fine renewal if the WB deal is as good as has been reported, but on a network this solid, it's not that pretty ratings-wise even by Friday standards. Grade: C-.

Dateline Fri: It was a little weaker this year, but a little weaker vs. a historically strong Dateline season. Understandably, a lot of its worst points came with Taken lead-ins, but those don't drag the average down that much because they were only one hour telecasts. Grade: B-.

Taken: To be fair, the average above is hurt by five summer Saturday episodes (0.25 average), while it got a barely less embarrassing 0.44 average in this timeslot. It was clearly a bomb last year and I think it probably still underachieved even relative to that standard with a bunch of low fractionals in season two. Like with Quantico, I have trouble figuring out why these networks renew these clear bombs and then have a quick trigger finger when they bomb again the next year. 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 NBC Friday.