Renewology Week 8: Fresh Off the Boat, The Kids Are Alright, Splitting Up Together, Speechless

Here's a look at the big Renewology developments in week eight. Just a quick look at some ABC comedies this week!

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Name	R%	True	Proj	Target	Aired	Skew	Male
The Kids Are Alright	69%	0.82	0.74	0.65	4	28%	38%
Fresh Off the Boat	66%	0.70	0.71	0.65	6	25%	40%
Splitting Up Together	54%	0.68	0.66	0.65	4	32%	34%
Speechless	44%	0.62	0.63	0.65	6	28%	37%

The ABC Tuesday lineup returned after getting big bounces in week three (presumably due to Halloween) and then taking a week off. Though they basically fell back to their pretty modest week two levels, their R% didn't fall that far because the big week three numbers are still part of the rolling average for now. If this week's reduced numbers were the only ones in the rolling average, we would've seen The Kids Are Alright revert right back to the bubble (53%) and Splitting Up Together head back into light red territory (38%), which is pretty much where they were based on the week two numbers.

Then things got really interesting with the Friday ratings, as Fresh Off the Boat had its best performance of the season by a really wide margin with a high 0.7 in the un-rounded prelims. The True formula expects 8/7c shows to benefit some from the end of DST; that's why the November 9 episode had kind of a low True score despite a pretty average raw rating. But this is ridiculous. To play the same game as with the Tuesday shows: if this week's Fresh Off the Boat were the only episode in the rolling average, it would have a 79% in Renewology. A 0.7 leading off Friday night is something ABC should probably renew. (It's basically what Last Man Standing did Plus-wise for much of its Friday run on ABC.) But it's only one week, and Fresh Off the Boat has looked like a bubble show at best for over a month now. So we'll see what kind of audience comes back on the other side of a multi-week hiatus.

Right now, these four R%'s add up to 2.33 renewals, and that's probably gonna drop close to 2.0 renewals unless the Tuesday shows bounce back this week. Maybe I'm overreacting to one week, but it's starting to look like the Friday shows might have the edge on the Tuesday ones if only two of these four can survive. They are the "bird in the hand" on a lower-priority night, and Speechless could be shepherded to a syndication-ish episode count. There's still a lot to learn about The Kids Are Alright ratings-wise, as it will have to air for quite awhile after The Conners ends, but its delayed viewing gains have not been encouraging. (That Halloween-boosted episode had a Happy Together-esque 22% bump from Live+SD to Live+7.)