Renewology Week 18: The Winter Premieres Revisited; Passage, Orville, Schooled, Brooklyn, Roswell, Blacklist, Fam

Here's a look at the big Renewology developments in week 18. This week, with a lull on the premiere calendar, I'm taking a look back at all the stuff that has premiered since the new year. With some more data in the books, which perceptions have changed?

Name	R%	True	Proj	Target	Aired	Skew	Male
Praying For a Chance on New Fox
The Passage	48%	0.98	0.85	0.86	2	31%	41%
The Orville	31%	0.78	0.78	0.86	5	31%	60%

The Passage could probably be lumped in with the two shows at the end of this post, in that it has looked bubbly both weeks; it did just a teeny bit worse than the projected week two drop, sliding it narrowly below 50%, but right now it still looks like something that could survive even on a scripted-light network. We just have to wait and see; as Manifest can attest, this kind of show often doesn't really put up any red flags in the early weeks, but just keeps eroding well into the later part of its order when most shows would have stabilized.

Meanwhile, I feel a little vindication for being so surprised about The Orville's 0.6 for its timeslot premiere, as the show has pulled off a rally in the weeks since and posted three straight high 0.7's. (It's also a notably impressive DVR gainer.) Renewology's guess is that this level is still unlikely to be good enough for New Fox. But we're all sort of guessing when it comes to exactly how much scripted programming Fox will bring into 2019-20, and Orville has worked its way back into the territory where you can argue it would be a better option than the third or fourth or fifth drama newbie. On most regularly-behaving broadcast networks, that would be a good case for renewal. On this network, it probably still has to hope that we're overrating the carnage that the "live event" strategy will cause. That may be a long shot, but compared with where it was after the 0.6 in early January, it's at least a plausible path.

Name	R%	True	Proj	Target	Aired	Skew	Male
The Post-Premiere Holders
Schooled	89%	0.98	0.90	0.67	3	33%	44%
Brooklyn Nine-Nine	83%	0.94	0.86	0.66	3	43%	47%
Roswell, New Mexico	82%	0.35	0.31	0.24	2	35%	43%

All three of these shows were in the light green column on premiere night and have moved into the dark green with solid results in their last episodes. In the case of Schooled and Brooklyn, it wasn't exactly a linear path to this point: both shows had somewhat worrisome drops in week two, before stabilizing/growing in week three. Roswell, meanwhile, feels like it might have overachieved a bit to drop just a couple hundredths in week two, so we'll see if it can keep it up.

Name	R%	True	Proj	Target	Aired	Skew	Male
Consistently Bubble Shows
The Blacklist	48%	0.74	0.72	0.73	4	21%	45%
Fam	46%	0.78	0.75	0.77	4	20%	37%

And then there are these two shows, an NBC veteran and a CBS newbie, both of which have screamed "bubble show" with pretty much every single airing on the board thus far. The Blacklist still looks a good bit stronger than what we've seen from the other NBC Friday occupants this year, and that's really borne out in the DVR numbers; Blacklist is back to being a 100%+ gainer in Live+7, just like the good old days on Thursday. But Blindspot has itself shown a little more spunk since the new year. I'm still rather confident in Blacklist as the stronger show compared with Blindspot, but I don't think NBC really needs either one, and it will come down to non-ratings issues.

Meanwhile, Fam has underachieved its premiere night projections just enough to slide below the 50% mark in week three. True still has it looking a decent bit stronger than Murphy Brown and Happy Together at their lowest points, which is why it's on the bubble and not down in their territory. But it's got to stop weakening really soon.