Renewology Week 24: Good Girls, Whiskey Cavalier, The Enemy Within

Here's a look at the big Renewology developments in the first three days of week 24. Will do a second post early next week, since there should be a lot to chew on with Thursday's ratings.

Name	R%	True	Proj	Target	Aired	Skew
Good Girls	41%	0.83	0.73	0.77	1	33%

Last week I said The Enemy Within's premiere looked somewhat comparable to the year-ago timeslot occupant (Good Girls season one). You can probably say about the same thing about the Good Girls season two premiere compared to the Sunday 10/9c occupant last year, season two of Timeless. If you squint, you could say it was maybe a little better since GG was a high 0.7, but Timeless was a much better DVR grower. Timeless was a very late decision last year, and this doesn't look like an easy one to decide either, at least based on premiere night.

Name	R%	True	Proj	Target	Aired	Skew	Male
Whiskey Cavalier	56%	0.83	0.72	0.69	2	22%
The Enemy Within	23%	0.73	0.64	0.77	2	24%	38%

A week ago, Whiskey Cavalier was in the light red and The Enemy Within in the true bubble range, but the shows flipped places and then some with week two, as Whiskey went up to 0.9 and Enemy came down to 0.9.

For Whiskey, this is almost exactly the kind of boost that the True formula would expect a settled show to get with a big upgrade in lead-in like this. (Another good example is The Rookie, which had the same boost after The Bachelor on Tuesday. That was a bigger upgrade in terms of ratings points, but it was also a lot less compatible skew-wise, so they end up being pretty similar in True terms.) But since this was week two, when a significant drop is the norm, this kind of boost is considered rather good news by Renewology. In the end, whatever you think of this data point, it's gonna get thrown out next week when Single Parents is back. But if it can continue to be steady in True, which would mean hanging onto 0.7 on the other side of this exposure, that will be a win, and it'll have to be considered a real contender.

Meanwhile, The Enemy Within took a 25%ish drop in week two. That's a lot. Usually a drop of this size can be tempered somewhat by the True formula, because the surrounding programs are down along with it; not this time, as The Voice stayed at 2.1. Plus, it didn't even face Bull this week. I tend to think going from the bubble all the way to 23% is a bit of an overreaction (the formula killed Good Girls for its big drops early last season as well), but it's definitely not encouraging.