The Breakdown: NBC Monday in 2018-19 (The Voice, America's Got Talent: The Champions, Manifest and more!)

It's time for a journey through the NBC Monday schedule in 2018-19...


fall

Year	8:00	8:30	9:00	9:30	10:00	10:30	Avg
2017-18	The Voice				The Voice	The Voice	The Voice	The Brave		The Brave	159
	2017-18	192		192	192		192	94		94		159
2018-19	The Voice				The Voice	The Voice	The Voice	Manifest		Manifest	172 (+8%)
	2018-19	182 (-5%)		182 (-5%)	182 (-5%)		182 (-5%)	152 (+61%)		152 (+61%)		171.668745663506
VsAvg	+31%		0.312727799458426	+25%		0.249047429654288	+41%		0.408387014353621	+32%
Rank	7/18		7/18	7/18		7/18	5/18		5/18	5/18

The Voice plugged away with another small decline in the first two hours, but the real story came at 10/9c with a breakout premiere for new drama Manifest. It dropped week-to-week for every episode of the fall run, losing half of the premiere demo by the fall finale, but this Plus average was still just a teeny bit behind what Blindspot and The Blacklist did here with bigger lead-ins.

winter

Year	8:00	8:30	9:00	9:30	10:00	10:30	Avg
2017-18	The Wall		The Wall	Better Late Than Never		Better Late Than Never	The Brave		The Brave	82
	2017-18	102		102	84		84	60			60	82
2018-19	America's Got Talent: The Champions				America's Got Talent: The Champions	America's Got Talent: The Champions	America's Got Talent: The Champions	Manifest		Manifest	155 (+89%)
	2018-19	179 (+75%)		179 (+113%)	179 (+113%)		179 (+113%)	106 (+78%)		106 (+78%)		154.864437945772
VsAvg	+48%		0.479609411819092	+57%		0.567047981021822	+16%		0.160060399101064	+42%
Rank	2/18		2/18	2/18		2/18	6/18		6/18	1/18

After over a decade of putting it off, NBC finally brought a regular-season edition of America's Got Talent to the world, absolutely blowing away last year's occupants and bringing The Voice-esque ratings to another segment of the calendar. Manifest finally sort of stabilized, even if it was at less than half of its 2.2 premiere rating, and played its own significant role in making this a near-triple digit growth night.

spring

Year	8:00	8:30	9:00	9:30	10:00	10:30	Avg
2017-18	The Voice				The Voice	The Voice	The Voice	Good Girls		Good Girls	139
	2017-18	166		166	166		166	85		85		139
2018-19	The Voice				The Voice	The Voice	The Voice	The Enemy Within		The Enemy Within	121 (-13%)
	2018-19	146 (-12%)		146 (-12%)	146 (-12%)		146 (-12%)	72 (-15%)		72 (-15%)		121.494487967708
VsAvg	+13%		0.133597388043914	+12%		0.121416977219257	-19%		-0.186920346106591	+5%
Rank	8/18		8/18	8/18		8/18	15/18		15/18	9/18

But in the spring, Manifest was gone, and the usually reliable The Voice took an uncommonly large drop. Alongside soft newbie The Enemy Within, NBC was left with double-digit declines in every hour.

Rating the Ratings

Name	Lo	Avg	Hi	y2y	Plus	Label	Plusy2y	Results
The Voice Fall*	1.4	1.73	2.1	-18%	182	big hit	-5%	detail
America's Got Talent: The Champions	1.6	1.70	1.8		179	big hit		detail
The Voice Spring*	1.1	1.50	2.1	-23%	157	big hit	-11%	detail
Manifest	0.9	1.25	2.2		132	hit		detail
The Enemy Within	0.6	0.74	1.2		78	marginal		detail

The Voice Fall: Not a great drop, but pretty much in line with its trajectory over the last several years. Grade: C+.

America's Got Talent: The Champions: Should this be graded as a whole new show or as simply another season of America's Got Talent? I'm kind of taking a hybrid approach here, but I'm thinking this has to be toward the high end of what NBC was expecting. Grade: A-.

The Voice Spring: I'm actually kinda surprised to see that it was only down 11% in Plus. It felt like a major crisis by Voice standards, because this show has been so reliable for so many years. But it's not nearly as bad as, say, what's going on with Dancing with the Stars. Still cause for concern. (The Tuesday drops are even worse, but I put less weight on those because it was off the air for many of the early weeks and then got moved to 9/8c.) Grade: C-.

Manifest: Despite all of the drops, this was a successful season; it had a higher Plus than the opening seasons of Revolution and Blindspot, for example. Even the level where it ended up in the winter was quite solid in a vacuum. But missing the fall schedule in 2019 probably doesn't bode great for the future. Grade: B+.

The Enemy Within: It was quite a bit weaker than last year's occupant Good Girls, though (especially considering how weak The Voice was) maybe a shade better than Taken from two years ago. Grade: D+.

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 Monday.