The Breakdown: CW Wednesday in 2018-19 (Riverdale, All American, Jane the Virgin)

It's time for a journey through the CW Wednesday schedule in 2018-19...


fall

Year	8:00	8:30	9:00	9:30	Avg
2017-18	Riverdale		Riverdale	Dynasty		Dynasty	36
	2017-18	52		52	20			20	36
2018-19	Riverdale		Riverdale	All American		All American	36 (+0%)
	2018-19	46 (-11%)		46.4711768352077	26 (+28%)			26 (+28%)	36.0302842468786
VsAvg	-16%		-0.164048505845095	-27%		-0.272731609589052	-21%
Rank	16/18		16/18	14/18		14/18	15/18

Riverdale couldn't quite live up to its breakout start in fall 2017, but it wasn't terribly far off. And its losses were totally recouped by a less bad performer at 9/8c; new drama All American was mediocre at best, but still a marked improvement on last year's newbie Dynasty.

winter

Year	8:00	8:30	9:00	9:30	Avg
2017-18	Riverdale		Riverdale	Dynasty		Dynasty	30
	2017-18	43		43	17			17	30
2018-19	Riverdale		Riverdale	All American		All American	30 (0%)
	2018-19	39 (-11%)		38.7478969273001	21 (+26%)			21 (+26%)	29.9814044098114
VsAvg	-10%		-0.0959031479054989	-24%		-0.236913152212611	-15%
Rank	12/18		12/18	13/18		13/18	12/18

The trends continued almost identically in the winter. All American had shown some hints of real momentum in the fall, but it never truly materialized in the winter, and it ended the season on a long string of 0.2's (still up in raw from what Dynasty was doing at this time).

spring

Year	8:00	8:30	9:00	9:30	Avg
2017-18	Riverdale		Riverdale	The Originals		The Originals	34
	2017-18	37		37	32			32	34
2018-19	Riverdale		Riverdale	Jane the Virgin		Jane the Virgin	27 (-22%)
	2018-19	28 (-24%)		28.2719383689011	25 (-21%)			25 (-21%)	26.7012751261844
VsAvg	-41%		-0.405003335009396	-19%		-0.185834402022395	-32%
Rank	18/18		18/18	12/18		12/18	17/18

Just like in spring 2018, the CW got a better performer into the 9/8c timeslot, but the final season of Jane the Virgin couldn't live up to the stout showing The Originals had in its own final season. And things suddenly got much uglier for Riverdale, which actually had several 0.2's along with a bunch of low 0.3's in the spring.

Rating the Ratings

Name	Lo	Avg	Hi	y2y	Plus	Label	Plusy2y	Results
Riverdale	0.2	0.36	0.5	-27%	38	solid(CW)	-15%	detail
All American	0.2	0.22	0.3		23	flop		detail
Jane the Virgin*	0.2	0.23	0.3	-5%	24	flop	+9%	detail

Riverdale: It was headed for a better grade for most of the season; a 10%ish decline wouldn't have been bad considering what a relative breakout season two was. But the spring collapse was pretty inexcusable. It's launching a newbie for the third straight year in fall 2019, so it would do well to get its act together a bit. Grade: C.

All American: It's got to go somewhere between all the mediocre newbies of this season (Legacies, Charmed, Roswell) and the really bad newbies of past seasons (Dynasty, Valor, Life Sentence, etc.). Feels like it has to be either a C- or D+, and I will be a little nicer just to acknowledge that it had some real post-premiere momentum, even if it didn't end up resulting in much. Grade: C-.

Jane the Virgin: (Still airing as of this post; averages are through June 26.) Not quite as impressive as what The Originals pulled off here last year, but still a rather decent showing, and another data point that suggests this show always had a little more of a ratings pulse than most of the CBS Studios flops. Grade: B-.

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 CW Wednesday.