The Breakdown: CW Sunday in 2018-19 (Supergirl, Charmed)

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


fall

Year	8:00	8:30	9:00	9:30	Avg
2018-19	Supergirl		Supergirl	Charmed		Charmed	37
	2018-19	38		38	36			36	37

For the first time in a decade, the CW opened for business on Sunday night, making this a truly unique episode of The Breakdown that is lacking in year-to-year comparisons! They did so with pretty reasonable initial success; Supergirl was fine leading off, and the new reboot of Charmed showed some early spark; it had a higher rating (in the un-roundeds) for the first two weeks, and stayed just 10-15% behind it for most of the time beyond that.

winter

Year	8:00	8:30	9:00	9:30	Avg
2018-19	Supergirl		Supergirl	Charmed		Charmed	30
	2018-19	33		33	26			26	30

Charmed took another step down after the new year, mostly a mix of high-0.2's and low-0.3's, while Supergirl held up a little better.

spring

Year	8:00	8:30	9:00	9:30	Avg
2018-19	Supergirl		Supergirl	Charmed		Charmed	26
	2018-19	32		32	20			20	26

And then Charmed took another step down; all of its spring ratings were rounded 0.2's, and almost all of them were south of an un-rounded 0.20. Supergirl held up rather nicely after DST, clinging right around a un-rounded 0.30 for most of the way.

Rating the Ratings

Name	Lo	Avg	Hi	y2y	Plus	Label	Plusy2y	Results
Supergirl	0.3	0.35	0.8	-31%	37	solid(CW)	-21%	detail
Charmed	0.2	0.26	0.5		28	marginal(CW)		detail

Supergirl: How much tougher is it to lead off Sunday than Monday? Even if you set aside the fact that the network was relaunching the night from scratch (which is significant), I think it's probably a good bit tougher. Monday and all the other weeknights have stronger local programming in the stripped syndicated stuff. -21% in Plus is a lot, but I don't think it's much worse than what it should've done in these circumstances if it were the same show from year to year. I'm also giving it some credit for holding up well in the spring, while some other shows on the network (like its lead-out) were trending in the opposite direction. Grade: C+.

Charmed: This show was reasonably successful for most of the season, but it really fell hard down the stretch. I think the spring struggles put it clearly behind Legacies and not meaningfully stronger than Roswell, New Mexico in the CDub newbie pecking order. I'm grading it narrowly ahead of Roswell based on the full body of work, but I don't see much difference in their spring performances. Grade: C+.

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 Sunday.