It's time for a journey through the ABC Tuesday schedule in 2019-20...
NOTE: In addition to classic A18-49+, Breakdown posts in 2019-20 also use CVPlus, comparing spring ratings against a higher league average due to viewership inflation from COVID-19 stay-at-home orders. See here for more.
fall
| Year | 8:00 | 8:30 | 9:00 | 9:30 | 10:00 | 10:30 | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-19 | The Conners | The Kids Are Alright | Black-ish | Splitting Up Together | The Rookie | 103 | |
| 170 | 108 | 96 | 76 | 83 | |||
| 139 | 86 | ||||||
| 2019-20 | The Conners | Bless This Mess | Mixed-ish | Black-ish | Emergence | 92 (-10%) | |
| 147 (-14%) | 92 (-15%) | 88 (-9%) | 85 (+12%) | 71 (-14%) | |||
| 120 (-14%) | 86 (+1%) | ||||||
| VsAvg | +19% | -18% | -4% | -1% | |||
| Rank | 6/19 | 16/19 | 10/19 | 10/19 | |||
ABC moved sophomore Bless This Mess, a modest success from the late spring last year, to the 8:30 half-hour and saw no improvement in retention out of a declining The Conners, putting the hour down noticeably from last year. The 9/8c hour was a relative bright spot, as veteran Black-ish shifted to 9:30 and did better than year-ago Splitting Up Together, while spin-off Mixed-ish launched at 9/8c. 10/9c genre newbie Emergence had an OK start, but big drops in weeks two and three left it as a clearly weaker option than last year's The Rookie.
winter
| Year | 8:00 | 8:30 | 9:00 | 9:30 | 10:00 | 10:30 | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-19 | American Housewife | The Kids Are Alright | Black-ish | Splitting Up Together | The Rookie | 78 | |
| 97 | 83 | 81 | 66 | 71 | |||
| 90 | 73 | ||||||
| 2019-20 | The Conners | Bless This Mess | Mixed-ish | Black-ish | Emergence | 75 (-4%) | |
| 128 (+32%) | 80 (-4%) | 79 (-3%) | 69 (+6%) | 46 (-35%) | |||
| 104 (+16%) | 74 (+1%) | ||||||
| VsAvg | +30% | -7% | -29% | 0% | |||
| Rank | 4/19 | 10/19 | 16/19 | 11/19 | |||
The ABC trends got better beyond the fall, as the net got 20 episodes of The Conners and stretched them across nearly the full season. That lead-in juice produced better trends for Bless This Mess and Mixed-ish. However, the 10/9c hour killed any chance at nightly growth, as Emergence completed an epic post-premiere collapse by dropping all the way to 0.29 for its late January finale.
spring
| Year | 8:00 | 8:30 | 9:00 | 9:30 | 10:00 | 10:30 | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-19 | American Housewife | The Kids Are Alright | Black-ish | Bless This Mess | 1969 | 61 | |
| 81 | 65 | 71 | 70 | 40 | |||
| 73 | 70 | ||||||
| 2019-20 | The Conners | Bless This Mess | Mixed-ish | Black-ish | For Life | 69 (+13%) | |
| 112 (+39%) | 70 (+8%) | 59 (-17%) | 58 (-17%) | 57 (+44%) | |||
| 91 (+25%) | 58 (-17%) | ||||||
| VsAvg | +21% | -39% | -16% | -14% | |||
| Rank | 5/19 | 18/19 | 15/19 | 15/19 | |||
The hours were reshuffled again during the COVID-19 viewership inflation, with The Conners doing pretty well but Black-ish and especially Mixed-ish becoming sore spots in this period. However, this time the 10/9c hour came to the rescue, with a passable showing from 10/9c legal drama For Life.
Rating the Ratings
| Name | Lo | Avg | Hi | y2y | Plus | Label | Plusy2y | Results |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Conners | 0.9 | 1.07 | 1.3 | -32% | 130 | hit | -21% | detail |
| Bless This Mess | 0.6 | 0.67 | 0.8 | +1% | 82 | marginal | +17% | detail |
| Mixed-ish | 0.5 | 0.62 | 1.1 | 76 | marginal | detail | ||
| Black-ish* | 0.4 | 0.59 | 0.8 | -25% | 72 | marginal | -13% | detail |
| Emergence | 0.3 | 0.49 | 0.8 | 60 | flop | detail | ||
| For Life | 0.4 | 0.56 | 0.7 | 68 | flop | detail |
The Conners: 20 episodes and wrapping in May this year, vs. 11 episodes wrapping in January last year. That accounts for a chunk of the drop. The inflated part early in season one also explains a chunk of the drop. And then there's another chunk of the drop that is the show getting weaker. I think all three chunks are about the same size; the closest thing to an apples-to-apples comparison for me was episodes 4-11 of both seasons, and in CVPlus that leads to a fairly reasonable -7%ish. Grade: C+.
Bless This Mess: Despite being up in raw numbers, it was pretty disappointing for a show that had shown some life at 9:30 to show up at 8:30 and essentially be indistinguishable from The Kids Are Alright all season long. Grade: C-.
Mixed-ish: A fairly "meh" performer for most of the season that got even shakier in the spring. Though it was surely an internal favorite, the spring results suggested a show that should probably be in real cancellation trouble. Grade: C.
Black-ish: It was actually kind of impressive in the fall, but much less so after the new year, and then got dragged into bleak territory alongside Mixed-ish down the stretch. The spring was ugly enough to tip me to a Grade: C.
Emergence: Ranking this behind The Baker and the Beauty even though it had a lot more DVR audience, solely because of the sheer ugliness of the trajectory. It fell so far by the end that its last few L+7 ratings weren't any better than Baker, anyway. Grade: D.
For Life: Its full CVPlus average is 63, which is almost identical to Emergence and Stumptown and certainly nothing to write home about, but it was a lot less front-loaded than those two shows. Definitely a reasonable occupant given how little help it got from the 9/8c hour late in the season. 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.
Previous Breakdowns for ABC Tuesday: 2015-16 | 2016-17 | 2017-18 | 2018-19
Here's the now updated Schedules Plus for ABC Tuesday.
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