The Breakdown: CW Thursday in 2019-20 (Supernatural, Katy Keene, Legacies and more!)

It's time for a journey through the CW Thursday 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	Avg
2018-19	Supernatural		Supernatural	Legacies		Legacies	40
	2018-19	45		45	35			35	40
2019-20	Supernatural		Supernatural	Legacies		Legacies	36 (-8%)
	2019-20	39 (-13%)		38.8953197286927	34 (-3%)			34 (-3%)	36.3022984134465
VsAvg	-21%		-0.209247939803526	-10%		-0.0965998844708696	-16%
Rank	15/19		15/19	14/19		14/19	16/19

Year	8:00	8:30	9:00	9:30	Avg
2018-19	Supernatural		Supernatural	Legacies		Legacies	40
	2018-19	45		45	35			35	40
2019-20	Supernatural		Supernatural	Legacies		Legacies	34 (-14%)
	2019-20	37 (-18%)		36.6100971288291	32 (-8%)			32 (-8%)	34.1694239869072
VsAvg	-25%		-0.253882694360248	-15%		-0.147295408222626	-21%
Rank	16/19		16/19	15/19		15/19	16/19

Last year's duo of Supernatural and Legacies returned in fall 2019, with the latter trending noticeably stronger than the former.

winter

Year	8:00	8:30	9:00	9:30	Avg
2018-19	Supernatural		Supernatural	Legacies		Legacies	37
	2018-19	44		44	31			31	37
2019-20	Katy Keene		Katy Keene	Legacies		Legacies	23 (-39%)
	2019-20	17 (-61%)		17.1139406806248	28 (-9%)			28 (-9%)	22.5592854426418
VsAvg	-63%		-0.628367254980632	-20%		-0.196149813540847	-44%
Rank	19/19		19/19	16/19		16/19	19/19

Year	8:00	8:30	9:00	9:30	Avg
2018-19	Supernatural		Supernatural	Legacies		Legacies	37
	2018-19	44		44	31			31	37
2019-20	Katy Keene		Katy Keene	Legacies		Legacies	21 (-43%)
	2019-20	16 (-63%)		16.1084427366848	26 (-14%)			26 (-14%)	21.2338563347209
VsAvg	-65%		-0.649799403084144	-24%		-0.241493107254363	-47%
Rank	19/19		19/19	17/19		17/19	19/19

Supernatural aired just three winter episodes on the night before giving way to the very weak Riverdale spin-off Katy Keene. Legacies once again did its best to mitigate the damage, building considerably on its lead-in, but was inevitably dragged from its borderline 0.2/0.3 level down to a consistent 0.2.

spring

Year	8:00	8:30	9:00	9:30	Avg
2018-19	Supernatural		Supernatural	In the Dark		In the Dark	28
	2018-19	38		38	18			18	28
2019-20	Katy Keene		Katy Keene	In the Dark		In the Dark	10 (-65%)
	2019-20	11 (-71%)		11.1585261010565	9 (-53%)			9 (-53%)	9.88134540274283
VsAvg	-72%		-0.718823379892691	-70%		-0.700746622683988	-71%
Rank	19/19		19/19	19/19		19/19	19/19

Year	8:00	8:30	9:00	9:30	Avg
2018-19	Supernatural		Supernatural	In the Dark		In the Dark	28
	2018-19	38		38	18			18	28
2019-20	Katy Keene		Katy Keene	In the Dark		In the Dark	11 (-60%)
	2019-20	13 (-67%)		12.6609919237201	10 (-46%)			10 (-46%)	11.2118422457039
VsAvg	-68%		-0.681598149083149	-66%		-0.661171512562292	-67%
Rank	19/19		19/19	19/19		19/19	19/19

When Legacies finished up in late March, the night went into full-on surrender mode, as the already borderline sophomore In the Dark showed up and tanked well below its poor level from a year ago.

Rating the Ratings

Name	Lo	Avg	Hi	y2y	Plus	Label	Plusy2y	Results
Supernatural*	0.2	0.29	0.4	-29%	35	solid(CW)	-18%	detail
Katy Keene	0.1	0.11	0.2		14	flop		detail
Legacies	0.2	0.23	0.3	-24%	28	marginal(CW)	-12%	detail
In the Dark	0.1	0.08	0.1	-49%	10	flop	-41%	detail

Supernatural: Ended with a couple random Monday episodes, which would've been quite the way for this show to sputter out if it weren't going to resume production. This poster child for steadiness has really crumbled in the space of just two years, actually posting its lowest Plus on a weeknight in series history. Grade: C-.

Katy Keene: We got a definitive answer to the "can the CW still cancel something" question, though even in the case of this disaster it took until well after the end of the season. Maybe you can make the case it was a teeeeny bit stronger than Lucy Hale's last effort Life Sentence, but even that is debatable. Grade: F.

Legacies: One of the biggest discrepancies between Live+SD performance and Live+7 performance on TV, from down double digits in L+SD to actually up in L+7. It only had a 100% bump in Live+7 three times in season one, and it only did not get to 100% three times in season two. There's an obvious timeslot reason why the same-day numbers lag: it aired a lot after the disaster Katy Keene instead of Supernatural. While it was not as dramatic a story as All American, it's clear that some of the streaming audience found this show, and it was a win by the CW's low standards this year. Grade: B+.

In the Dark: This was already a shaky show last year, so to go -41% in Plus is pretty ridiculous, but like Legacies it experienced the huge change from Supernatural to Katy Keene as a lead-in, and like Legacies it had much bigger DVR percentage gains in season two. It's still a huge drop, but enough of a difference to narrowly keep it off the F line. No doubt it should continue getting the low priority treatment. 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.

Previous Breakdowns for CW Thursday: 2015-16 | 2016-17 | 2017-18 | 2018-19

Here's the now updated Schedules Plus for CW Thursday.