Thursday, August 6, 2020

The Breakdown: Fox Thursday in 2019-20 (Last Man Standing, Outmatched, Deputy)




It's time for a journey through the Fox 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


Year8:008:309:009:30Avg
2018-19Thursday Night Football459
459459
2019-20Thursday Night Football576 (+26%)
576 (+26%)576 (+26%)
VsAvg+357%+396%+376%
Rank1/191/191/19

Football!

winter


Year8:008:309:009:30Avg
2018-19GothamThe Orville71
6875
2019-20Last Man StandingOutmatchedDeputy81 (+14%)
100 (+48%)73 (+8%)76 (+2%)
86 (+28%)
VsAvg-29%-10%-22%
Rank13/199/1913/19

A year after its historic Friday night breakout, Fox shifted a diminished version of Last Man Standing over to midseason Thursday duty, where it provided a major improvement on the drama night that aired here last year. But its newbie lead-out Outmatched had very mediocre retention, while 9/8c drama newbie Deputy showed ended up matching Outmatched for much of the winter.

spring


Year8:008:309:009:30Avg
2018-19GothamThe Orville62
5866
2019-20Last Man StandingOutmatchedMental Samurai (R)54 (-13%)
75 (+28%)61 (+5%)40 (-39%)
68 (+16%)
VsAvg-24%-40%-31%
Rank12/1918/1916/19

Fox ran out of content and treated us to a spring of mostly Mental Samurai repeats, while the comedies lost steam but remained an improvement on Gotham.

Rating the Ratings

NameLoAvgHiy2yPlusLabelPlusy2yResults
Last Man Standing*0.60.741.0-32%90marginal-21%detail
Outmatched0.50.560.769flopdetail
Deputy0.50.580.871marginaldetail

Last Man Standing: Not a huge surprise that last season's numbers were unsustainable, since it lost a lot of its audience over the course of the first Fox season. But it can't get a good grade because the year-to-year trends didn't really show much improvement even as the season went on (at least until the pandemic hit). Young Sheldon and Superstore provided a lot of comedy competition, but it's still a little disappointing that the show basically went back to where it was at the end of its ABC tenure. Grade: C-.

Outmatched: Had about the same retention as last year's The Cool Kids, but out of a much weaker lead-in. Grade: D+.

Deputy: This was like the quintessential bubble show. Showed some signs of life and had OK DVRing, though a lot less than something like the year-ago winter occupant The Orville. Could've gone either way, but probably wasn't needed on top of Prodigal Son. 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 Fox Thursday: 2015-16 | 2016-17 | 2017-18 | 2018-19

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

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