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
Year | 8:00 | 8:30 | 9:00 | 9:30 | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-19 | Thursday Night Football | 459 | |||
| 459 | 459 | ||||
| 2019-20 | Thursday Night Football | 576 (+26%) | |||
| 576 (+26%) | 576 (+26%) | ||||
| VsAvg | +357% | +396% | +376% | ||
| Rank | 1/19 | 1/19 | 1/19 | ||
Football!
winter
Year | 8:00 | 8:30 | 9:00 | 9:30 | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-19 | Gotham | The Orville | 71 | ||
| 68 | 75 | ||||
| 2019-20 | Last Man Standing | Outmatched | Deputy | 81 (+14%) | |
| 100 (+48%) | 73 (+8%) | 76 (+2%) | |||
| 86 (+28%) | |||||
| VsAvg | -29% | -10% | -22% | ||
| Rank | 13/19 | 9/19 | 13/19 | ||
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
Year | 8:00 | 8:30 | 9:00 | 9:30 | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-19 | Gotham | The Orville | 62 | ||
| 58 | 66 | ||||
| 2019-20 | Last Man Standing | Outmatched | Mental Samurai (R) | 54 (-13%) | |
| 75 (+28%) | 61 (+5%) | 40 (-39%) | |||
| 68 (+16%) | |||||
| VsAvg | -24% | -40% | -31% | ||
| Rank | 12/19 | 18/19 | 16/19 | ||
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
Name | Lo | Avg | Hi | y2y | Plus | Label | Plusy2y | Results |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Last Man Standing* | 0.6 | 0.74 | 1.0 | -32% | 90 | marginal | -21% | detail |
| Outmatched | 0.5 | 0.56 | 0.7 | 69 | flop | detail | ||
| Deputy | 0.5 | 0.58 | 0.8 | 71 | marginal | detail |
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.
