It's time for a journey through the Fox Wednesday schedule in 2021-22...
fall
| Year | 8:00 | 8:30 | 9:00 | 9:30 | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-21 | The Masked Singer | I Can See Your Voice | 206 | ||
| 251 | 161 | ||||
| 2021-22 | The Masked Singer | Alter Ego | 133 (-35%) | ||
| 184 (-27%) | 82 (-49%) | ||||
| VsAvg | +52% | -29% | +12% | ||
| Rank | 3/21 | 16/21 | 9/21 | ||
It had already become pretty clear by the spring of 2021 that we've reached peak Masked Singer, and that continued to play out with another huge year-to-year drop for the franchise in fall 2021. But the year-to-year declines were far more severe in the 9/8c hour, where Alter Ego only managed half the ratings of I Can See Your Voice.
winter
| Year | 8:00 | 8:30 | 9:00 | 9:30 | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-21 | The Masked Dancer | Name That Tune | 95 | ||
| 97 | 94 | ||||
| 2021-22 | I Can See Your Voice | Next Level Chef | 82 (-14%) | ||
| 75 (-22%) | 89 (-5%) | ||||
| VsAvg | -60% | -52% | -56% | ||
| Rank | 21/21 | 20/21 | 21/21 | ||
After a strong first season in fall 2020 following The Masked Singer, I Can See Your Voice was called into winter lead-off duty for season two and had a really rough time. The closest thing to a bright spot for Fox on this night was old reliable Gordon Ramsay, who delivered yet another competent occupant to the 9/8c hour in Next Level Chef.
spring
| Year | 8:00 | 8:30 | 9:00 | 9:30 | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-21 | The Masked Singer | Game of Talents | 140 | ||
| 186 | 93 | ||||
| 2021-22 | The Masked Singer | Domino Masters | 101 (-28%) | ||
| 136 (-27%) | 65 (-30%) | ||||
| VsAvg | +2% | -62% | -34% | ||
| Rank | 9/21 | 21/21 | 19/21 | ||
Even with a full year of sharp declines in the books, the downward spiral kept coming for The Masked Singer in the spring, taking the franchise all the way out of big hit territory. And the franchise put forth yet another sub-50% retainer in the 9/8c hour, as Domino Masters proved incapable of finding the LEGO Masters spark from two years ago.
Rating the Ratings
| Name | Lo | Avg | Hi | y2y | Plus | Label | Plusy2y | Results |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Masked Singer Fall | 0.8 | 0.94 | 1.1 | -47% | 185 | big hit | -33% | detail |
| Alter Ego | 0.3 | 0.42 | 0.6 | 83 | marginal | detail | ||
| The Masked Singer Spring | 0.6 | 0.71 | 0.9 | -41% | 139 | hit | -26% | detail |
| Domino Masters | 0.2 | 0.34 | 0.4 | 66 | flop | detail | ||
| I Can See Your Voice | 0.3 | 0.37 | 0.5 | -66% | 73 | marginal | -57% | detail |
| Next Level Chef | 0.4 | 0.71 | 2.6 | 139 | hit | detail |
The Masked Singer Fall: Decline is a bit exaggerated because the fall 2020 season had a Thanksgiving post-football episode, but it's still bad. This is a D-level drop but I won't quite go that far because it remained among the biggest entertainment programs on TV, plus it had to face Survivor after not doing so last season. But if it continues at this rate of decline the grades are gonna keep getting worse. Grade: C-.
Alter Ego: Like I said with Game of Talents last year... at least it wasn't Almost Family! However, this show was probably even a little weaker than Game of Talents. Grade: D+.
The Masked Singer Spring: We're now more than a year past the peak and the big declines keep coming. As promised twenty seconds ago, the grades will get worse as it fades from the top of the charts. Grade: D+.
Domino Masters: Thought about going even worse but I kinda feel like this was pretty interchangeable with Alter Ego, considering how much TMS collapsed from fall to spring. Hey, it played Beyond the Edge to basically a draw at 9/8c even though Survivor was a lot stronger, so that's... something! Grade: D+.
I Can See Your Voice: -57% is brutal, man. Since it didn't actually hit flop territory I will gift it a Grade: D-, but this is an enormous fall from grace for one of the really promising Masked Singer lead-outs. Clearly it was just attached at the hip with TMS audience, and getting separated (plus that show's declines over the last year) meant there was nothing much left. You can say that the same general thing happened to LEGO Masters in season two, but this show had a bigger season one Plus and ended up with the same Plus as LEGO despite airing in the winter rather than the summer (in a period when Fox has often been able to take advantage of Survivor's absence), so it's pretty clearly even worse than that one.
Next Level Chef: Average is completely distorted by multiple post-football episodes, and it'll get the biggest football lead-in of all next season when it airs after the Super Bowl. I gave Name That Tune a B- last year and this was perhaps a touch more impressive in the Wednesday episodes, growing from I Can See Your Voice by almost a tenth on average. I thought about penalizing it since it had the football exposure, but you'd never really know it from the trajectory of the Wednesday episodes. Quite steady. Grade: B.
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 Wednesday: 2015-16 | 2016-17 | 2017-18 | 2018-19 | 2019-20 | 2020-21
Here's the now updated Schedules Plus for Fox Wednesday.
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