The Breakdown: ABC Tuesday in 2022-23 (The Rookie, The Rookie: Feds, Will Trent and more!)

It's time for a journey through the ABC Tuesday schedule in 2022-23...


fall

Year	8:00	8:30	9:00	9:30	10:00	10:30	Avg
2021-22	The Bachelorette				The Bachelorette	The Bachelorette	The Bachelorette	Queens		Queens	108
	2021-22	133		133	133		133	58		58		108
2022-23	Bachelor in Paradise				Bachelor in Paradise	Bachelor in Paradise	Bachelor in Paradise	The Rookie: Feds		The Rookie: Feds	108 (0%)
	2022-23	131 (-2%)		131 (-2%)	131 (-2%)		131 (-2%)	63 (+8%)		63 (+8%)		108.007076617272
VsAvg	+22%		0.218784386404463	+16%		0.15980031868148	-19%		-0.186151400987945	+9%
Rank	6/24		6/24	6/24		6/24	20/24		20/24	6/24

Night two of Bachelor in Paradise was actually quite close to the year-ago fall season of The Bachelorette (though that was a rather weak Bachelorette season). The network ended up dead even for the night year-to-year as the new The Rookie spin-off slightly improved the 10/9c hour vs. last year's Queens. However, a lot of that improvement came in the early weeks, and by the end of the fall Feds was not meaningfully stronger than Queens.

winter

Year	8:00	8:30	9:00	9:30	10:00	10:30	Avg
2021-22	Judge Steve Harvey		Judge Steve Harvey	Abbott Elementary	Black-ish	Queens		Queens	91
	2021-22	125		125	113	81	50			50	91
	2021-22										125	125	113	81	50	50	91
	2021-22			125	125	97				97	50	50	91
2022-23	The Rookie		The Rookie	The Rookie: Feds		The Rookie: Feds	Will Trent		Will Trent	93 (+2%)
	2022-23	126 (+1%)		126.051684713162	81 (-16%)		81 (-16%)	71 (+43%)			71 (+43%)	92.926474544354
VsAvg	+40%		0.395900285007861	-3%		-0.0304232027535169	-1%		-0.00507625257578291	+13%
Rank	2/24		2/24	10/24		10/24	11/24		11/24	4/24

In the winter The Rookie mothership made the move to Tuesday, airing earlier than 10/9c for the first time in its five-season run, and the results were rather splendid. After hitting mostly 0.3's on Sunday in the fall, it exploded to a high 0.6 in its first Tuesday episode and hung in the 0.5 range for most of its episodes going forward. The network moved spin-off Feds to the 9/8c hour after the mothership, and it definitely helped the numbers, but likely not as much as ABC hoped. In fact, the better performer was probably at 10/9c, where newbie Will Trent actually had higher raw numbers than Feds did in the fall.

spring

Year	8:00	8:30	9:00	9:30	10:00	10:30	Avg
2021-22	Judge Steve Harvey		Judge Steve Harvey	Abbott Elementary	Black-ish	To Tell the Truth		To Tell the Truth	73
	2021-22	87		87	102	71	45			45	73
	2021-22										87	87	102	71	45	45	73
	2021-22			87	87	87				87	45	45	73
2022-23	The Rookie		The Rookie	The Rookie: Feds		The Rookie: Feds	Will Trent		Will Trent	77 (+6%)
	2022-23	104 (+19%)		103.655524917614	67 (-23%)		67 (-23%)	61 (+36%)			61 (+36%)	77.2335283699868
VsAvg	+27%		0.270259393489954	-29%		-0.291979301824634	-14%		-0.144935176617596	-6%
Rank	4/24		4/24	19/24		19/24	16/24		16/24	14/24

Everything dropped in the spring, but Rookie's timeslot improvement sped up when compared with the weaker second half of Judge Steve Harvey's season.

Rating the Ratings

Name	Lo	Avg	Hi	y2y	Plus	Label	Plusy2y	Results
Bachelor in Paradise	0.4	0.54	0.6		126	hit
The Rookie*	0.3	0.43	0.6	+20%	101	solid	+44%	detail
The Rookie: Feds	0.2	0.30	0.4		70	marginal		detail
Will Trent	0.2	0.29	0.4		67	flop		detail

Bachelor in Paradise: Already updated.

The Rookie: We just keep re-learning this lesson about how much more beneficial the 8/7c hour is compared with 10/9c. I want to show some restraint with the grading in these situations, but like with S.W.A.T. last year, there's evidence from another timeslot that suggests this was a really impressive performance even after you take that into account. As we'll see on the Sunday post, it was actually up quite a bit year-to-year even in the same-timeslot comparisons from the fall before moving to Tuesday (though its 9/8c lead-in was up a lot too). And it ended up posting some of ABC's best numbers on Tuesday historically, even edging out the strong Judge Steve Harvey start from a year ago. (The network's highest winter average at 8/7c since Millionaire in 2000!) For the show to be in the 70's for four years and then suddenly go over the league average is kinda crazy, so I guess I gotta go with Grade: A.

The Rookie: Feds: The spin-off, on the other hand, underperformed at pretty much every turn. It was clearly not promising at all in the fall, and one could argue the winter/spring with nearly 40% drops from the mothership was even worse. ABC has been dragging its feet on a decision here, understandably. Grade: C-.

Will Trent: These numbers are nothing to write home about, with the season average dipping into flop territory, but in the last decade or so ABC has really only had one show (early season one of Big Sky) that did a lot better in this hour, and many shows that did worse. It definitely looked stronger than Feds. 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 | 2019-20 | 2020-21 | 2021-22

Here's the now updated Schedules Plus for ABC Tuesday.