A New-Era Cartoon Finally Sticks
After losing American Dad! and The Cleveland Show, Fox spent several years attempting to incorporate live-action comedies into its Sunday lineup, perhaps most notably with Will Forte's The Last Man on Earth, but recommitted to going all-animation starting in fall 2019 with Bless the Harts. Though Harts only lasted two seasons and early 2020 newbie Duncanville just one, Fox was finally able to find some improvement on those shows with the January 2021 launch of The Great North. Its season one average was carried by two January episodes that led out of NFL playoff games, but the show did prove to be a little stronger than Duncanville when the dust settled, typically dropping about 15% of its Simpsons lead-in.
Seasons two and three got similar levels of NFL boost, but in these seasons it was airing in the fall after the regular season NFL lead-ins. Once all that inflation was gone in the winter/spring, The Great North was a clear weak link when lined up with Simpsons, Bob's Burgers and Family Guy, but it was doing enough to stay on the air.
Season four saw The Great North completely miss out on all those fall lead-ins, leading to a catastrophic-looking drop in its ratings averages. The silver lining was that Fox also chose this year (plus spring 2023's Housebroken) to start rolling out more animated newbies, Krapopolis and Grimsburg, and those shows arguably looked even worse. In the end, this has reinforced at least through 2023-24 that The Great North is the strongest (or least weak) animated newbie in this generation. That's a low bar to clear, but it's been enough for the show to hang on for a fifth season. It's aired a few episodes in early September, getting a bit of the early NFL juice, and then will return at midseason.
Adults 18-49 info by season:
| Seas | Year | Slot | Avg | y2y | Lo | Hi | Results | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2021 | Sunday 8:30 | 0.55 | 0.3 | 2.1 | detail | C | |
| 2 | 2021-22 | 0.40 | -27% | 0.2 | 0.8 | detail | C+ | |
| 3 | 2022-23 | 0.33 | -17% | 0.2 | 0.8 | detail | C+ | |
| 4 | 2024 | Sunday 9:00 | 0.15 | -54% | 0.1 | 0.2 | detail | C- |
Historical-adjusted ratings by season:
| Seas | Year | A18-49+ | Label | Now24 | y2y | Lo | Hi | Premiere | Finale |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2021 | 85 | marginal | 0.32 | 47 | 330 | 107 | 47 | |
| 2 | 2021-22 | 78 | marginal | 0.29 | -8% | 43 | 149 | 133 | 43 |
| 3 | 2022-23 | 77 | marginal | 0.29 | -1% | 40 | 176 | 176 | 40 |
| 4 | 2024 | 40 | flop | 0.15 | -48% | 26 | 58 | 58 | 42 |
| AVERAGE: | 70 | marginal | |||||||
| CAREER: | 279 | blip | |||||||
The War of 18-49 chronicles the ratings history of veteran primetime series. For more, see the Index.
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