First Two Weeks, Charlie's Angels

CHARLIE'S ANGELS (ABC)

WEEK ONE
ABC's remake of TV classic Charlie's Angels didn't premiere particularly well, leading off premiere Thursday with just a 2.1 demo. It also skewed old, as less than a third of its 8.74 million overall viewers fell within the 18-49 demo. I will note that this number was a little deceptive, because Thursday 8/7c is one of TV's hardest timeslots. In the TRUE metric, the Charlie's Angels premiere (2.49) was actually less than two tenths behind that of fellow ABC drama Revenge (2.65, yet a 3.3 raw 18-49). Either way, though, it's at best a fairly mediocre start.

WEEK TWO
Any hope that the show might do OK considering its tough situation was dashed in week two as the show plummeted to just a 1.5 demo. That's a fairly brutal 29% drop and instantly made the series ABC's weakest show in an "important" timeslot.

PROGNOSIS
The day after this show premiered, it was widely pronounced DOA for a couple reasons: 1) the bad 2.1 demo rating and 2) the fact that remakes frequently premiere with a healthy dose of nostalgia sampling that bails pretty quickly. As I noted above with the TRUE metric, I don't think the premiere rating was as bad as it appeared, but it certainly turned out the second reason was pretty valid. The show basically moved into certain cancellation territory starting in week two. How much more will it air? It's definitely not going to be two-and-through like last year's timeslot occupant My Generation, and it's also not going to get extended beyond its initial order. But I could see it lingering for a decent chunk of the fall provided it doesn't get down toward the very low 1's. My Generation got such a quick hook because it was already into Grey's Anatomy repeat territory by week two. The Angels are still about a half point away from that arena. Its first two weeks were quite close to those of NBC's failed Undercovers last year, and that ended up lingering in the mid 1's for about a month and ultimately airing 11 total episodes. I could see a similar fate for Charlie's Angels. Or maybe it just drops to a 1.2 and then a 1.0 the next two weeks and is gone. Either way, definitely no season two.

"First Two Weeks" is my look at... the first two weeks of a new scripted broadcast show's ratings. I also line all of these numbers up to do an objective analysis in what I call "the system."