Wednesday, October 24, 2012

First Two Weeks, Chicago Fire


WEEK ONE
Like ABC with Nashville, NBC waited on Chicago Fire's premiere till after the presidential debate in week two, meaning it was in a head-to-head showdown with Nashville. And Chicago Fire pretty much met its low expectations, hitting a 1.9 demo and fully holding onto its Law and Order: SVU lead-in. That's not great, but it's certainly not the worst "conventional" drama they've launched in recent years. Last year's Prime Suspect had just a 1.6 with a much bigger (though less compatible) lead-in.

WEEK TWO
But a lot of the "not bad"-ness evaporated in week two. Chicago Fire dropped a surprising 21% to a 1.5 demo. It had little help from SVU (which was down to a 1.7 in the 9:30 half-hour), but this was still a disappointment considering the show was relatively steady in the half-hour breakdowns in week one.

PROGNOSIS
If this show had held up pretty well in week two, I was ready to unload some kind of potential sleeper narrative. The -21% surprised me, and so I think I have to retreat to my pessimistic preseason outlook for this one. I'm not ruling out an episode extension or a full season at this point, because frankly I'm not sure there's going to be a better plan for long-troubled NBC Wednesday within the rest of this season. But it just feels like the Dick Wolf era is winding down on NBC, and I can't imagine NBC wanting another SVU-centric Wednesday in 2013-14. If Revolution continues to look like a legit success for the rest of the season, NBC would probably be better off trying to center Wednesday around that show, and I don't see Chicago Fire having the ratings to justify trying somewhere else. Cancel.

"First Two Weeks" is my look at... the first two weeks of a new scripted broadcast show's ratings. I also line up all of the premiere and week two drop numbers together.

2 comments:

Spot said...

It might get a few more episodes, but I think
"Hannibal" is going to replace this at mid-season. It's compatible
with SVU, and (I assume) it's very much a 10pm show.

Spot said...

I think sooner rather than later there going to move SVU back to 10pm, its always struggled at 9, and I think now NBC realises it isn't strong enough to launch a show

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