Monday, August 26, 2019

The Breakdown: CBS Sunday in 2018-19 (60 Minutes, God Friended Me, NCIS: Los Angeles and more!)




It's time for a journey through the CBS Sunday schedule in 2018-19...


fall

Year8:008:309:009:3010:0010:30Avg
2017-1860 MinutesWisdom of the CrowdNCIS: Los AngelesMadam Secretary103
198878761
1429176
2018-1960 MinutesGod Friended MeNCIS: Los AngelesMadam Secretary116 (+13%)
222 (+12%)104 (+20%)94 (+8%)60 (-2%)
163 (+15%)106 (+16%)80 (+6%)
VsAvg+38%+20%+2%+23%
Rank2/182/188/182/18

The news was positive for CBS Sunday in the fall, as the NFL's bounce-back year helped 60 Minutes, and the new post-60 Minutes drama God Friended Me was able to take advantage and show a little more spunk than last year's Wisdom of the Crowd. That spilled into a gain later in the night for NCIS: Los Angeles, as well.

winter

Year8:008:309:009:3010:0010:30Avg
2017-18Wisdom of the CrowdNCIS: Los AngelesMadam Secretary70
668758
2018-19God Friended MeNCIS: Los AngelesMadam Secretary75 (+7%)
78 (+18%)89 (+2%)58 (0%)
VsAvg-9%+4%-25%-10%
Rank13/187/1817/1811/18

The trends basically continued in the winter, with God Friended Me doing enough in standalone January episodes to eke out an early renewal (before proceeding to look much worse later in the season).

spring

Year8:008:309:009:3010:0010:30Avg
2017-18InstinctNCIS: Los AngelesMadam Secretary68
747752
2018-19The Red LineNCIS: Los Angeles45 (-33%)
38 (-48%)38 (-50%)60 (+14%)
VsAvg-55%-52%-16%-42%
Rank18/1818/1812/1818/18

The same three dramas continued on into the spring, but at the end of the season they made way for the eight-hour limited series The Red Line, scheduled for two hours on each of the four May sweeps Sundays. It was one of the season's biggest ratings disasters. Shoving NCIS: LA to 10/9c after Red Line really tanked its late-season ratings, but it still managed enough growth from Red Line to mark an improvement on the year-ago Madam Secretary.

Rating the Ratings

NameLoAvgHiy2yPlusLabelPlusy2yResults
60 Minutes0.61.222.5-9%128hit+5%detail
God Friended Me0.60.901.395marginaldetail
The Red Line0.30.360.438flopdetail
NCIS: Los Angeles*0.50.831.1-9%87marginal+5%detail
Madam Secretary*0.40.560.8-10%59flop+4%detail

60 Minutes: After a rare ratings decline for 60 Minutes last year, a bounce-back year for the NFL helped lead to a bounce-back year for 60 Minutes, getting it back onto its seemingly inevitable long-term upward trajectory. Grade: B.

God Friended Me: This show remains a bit of an enigma; it seems to have some casual appeal because it always gets a good bounce from inflated lead-ins (or even just high overall viewing, as in January), but it has very little DVRing and sometimes looks horrible when the conditions aren't ideal. When it didn't have a lot of help, it looked like a shaky to bad renewal, but it may continue to hide from those problems for another year with a return to 8/7c. Grade: C.

The Red Line: If the goal here was to make the God Friended Me renewal look better, I guess they succeeded. Grade: F.

NCIS: Los Angeles: Even though they were probably a weird pair, I imagine the live-heavy God Friended Me was a better lead-in for this show than Wisdom of the Crowd. But getting buried at 10/9c after The Red Line makes up for a lot of that benefit, and it was an accomplishment to grow in Plus. Grade: B+.

Madam Secretary: True Plus is harsher to this show than the raw trend, presumably because it got to avoid May sweeps due to The Red Line, but what we did see of it in the spring (two 0.4's to end the season) was pretty ugly. It was basically even in Plus in the winter and spring, though, so I won't go overly hard on it. 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.

Here's the now updated Schedules Plus for CBS Sunday.

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