The Breakdown: CW Thursday in 2021-22 (Walker, Legacies)

It's time for a journey through the CW Thursday schedule in 2021-22...


fall

Year	8:00	8:30	9:00	9:30	Avg
2020-21	Supernatural		Supernatural	The Outpost		The Outpost	23
	2020-21	35		35	11			11	23
2021-22	Walker		Walker	Legacies		Legacies	20 (-12%)
	2021-22	24 (-30%)		24.0824131064446	17 (+44%)			17 (+44%)	20.3175914192614
VsAvg	-49%		-0.486470122137783	-52%		-0.521158535123851	-50%
Rank	19/21		19/21	20/21		20/21	21/21

Back less than three months after its August finale, the CW sophomore Walker just kept fading; a show that had been hitting high 0.1's and low 0.2's well into the summer premiered at a 0.11 and stayed around there for much of the fall. Legacies, meanwhile, was mostly mired at low 0.1's by this point.

winter

Year	8:00	8:30	9:00	9:30	Avg
2020-21	Walker		Walker	Legacies		Legacies	33
	2020-21	43		43	23			23	33
2021-22	Walker		Walker	Legacies		Legacies	17 (-48%)
	2021-22	22 (-48%)		22.3462391383056	12 (-46%)			12 (-46%)	17.3804082186821
VsAvg	-50%		-0.500501456457042	-63%		-0.625280471515097	-55%
Rank	20/21		20/21	21/21		21/21	21/21

In the winter, they kept trickling down, and now got compared against the big opening weeks of Walker, which was not a pretty comparison.

spring

Year	8:00	8:30	9:00	9:30	Avg
2020-21	Walker		Walker	Legacies		Legacies	23
	2020-21	28		28	18			18	23
2021-22	Walker		Walker	Legacies		Legacies	15 (-35%)
	2021-22	17 (-40%)		16.8576891745112	13 (-29%)			13 (-29%)	14.8974927588704
VsAvg	-56%		-0.557650119028373	-53%		-0.530411589220904	-55%
Rank	20/21		20/21	20/21		20/21	20/21

But the comparisons were not really much more favorable in the spring, even after the initial Walker hype was supposed to have worn off. After DST, Walker was south of 0.10 most weeks, and easily the network's weakest 8/7c anchor on the four weeknights.

Rating the Ratings

Name	Lo	Avg	Hi	y2y	Plus	Label	Plusy2y	Results
Walker	0.1	0.11	0.2	-46%	21	flop	-32%	detail
Legacies	0.0	0.08	0.1	-38%	15	flop	-22%	detail

Walker: I hate to be this harsh on a sophomore that was front-loaded in its first season, but it's just not easy to come up with a way to forgive the show for continuing to go -40% even into the spring. It's a brutal outcome after it looked so promising in winter 2021. It's getting a third season plus a spin-off, so maybe all the promo for that can bring some of the original viewers back? Grade: D.

Legacies: Basically the same story except it's an older show and thus not dropping quite as much, but still a lot. Grade: D+.

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 CW Thursday: 2015-16 | 2016-17 | 2017-18 | 2018-19 | 2019-20 | 2020-21

Here's the now updated Schedules Plus for CW Thursday.