WHAT MATTERS:
- It was never gonna be The Sound of Music Live!, but NBC's latest "event" was not even remotely eventful. The remake of Rosemary's Baby (1.1) didn't even noticeably outrate the usual combo of cancelled Believe and Crisis, which has gotta be a big disappointment for NBC. That means its conclusion on Thursday probably won't improve on the network's anemic Thursday levels, either.
- ABC's split-season treatment for the Sunday dramas has quietly been a significant success this spring, and it ended with Once Upon a Time (two hours at 2.3) actually matching last year's finale, while Revenge (1.4) adjusted down to finish 18% behind. For Once, that means it will cut a 30%+ year-to-year deficit from the fall all the way to about 20% by season's end.
- After a strong Sunday a week ago, Fox saw The Simpsons (1.6) give back its LEGO spike from last week and Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (1.1) fall off a cliff.
WHAT MATTERS:
- The slippage streak finally ended on Resurrection's finale night (2.1), as the show was up two ticks week-to-week as its lead-in Once Upon a Time (2.1) was slightly down. Even ekeing out the 2.1 after finals, this won't exactly inspire much confidence in a season two. But a pessimistic season two outlook would likely still be a better option than many of ABC's recent Sunday efforts.
- Fox had a pretty good night with a LEGO-themed The Simpsons (2.0), Family Guy (2.2) and Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (1.6) all hitting their best numbers in at least four weeks. Dramas on the other networks remained low; Believe (1.0), Crisis (1.0), The Mentalist (1.2) and Revenge (1.3) were all flat at or very near their lows and The Good Wife (1.1) took a hit in finals to hit a new series low.
- Cable: Game of Thrones hit another new high, while WGN America's Salem (0.18) has now lost over 60% of its premiere demo audience in just two weeks.
WHAT MATTERS:
- After a promising start to the spring, it seems to be falling apart in April for Once Upon a Time (1.7), down another three tenths week-to-week and now down seven tenths over the last two weeks. But after seeing the week-to-week HUT decline on Easter Sunday, it seems a bit more reasonable. It also had a much worse lead-in than usual from a Peanuts Easter special (0.9), and the network had low-rated Hallmark Hall of Fame movie In My Dreams from 9-11 (1.0, down 23% from the April movie last year).
- The absence of Resurrection at 9/8c may have been of some benefit to the competition, as NBC's Believe (1.1) was up a tick. It also had a better lead-in from Dateline (0.8), even if its flip to 8/7c with American Dream Builders (0.5) at 7/6c didn't net any growth over the first two hours. And Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (1.4) also had its first week-to-week growth despite the animated lead-in going into repeats.
- CBS was on the downswing across the board with The Amazing Race (1.7), The Good Wife (1.3) and The Mentalist (1.4).
- Cable also had some Easter ugliness:
WHAT MATTERS:
- The finals helped ABC, as Resurrection (2.1) was down just a single tenth, and it can probably deflect a lot of the blame for that over to Once Upon a Time (2.0), which still had an oddly large week-to-week decline (but not as bad after finals).
- Fox's Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (1.3) dropped into problem territory, though it too got some finals help that made it not quite as bad. Not sure if it's low enough for Fox to start considering moving it and re-installing the 8-10 animation block, but that scenario could at least be on the radar at this point. The toons are in repeats next week, so the network may want to see how Cosmos fares in that scenario.
- CBS had an 11-minute overrun from The Masters, but it was not much of an 18-49 lead-in to their all-original lineup. The Good Wife (1.5) gave back most of last week's big spike.
- The only steady Sunday lineup was NBC's already weak one, but that meant American Dream Builders (0.7) didn't benefit from last week's tryout after The Voice.
- UPDATE: AMC's Mad Men kicked off its two-year final season with 2.3 million viewers and a 0.8 demo rating. The show was already showing some signs of having peaked last season, but this marks a particularly steep 30%ish year-to-year decline. The silver lining for AMC is that Mad Men's presence seemed to help week two of Turn (0.61) skew a bit younger; that show was up 16% in the demo from the premiere despite a roughly 10% drop in overall viewership.
WHAT MATTERS:
- Week four of ABC's Resurrection (2.4) saw yet another drop, though this one wasn't that severe compared to last week's 2.5, especially after it adjusted up. The good news for this show is that it's through the against-The Walking Dead half of its season at what would still be a winning level for ABC. But it's not a given that TWD was making much of an impact. Next week promises to be telling.
- The death blow was probably dealt to all of NBC's Sunday shows, as Crisis (1.1) became the latest big week three dropper (though it adjusted up) and American Dream Builders (0.8) and Believe (1.1) inched down again as well.
- CBS benefited from an even bigger basketball overrun lead-in than last week, posting a 6.1 in the first 20 minutes of primetime, and some major developments on The Good Wife, which vaulted it to tie a season high.
- And Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (1.5) also took another hit. As a show that has some heavy male 18-34 interest (like its cartoon lead-ins), this will be another show to watch next week with The Walking Dead gone.
- UPDATE: The much-aforementioned The Walking Dead finale (8.0 with 15.7 million viewers) was the series' first spring finale not to set a new series high, but it was easily a finale record and darn close to the 8.2's that opened the fall and the spring. This marks roughly 20% growth from last week's 6.7 and about 25% growth from the spring 2013 finale (6.4). And as usual, there's simply no comparison between it and anything else scripted on TV. Its lead-out Talking Dead grew even more strongly, shattering the previous series high in Andrew Lincoln's first live appearance.
WHAT MATTERS:
- ABC's Resurrection (2.5) was down another 19% in week three. It was actually down more by percent in week three than in week two, which is not a promising trend. The show still has a lot of room to fall before being in the bubble conversation, but its potential as a game-changer for ABC is looking more limited. And it will have to try to fend off The Walking Dead's finale, which looms next week. One thing to note in its defense is that its lead-in Once Upon a Time (2.1) was also down quite a bit this week.
- Sunday got worse for NBC, too. The second timeslot originals for Believe (1.2) and Crisis (1.3) were each down the usual 20%ish from last week, and new reality series American Dream Builders (0.9) did not make an impact at 8/7c. (It was way behind last week's The Voice recap special.)
- And week three of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (1.7) also took a larger drop in week three than in week two.
- CBS had a very large lead-in from an NCAA basketball game with a really unfortunate result, delaying its lineup by about 40 minutes. This boosted 60 Minutes but made no real impact on the other shows.
WHAT MATTERS:
- Premiere Sunday on NBC didn't go very well, as Believe (1.5) took a whooping 44% drop in its first episode in its regular timeslot. Crisis (1.6) actually did garner an OK amount of initial interest (more than I expected, especially if you'd told me Believe had a 1.5), but it still likely needs to overachieve in the coming weeks to give itself a shot at a long-term future.
- On ABC, Resurrection (3.1) is still looking quite promising, down 18% from last week's huge premiere. That's basically an average drop, and that premiere number would've been quite tough to sustain anyway. And Once Upon a Time (2.4) and Revenge (1.7) were even to down minimally, managing to avoid the huge week two drops that their fellow long hiatus shows (Grey's Anatomy/Scandal) experienced.
- Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (2.0) remained pretty solid, down just a tenth in week two for Fox (though it might have been a bit steeper drop if not for the week one simulcast). CBS' only notable was a sizable decline for The Mentalist (1.3), ending its long streak of high-1's ratings.
Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey
Sundays, 9/8c, Fox
WHAT MATTERS:
- Here come all of the "back to life" headlines! ABC's Resurrection opened to a massive 13.9 million viewers and 3.8 adults 18-49 rating. I said last week that there was a very wide range of possibilities here, but this went beyond even what I imagined. It's a big win not just for ABC (which really needed it) but for broadcast TV in general, especially considering how these nets have been increasingly rejected on Sunday nights lately. The show was able to co-exist with male 18-34 powerhouse The Walking Dead because it leaned much more toward the female 25-54 end of the demo (scoring a prelim 5.4 there).
- Surrounding this big event were nice bounces from the returns of Once Upon a Time (2.3) and Revenge (1.9), though in the True metrics it looks like a much bigger deal for Once; Revenge didn't get that much help from its biggest lead-in in well over a year.
- Though it won't grab the headlines on this night, Fox had a solid premiere in a very crowded hour from its science documentary Cosmos: A Spacetime Journey (2.1). Though these numbers are worth touting, Fox will probably prefer you look at the cumulative numbers from a simulcast across
all most of its cable networks. It averaged a 2.9 across all ten networks, with no individual network cracking the cable top 100.
- As ABC and Fox soared, CBS was left behind. The Amazing Race (1.8) saw its usual week three rally from a terrible first two weeks against the Olympics and the Oscars, but this point was still down 24% from week three of last spring. The Good Wife (1.3) was also on the low end, though the The Mentalist (1.6) continued to look pretty good at 10/9c. NBC sat out one last Sunday with a 1.1 for four hours of Dateline and The Voice repeats; its big premiere night comes next week.
- Cable: yet another major success story in the 9/8c hour was the finale of True Detective (1.57), which soared to nearly a half point above any previous result. And The Walking Dead (6.30) was only down 2% week-to-week, though it had huge competition last week as well from Oscar.
|
| This Sunday sees a head-to-head premiere duel between two of midseason's biggest promotional darlings. The drama Resurrection got a ton of Academy Awards play and is incredibly high-stakes for ABC, potentially Paul Lee's last stand after a development season of disappointments and many a mega-bomb. And Fox's Seth MacFarlane documentary effort Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey came out of nowhere to get major promo during the Super Bowl. Both have OK but not great lead-in situations; Resurrection leads out of the respectable but fading Once Upon a Time franchise, while Cosmos will have the decent-rated but likely incompatible animated comedies. However, these concepts are unique enough that they may bring their own audiences. (Expensive science documentaries like Planet Earth and Life have certainly done so in the fairly recent past.)
For me, the issue coming into tonight is not who wins between ABC and Fox. It's whether there's any winner. If both shows bomb, I don't care who bombs less. So here's how this game works. "Over" wins if EITHER Resurrection OR Cosmos goes over the line, while "under" wins if NEITHER one goes over.
Highest Rating Among Resurrection AND Cosmos (Fox airing only) Over/Under: 2.25. |
Best Case/Worst Case returns today to preview the next nine shows premiering on broadcast, spanning from this Sunday (March 9) through two weeks from this Sunday (March 23). BC/WC will be back in roughly three weeks to hit the very end of March (Surviving Jack, Friends with Better Lives
) and into April.
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