SpotVault - The Last Ship (TNT) - Fall 2018 Ratings

Cablemetrics: The Last Ship, Survivor's Remorse, The Sinner, Game of Thrones

These numbers are current through Monday, August 21.

WHAT MATTERS:

• TNT veteran The Last Ship (0.34/0.30) was back on the Sunday scene, about two months later than it usually premieres due to production delays. This was only a slight Plus decline from its last premiere (a 0.41/0.39 doubleheader in June 2016). While that may seem acceptable, it is worth noting that Last Ship took a big post-premiere surge last year, to 0.57 in week two and settling around 0.5 for most of the season. So the show will have a high bar to clear if it wants to stay close to these trends going forward.

SpotVault - The Last Ship (TNT) - 2017 Ratings

Cablemetrics: Mr. Robot, Suits, The Night Of, Tyrant

These numbers are current through Wednesday, July 13.

WHAT MATTERS:

• The double-episode return of USA's heavily-acclaimed Mr. Robot averaged a 0.43 demo, narrowly dodging the 0.42 season low from last year and not far behind the 0.46 season premiere and finale.
• There are a couple ways of looking at this. The natural reaction is probably: "Boy, all that hype did nothing for the ratings!" The way I look at it is two-fold: first, being down 7% year-to-year is a really good trend on cable nowadays. But I'm also kinda cautious because there's a lingering possibility that the hype did do something for the ratings, and this 0.43 is actually inflated compared with what's to come. If it holds up as well post-premiere as it did last year, I think USA's gonna be pretty happy. But let's wait a week and see if that happens.

Cablemetrics: Preacher, Ray Donovan, Wrecked, Animal Kingdom, Dead of Summer

These numbers are current through Tuesday, July 5.

WHAT MATTERS:

• In the first week without Game of Thrones, nothing in the table broke a 1.0. But the lack of Thrones may have helped some other male-skewing players in the Sunday landscape; both Preacher (0.51) and Ray Donovan (0.33) upticked on Sunday, even on a low-viewed holiday weekend night. The only of the Sunday 9/8c staples that seemed to suffer from the holiday at all was The Last Ship (0.41).

SpotVault - The Last Ship (TNT) - Summer 2016 Ratings

Cablemetrics: The League, You're the Worst, Awkward, The Last Ship

These numbers are current through Thursday, September 10.

WHAT MATTERS:

• It was a good news/bad news night for FXX's premiere comedies. The League was back with a 0.49, up 20% from last year's premiere, and continued its long tradition of laser-focusing on the 18-49 demo like almost nothing else on TV. (Its 86% skew is nearly 20 points ahead of anything else on the table, and it means that only about 100,000 of its 720,000 total viewers were out of the 18-49 demo.) But the acclaimed sophomore You're the Worst (0.16) had weak one-third retention in its move from FX and set a new series low.
  

Spotted Ratings, Weekend Roundup 6/26-6/28/15

WHAT MATTERS:

• FINALS UPDATE: Added 6/19-6/21 and 6/26-6/28 tables on this post. Big Brother (1.8) adjusted up to match last year's Sunday premiere, but Celebrity Family Feud (1.9) stayed narrowly in the nightly lead with an uptick of its own. HBO saw True Detective (1.33) hold up swimmingly in week two, while The Ballers (0.89) and The Brink (0.55) each dropped close to 20%. Humans (0.53) had a pretty good start on AMC, tying last year's Turn series premiere and well ahead of anything Halt and Catch Fire has ever done.

• Celebrity Family Feud is a great lesson in how quickly the raw numbers landscape shifts. The last time this concept was tried, by NBC in summer 2008, it premiered at a 2.3 demo rating, settled at around 2.0, and was a modest performer not renewed for season two. In 2015, premiering just a tenth higher on ABC at 2.4, it's the breakout smash of the summer. It's not a huge shock that this would do better than the 2008 edition; the 2015 one has got Steve Harvey, the host who has been a godsend for the syndicated version's ratings. But it's pretty striking that the show was actually the #1 entertainment series last week. However, it took a big 25% dip to a still very good 1.8 last night. It's possible the BET Awards were rough competition for this show.

• Great as the Feud did, it shouldn't get lost that ABC had a second significant success last Sunday in another resurrected reality concept. BattleBots (1.9) retained about 80% of its lead-in in 18-49, but it was not simply riding the Feud's coattails; in fact, it skewed younger and considerably more male than its lead-in (actually building from Feud's 1.9 up to a 2.1 in M18-49). So this was a success in its own right. It also took a considerable week two drop to 1.4. But at least so far, the only bad news for ABC in this block is that they've only got it for six weeks.

• And CBS premiered its third night of Big Brother (1.7). Like the first two nights (2.1/2.1), this was down less than average from the year-ago premieres (2.3/2.3/1.8).

• The other notable from last weekend (6/19-6/21) was Fox bringing major championship golf to broadcast primetime with their newly acquired US Open. The event didn't really do much on Thursday (0.7), Friday (0.6) or Saturday (0.7), only hanging a relatively strong average for Sunday (1.3). I'm assuming these are all full-day averages, as the event was mostly much higher (upper-1's) during Sunday primetime and peaked with a 2.6 at 10:00. This weekend, Fox had the USA's quarterfinal in the Women's World Cup; its preliminary 2.0 on Friday improved on the 1.6/1.8 for group stage games in Fox primetime.

• On June 21 cable, a fresh cast on True Detective (1.42) had a strong return, just behind the huge season one finale (1.57) and miles ahead of everything else from season one (including the 0.97 series premiere). TNT's The Last Ship averaged a 0.69 for its two-hour return, considerably below the low-1's throughout season one.

SpotVault - The Last Ship (TNT) - Summer 2015 Ratings

The Last Ship

Sundays, 9/8c, TNT

Spotted Ratings, Weekend Roundup 6/19-6/21/15

Out of town this week, but here's an open thread for last night's ratings. My thoughts and full table to come later.

Premiered last night: Celebrity Family Feud (ABC) | BattleBots (ABC) | plus cable notables True Detective (HBO) & The Last Ship (TNT)

Spotted Ratings, Weekend Roundup 8/22-8/24/14

WHAT MATTERS:

• The series finale of True Blood (2.1) was only up 14% from last week and didn't even set a new season high. Though it may have been an underwhelming final season, it still goes out as easily the top drama of the summer. More importantly for HBO going forward, this bounce helped vault rookie The Leftovers (0.9) to a new high. In other finale news, TNT's The Last Ship (1.0) was exactly even week-to-week, wrapping up a first season that had nearly the exact same rating every week.

• On Saturday, the return of Doctor Who (0.85) and the introduction of a new Doctor exploded for BBC America, way up from the 0.6 that began the last season in March 2013. But new lead-out Intruders (0.23) retained very little of that audience. Fox's second and final Saturday Glee repeat (0.2) once again failed to hit a 0.1, though it was very close (since the 9:30 half-hour averaged 0.1).

• MTV ruled Sunday with the Video Music Awards (4.2), though they were down a full point from last year (and merely tied Monday's Emmys). Despite that, ABC's finale of Rising Star (1.0) was up two tenths to the show's best rating in over a month. I wouldn't think this would be enough for renewal, but I guess we'll see. And CBS saw a big bounce for Big Brother (2.5), which not only set a new season high but tied last season's high as well. (One of the many times it hit 2.5 last season was on this night 52 weeks ago.)

• With all the national NFL preseason games in the books, we can pretty confidently say it was not a good preseason for the league. Four of the five games were steeply behind the corresponding games last year, including all three this weekend.

Spotted Ratings, Sunday 7/27/14

WHAT MATTERS:

• ABC added a second hour of Wipeout (0.8) to lead off their Sunday, and it proceeded to bring the two-hour period well behind last week's lineup with strong repeater America's Funniest Home Videos leading off. That helped Rising Star (0.9) move down another notch. Way to go, ABC.

• WGN America's Manhattan (0.18) was better-reviewed than its network's first scripted foray Salem (which premiered nearly three times higher at 0.51 in April), but the period concept was clearly not as appealing to the masses in the current TV environment. Cable's two strongest newbies this summer, TNT's The Last Ship (1.1) and FX's The Strain (1.0), steadied week-to-week, while the second episode of Lifetime's The Lottery (0.21) went completely off the map.

Spotted Ratings, Sunday 7/13/14

WHAT MATTERS:

• ABC Sunday was on the upswing, thanks mostly to a huge lead-in from the World Cup Final in the late afternoon. This effect was evident in the huge 0.6 spike week-to-week from America's Funniest Home Videos at 7:00, and it got smaller as the night wore on with Wipeout (up 0.3, but still hitting its highest rating in the last two summers) and Rising Star (up 0.1).

• CBS got another very good Big Brother result, up 0.3 week-to-week and slightly up vs. the same week last year. The Unforgettable/Reckless switch put two tenths into Unforgettable and took one from Reckless, a trade-off that CBS will happily take.

• On cable:
• FX dove into a crowded Sunday fray that it's generally avoided in recent years, and it had a good start with new vampire drama The Strain (1.2). This tied TNT's The Last Ship as the biggest scripted premiere on cable this summer and was a fair bit stronger than recent FX premieres like The Bridge (0.9), Fargo (0.8) and Tyrant (0.6).
• Elsewhere, The Last Ship (1.0) stayed in the ones for a fourth straight week. And Lifetime's Devious Maids (0.8) finished out a largely rough sophomore season with a new season high; it may have helped its renewal case in the last couple weeks.

Spotted Ratings, Sunday 6/22/14 & 6/29/14

WHAT MATTERS:

• Sundays in the summer remain a tough nut for the broadcasters to crack. ABC was first to give it a crack, but it had a relatively soft start from new singing competition Rising Star (1.5 on 6/22). This may have been a bit stronger than ABC's last major music competition premiere foray, Duets (1.7 on 5/24/12), given it's over two years later and the show skewed a little younger than Duets. However, the general point is the same: this is not ABC's game-changer, and it's even farther from being that after a 20% week two drop (prelim 1.2 on 6/29). It soundly lost to NBC's special America's Got Talent (2.1) on 6/22 and had to deal with the always potent BET Awards (3.1) last night.

• It got even uglier last night as CBS entered the fray. Though Big Brother (1.8) continued its solid start, nearly even with the 2013 Sunday premiere (1.9), CBS continued to surround it with weak and highly incompatible pieces. New drama Reckless (0.6) retained a paltry third of the BB demo (yet 70% in total viewership). Since the return of Unforgettable (0.9) actually picked up some steam at 10/9c, CBS may be tempted to try flipping the dramas around here (or they may just kill Reckless altogether).

• The biggest cable story on 6/22 was the solid premiere of TNT's drama The Last Ship (1.2 with 5.33 million viewers), the closest thing to a new breakthrough on cable this summer to date. It joined a softening Falling Skies (1.0 on 6/22), which tied its series low and was down big from last summer's 1.5 start. HBO brought back True Blood (2.2 on 6/22) for its final run in relatively healthy fashion, down just a bit from last year's 2.4 start, and starting last night it led into new HBO drama The Leftovers. Much more cable to come!
• 6/29 UPDATE: The Last Ship (1.1) had a solid week two hold; not so much for True Blood (1.6), which plummeted to easily its lowest number since season one (excluding a 4th of July episode in season four). The Leftovers (0.8) opened at half of True Blood's delivery. 

SpotVault - The Last Ship (TNT) - Summer 2014 Ratings

The Last Ship

Sundays, 9/8c, TNT