Much like the Sunday Reckless/Unforgettable flip, a CBS Wednesday flip didn't hurt Extant(1.1) in its move to 10/9c and improved the repeat Criminal Minds (1.1) at 9/8c. Because Extant was so wildly incompatible skew-wise with Big Brother, holding last week's unimpressive number is not that much of an achievement.
The CW had a nice start out of newbie Penn and Teller: Fool Us (0.5), which outrated anything scored by CDub unscripted newbies Perfect Score and Capture last summer. This series originated in the UK three years ago and was cancelled after one season, so any kind of continued relationship beyond this season would probably be more expensive for the CW than this surely cheap acquisition was. But the surely cheap acquisition itself looks like a win so far.
And score one for Twitter as Syfy's original movie Sharknado 2: The Second One (1.3) roughly tripled the first movie's delivery from last year. It was the network's most-watched original movie ever.
Scheduling history: Aside from a few odd 9:30 episodes, the first three and a half seasons of Bob's Burgers aired on Sunday at 8:30 after The Simpsons. A shake-up to the animated lineup bumped Bob's Burgers to 7:00 in spring 2014, and it's returned to the earliest hour (at 7:30) starting in fall 2015. Fall 2018 will finally see a regular return to the 8:30 timeslot. See (who saw) how it all began: In the last few years, Fox's best animated ratings have regularly come on the night after Fox has a late-afternoon NFL playoff game. That made it a great place to launch something new, and Bob's Burgers responded with 9.38 million viewers and a 4.5 demo on 1/9/11 (down from The Simpsons' 12.55 million and 5.7). It was the biggest scripted series premiere of the 2010-11 season. No NFL help brought Bob's back to reality; it dropped 44% to a 2.5 demo the next week, then to a 2.2 in week three. It held in the low 2's for the rest of the season, a bit behind its usually mid-2's Simpsons lead-in.
The best of times:Bob's Burgers has never again gotten remotely close to the 4.5 on premiere night. After being held for midseason again in 2011-12, Bob's Burgers got its first whack at the fall in 2012-13 and thus grew a bit in that season. After several low 2's ratings through the fall, it got up to a 3.1 with NFL playoff help (on 1/6/13, two years after the series premiere). It then got as high as a 2.9 in the 2013-14 season, once again in the same week.
The worst of times:Bob's Burgers was actually down less than the league average as of the end of January 2014, possibly headed for its biggest season yet in Plus, when the scheduling of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey intervened. Both Burgers and American Dad! got shoved to the 7:00 hour, and Fox opted to give the better 7:30 slot to the show that was about to leave the network. At 7:00, Bob's opened at a series low 0.9, briefly improved into the low 1's, then dropped again in April. It got as low as a measly 0.6 rating for an Easter Sunday 7:00 airing on 4/20/14, and took five years to get back to that raw low again.
Then vs. now: Part of the initial appeal of Bob's Burgers was that it came from an alternative voice in a Fox animation world increasingly overrun with Seth MacFarlane shows. That may be a big part of why it's now outlived second-tier MacFarlane cartoons The Cleveland Show and American Dad! (at least on Fox). However, Fox seems to have pretty much given up on making this show anything better than a second-tier performer. It was eyebrow-raising when Bob's got the worse slot in the 7:00 hour and outgoing American Dad! went to 7:30, and the preferential treatment for Dad! has continued during summer rerun season. It all led to a fall schedule in which Bob's Burgers will be back in the lowest-viewed hour, only airing when there's no direct NFL lead-in. But Fox needed it as a stopgap after the Mulaney debacle, and then again after the failure of Cooper Barrett's Guide in early 2016. In fall 2018, after Fox wiped out its live-action comedies, it will finally get regularly scheduled in a 'main' timeslot.
Week two of Food Fighters (1.3) had some real fight in it, growing a shocking three tenths from an unassuming 1.0 premiere last week. We'll see if this was a blip or something in the coming weeks, but this will keep it very much on the radar for now.
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.
Another season of The Bachelorette (2.0 finale, 2.1 After the Final Rose) is in the books, and this one didn't seem to attract the franchise's usual huge heat late in the season. The finale was at season high levels, but up just two tenths week-to-week and 23% behind last year's finale.
NBC premiered Running Wild with Bear Grylls (1.4) at 8/7c, and it went just below last year's 1.5 premiere for Bear Grylls effort Get Out Alive. Considering that show aired at 9/8c after American Ninja Warrior while this one was leading off, NBC will take it. And Running Wild was a major improvement on the usual 8/7c repeats NBC's been running, which helped produce a new season high for increasingly hot American Ninja Warrior (2.0).
Hotel Hell (1.6) solidified its renewal case by inching up in week two.
Schedules Plus looks at the evolution of network schedules and timeslots using fairer numbers adjusted for historical decline. These update posts will link back to the now updated full posts for each day, and the update posts have exclusive comparisons vs. last year's schedule (in parenthesses) and vs. the full 11-year historical average (in the "VsAvg" row).
Many more disclaimers can be seen on the individual pages, but the most basic one to keep in mind is that the listed schedules are fall lineups, even when midseason replacements may have done much better. (But I try to mention those midseason replacements that did better.)
