I think either Castle or The Unusuals will be a big hit and Cupid will be cancelled.

Im excited about Harper’s Island its not a produceral yay

By the way, you guys should have a poll where we can all vote for our favorite show. Not like I can’t tell what shows are the favorites here by the comments, but an actual poll would be pretty nifty, me thinks.

I’ll touch on this more later (when the Tuesday ratings come in), but TM is no longer lead-in dependent. It’s turning into a bigger hit than NCIS.

I think FOX was looking for Fringe to have the same effect out of House.

Bill, Fringe is particularly lead-in dependent, though. Its heavily promoted pilot debuted to only 9 million while the second episode (which was after House’s premiere) got 13 million. That’s a pretty noticeable bump. Of course, it’s settled back down to 8 million-ish, but you can’t expect the whole 8 million to come from the 9 million who watched the pilot. Plus, Fringe’s demo success is largely based on House – without it, it’d probably be in the mid or low 2′s by now.

Well, it did have the second most expensive pilot ever. If ‘Fringe’ had better retention out of ‘House’, then I probably would think that it is a more than a timeslot hit. It seems to me that if it was cut off from ‘House’, it would suffer a bit of a decline and may fall into non-hit territory. If it had higher numbers in the first place, then it might fall without ‘House’, but it would have started higher to begin with. Yeah?

I think that everyone had really high expectations for ‘Fringe’, but for some reason, FOX debuted it before the fall season and it only got 9 million Live + SD viewers for its pilot. Its nice 6 demo was overshadowed by its lack of viewers. ‘Lost’ premiered to twice as many on the #4 network at the time (also without a lead-in). Even J.J. Abrams’ other (cancelled) shows like ‘What About Brian’ started up with 13 million. And by the end of November sweeps, ‘Fringe’ was down at the high 7 millions Live + SD and getting beaten in the demo by CBS’s crime procedurals, ‘Dancing with the Stars’ and ‘Charlie Brown’ specials. What if it did not have the ‘House’ lead-in then? High 5 millions and a low 2 demo? Not unlikely and what kind of a hit is that? And it is expensive.

Not everything is lead-in dependent. Take ‘Lost’, for example. It aired the first part of its most recent season as a self-starter and returned as a lead-out of ‘Grey’s Anatomy’, yet it produced very similar numbers on both sides of its midseason hiatus. Or how about ‘House’? It is doing fine as a self-starter and it certainly did not used to rely on its ‘Bones’ lead-in.

The ‘American Idol’ lead-in will surely boost ‘Fringe”s viewership and will likely get it past its lead-in dependence for next fall. But for now, I think that ‘Fringe’ is a timeslot hit.

Although I really like Fringe, but I am not yet confident as to how long it will stick around. I’m not yet confident it can stay at its current level, regardless of lead-in. They could go all “Heroes” on us, and then watching would just be too confusing to bother!

What would have happened if the NBC Universal produced House was not passed on by the NBC network, but instead picked up by it?

Fringe (4.699m) > Bones (4.200m) for 18-49 demo

http://tvbythenumbers.com/2008/12/23/fans-of-terminator-life-knight-rider-gary-unmarried-should-look-on-the-bright-side/9940

Argue amongst yourselves about discounting the lead in.

Wrong. That’s Bones. With no lead-in.

Fringe is definitely the kind of show that could drop in viewers at a breakneck pace. It doesn’t take too long to lose interest in riduculous plot twists that serve only to prolong a story that should have ended already (*cough*PRISON BREAK*cough*). Just my opinion there.

“Fringe” is a freshman hit by FOX standards, along those same lines. By the numbers, it’s holding the critical youth demos and, as Julia said, the critical-to-advertisers C3 rating. Plenty of magazine and online buzz about little Pacey all grown up; about the show in general; and even a couple blurbs about the excelled supporting role of Astird (the name of the actor escapes me).

Excluding repeat episodes, how many times did “The Mentalist” beat “Fringe” in the 18-49 demos? Maybe once that I recall. I’ll back-check that to be sure. As to whether “Fringe” can last as long as PB, I’d like to hope so but it’s a hazy picture at best. “Fringe” could fly off the rails, story-wise, with just one too-contrived plot twist. Anna Torv could let those pained and blank facial expressions get the better of her, to the point that not even John Noble and Joshua Jackson can make the show worthwhile. I’d expect get a better idea of where the show is headed by season’s end.

Fringe isn’t the biggest flop if you only look at the numbers (and the current state of network TV) but I don’t think it’ll be around as long as Prison Break has.

MOMMA’S BOY, TRUE BEAUTY AND DOLLHOUSE FOR THE FLOP

I’ll go with Lie to Me for biggest hit. FOX is promoting the crap out of it every night, and plus, doesn’t it have one of the coveted post American Idol timeslots?

Superstars of Dance will be eaten alive by House and CBS. NBC will be happy to bring Chuck back 2/2/08.

Buffy, at the time I had made my comment above I didn’t realize there was a Whedon site (Whedonesque.com) linking to the poll. My comment wasn’t intended to be veiled in anyway, though I can’t at all deny that I chose “bitch”.

Castle sounds like a remake of Murder She Wrote with a male lead, so I am not sure how that will turn out. It might be interesting though, and we know Murder she wrote lasted for freekin ever!

We can’t be far off in time from posts with comments like “and when TSCC gets cancelled, maybe Whedon will get Summer Glau to star on ‘Dollhouse’!”

Yippee! I can’t wait. Ok, I can wait.

Okay, I forgot about Fringe. It’s FOX’s biggest success, but I’m not sure I’d qualify it as a hit.

Flop–The Castle. Game Show in My Head, Momma’s Boys, and Superstars already started, so it doesn’t seem fair to choose them. Dollhouse seems the easy pick, but with it being shipped off to Friday with the failing Terminator, I don’t think the expectations are high enough to call it the biggest flop when it fails. While procedurals are big, ABC has not had any luck with them lately. I think they’ll have the same problem with this one as they’ve had before by trying to be too cute about it.

And Andrea, “The test for Fox, however, is to deliver its first scripted hit since the premiere of Prison Break in Fall 2005.” You don’t consider Fringe a hit? Or are you limiting this to shows produced by Fox?

I picked Kings for biggest hit, not because I think it well get the most viewers or fantastic demos, but I think it could have a big positive impact on NBC.

If any other show turns out to be a hit, it won’t matter as much. Even a small hit on NBC could make a big difference.

Defining flops is also difficult – half the options are defacto canceled shows (Head/Boys/Fear/Dance/Harper/Doll). Expectations also fall into this: is it fair to call Harper’s the biggest flop when it will garner the worst ratings for the year on that network (CBS), even if it will get more viewers than half the other shows on that list?

IMO, the ratings most worth keeping an eye on are ABC shows, namely Castle & The Unusuals. I don’t expect Unusuals to do well – The Job didn’t do well years ago, and the minor structural changes (female lead) aren’t enough to break it out of the cable programming where it belongs (see Rescue Me). Castle is also tough to judge – ABC’s Friday Women’s Murder Club died an early death last year, but the Dancing tie-in and male family lead should give it a bigger (albeit older) audience than Murder Club garnered.