There have been hundreds of comments about the potential fate of Dollhouse on our site with all sorts of theories and questions about its future. Do the C+3 ratings make up for its Live+SD ratings? Does the big increase in viewing from Live+7 ratings give the show a better chance? Since I'm sure that all 13 episodes of Dollhouse will air this season, I will repeat the one thing fans of the show can be certain of: The ratings of the later shows, and their trend, will matter a lot more than the shows that have already aired. If ratings stay where they are though, I don't believe the show comes back.
Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles is going to be canceled at the end of the season. But there is one bit of good news for the show. Some (not me) thought it might be pulled from the schedule before its episodes finished this spring. Since the return of Prison Break has been announced for April 17 (which would allow all completed TSCC episodes to air on Friday at 8pm), TSCC looks likely to finish all of its episodes this season.
This is a breakdown of Fox scripted shows and their renewal and cancelation prospects. Here are the others:
Our Renew / Cancel index predicts potential renewal for *next* season: Canceled/Not Returning, In Danger, or Renewal Likely for 2009-10.
| PROGRAM | Net | STD 18-49 (LIVE+SD) (000) | Network Avg. STD 18-49 | Renew/ Cancel index | Status |
| TERMINATOR: SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES (FRI) | FOX | 1,630 | 3,530 | 0.46 | |
| DO NOT DISTURB | FOX | 2,097 | 3,530 | 0.59 | canceled |
| DOLLHOUSE | FOX | 2,250 | 3,530 | 0.64 | |
| TIL DEATH | FOX | 2,364 | 3,530 | 0.67 | |
| PRISON BREAK | FOX | 2,988 | 3,530 | 0.85 | final season |
| American Dad | FOX | 3,586 | 3,530 | 1.02 | |
| KING OF THE HILL | FOX | 3,768 | 3,530 | 1.07 | final season |
| Bones | FOX | 4,035 | 3,530 | 1.14 | |
| Simpsons | FOX | 4,192 | 3,530 | 1.19 | |
| Family Guy | FOX | 4,556 | 3,530 | 1.29 | |
| FRINGE | FOX | 4,586 | 3,530 | 1.30 | |
| 24 | FOX | 5,084 | 3,530 | 1.44 | |
| Lie To Me | FOX | 5,780 | 3,530 | 1.64 | |
| HOUSE | FOX | 6,215 | 3,530 | 1.76 |
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The Renew/Cancel Index is a show's Season To Date adults 18-49 viewership divided by its networks Season to Date average 18-49 viewership. Note that the Fox average used above is its final Season to Date average prior to American Idol (see below).
Notes:
Prison Break is in its final season.
'Til Death has done terribly, and has been off Fox’s schedule since October, Sony Pictures has reportedly made Fox such a sweet deal for future episodes that Fox has bought another entire season, proving that at a low enough price that even a ratings black hole is worth suffering through.
Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles: The numbers above are for only its Friday airings that began on February 13, 2009. FYI, It's 13 episode 18-49 average on Monday this season was 2.726 million.
How did we come up with our Index? We found that last season, the future of a show was nearly directly related to its adults 18-49 average viewers divided by its networks 18-49 average viewers. Many other factors may matter, but they all seemed to boil down to that one number. Because American Idol so skewed Fox's 18-49 average, and would make nearly all Fox shows fall into the "cancel" range, for Fox, I used the last STD 18-49 average *before* Idol. Last season, if a show had better than 92% of its network's average 18-49 viewership (0.92 in our index) it was pretty safe, below that level it was in danger.
Remember that plenty can change before the end of the season, particularly for the shows with indexes between 0.80 and last season’s renewal line of 0.92. The list is presented in a (and has to be, since I cannot predict future ratings) “what would happen if the season ended today” mode. Could the renewal line be 0.86 this season? Possibly. It might also be 0.95. Might it be 0.70? No chance.
Nielsen TV Ratings Data: ©2009 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved. All viewership numbers are Live+SD.
maybe they can burn off all those episodes of til death next season (and the rest from this season for that matter) in the 7pm hour on sunday after football is done. even til death should be able to improve on hole in the wall’s anemic numbers
i usually love joss’s work but i really cant say anything good about this show.
you know even the people involved are not happy when all you hear them saying is wait till episode 6 it really gets good. how bout being good from the beginning. imo this show was dead on arrival and fox smartly i believe knew what they had and they put it on friday.
As ive mentioned many times the Dollhouse/Terminator pairing will be over when the episodes are used up. Many people have mentioned a glimmer of hope that Dollhouse could be renewed but it won’t be. In the end FOX will air all 13 episodes and be done with the show. Saying the all to common phrase “We tried it out but it didn’t quite work for us”.
I hope that when Hole in the Wall finishes airing on April 12. FOX can bring Til Death to 7:00 and burn the rest of the King of the Hill episodes at 7:30 so it could look like this.
From April 19-May 17
7:00 Til Death
7:30 King of the Hill
8:00 The Simpsons
8:30 Sit Down, Shut Up
9:00 Family Guy
9:30 American Dad
So atleast from April-May the 7:00 timeslot won’t have repeats. FOX can air atleast 5 left over Til Death episodes, and the remaining KOTH episodes from Season 13 will air. Thats what I would do If I were head at FOX, however its likely that The Simpsons/American Dad or more Hole in the Wall repeats will air in the 7:00 slot during that time. Which I think is stupid.
Dan, if FOX really wanted to get rid of the show, it would have aired on Mondays and be off the network right now.
Dollhouse/Terminator = Cancelled
Just out of curiosity, and I don’t know if this is available elsewhere on the site, if you added in all the DVR numbers for all the shows and re-calculated the Renew/Cancel Index, would that in any way significantly improve the index for those shows currently in danger such as TSCC?
I mean, I look at that TSCC number and it’s ridiculous. With a number that low, it can’t possibly survive. But it you added in the DVR numbers for ALL the shows and recomputed, would it raise that number, leave it unchanged, or drop it further?
Again, just out of curiosity and as a reference point for all the “DVR numbers matter/don’t matter” arguments.
Because presumably a lot of OTHER shows have good DVR numbers, too. And while the best shows by definition are shows that people really want to see live, presumably all shows have some DVR numbers. So is the large increase in DVR numbers one sees in shows like TSCC really all that significant, or are they offset by the numbers on other shows with even better live numbers?
Friday nights at 9 p.m. EST are actually somewhat interesting on the R/C Index. Flashpoint and Dollhouse are both faring poorly on this Index. Dollhouse has a bit worse R/C Index than Flashpoint. But Flashpoint airs on CBS – higher expectations due to GW and Numbers? Will both nets use the “Friday is a special case” logic? How low is “too low” in the 18-49 demo on a Friday night? I will guess that for cost, Flashpoint is even cheaper than Dollhouse, but would CBS be the network less likely to tolerate 18-49 ratings low enough to score under 0.75 in the R/C Index?
Nick, which show are you referring to. If its Dollhouse than I believe the reason they moved it to fridays was because FOX cared about the strength of mondays after the horrible Terminator/Prison Break Combo last fall. So they figured pair 2 well established shows (House/24) on mondays, air the freshman dramas that they want to succeed after idol Fringe tuesdays and Lie to Me wednesdays, put an established drama thursdays at 8 along with an established reality series, burn off the new 13 episode Dollhouse and combine it with the burning off the low rated similiarly Sci-Fi show Terminator and you have a schedule right there. I guess there was something FOX didn’t like about Dollhouse that they decided they didn’t want to risk airing it around the 2 year hiatus series 24.
Richard, go to:
http://tvbythenumbers.com/2009/03/02/dollhouse-premiere-is-28th-in-total-dvr-viewing-8th-in-viewing-on-dvr/13777
In one of Bill’s comments, he compares Terminator’s and Dollhouse’s ratings with the DVR numbers to the other Fox shows. As Bill points out, Terminator’s and Dollhouse’s ratings still suck,even with DVR numbers.
wow, TSCC went through the floor on Fridays.
on Family Guy sunday there was a horse-race with all the horses named after fox shows. Here’s a qoute.
“And behind them all, yet somehow still in the lead, it’s Til’ Death!”
Hilarious.
If I were running FOX I’d have Fringe at 8 PM and Dollhouse at 9 PM on Fridays. I think Fringe is a waste of the post-Idol slot (when it had it at least) as it’s not a show I could see 14 year old girls liking. I think it’s developed a decent enough fanbase to at least put up respectable numbers on Friday, and I think Dollhouse would have a better chance, percentage wise, of holding some of their viewers than most shows on the network.
Although I’ve been less than satisfied with T:TSCC this season. FOX should give it and Dollhouse another full season in the SciFi Friday slot. Their power play to shift ownership of SciFi Friday from the Scifi Channel to FOX is going to take more than a half-season to come to fruition. Last week’s episode of T:TSCC was a good one and Dollhouse was also pretty cool.
T:TSCC has had a really bad run this season and some really bad decisions by both the creators and FOX, but this show still has potential. If I were FOX I’d take a gamble and keep both shows and go after the SciFi crowd. It can work, it just needs more time.
Just a side note: I didn’t watch Heroes when it first aired on NBC. I watched it on the Scifi Channel first. If it were possible for FOX to do something similar with T:TSCC and Dollhouse, they could get the SciFi crowd to tune in when it airs on their network. It worked in my case, I watch Heroes on NBC every Monday now.
Michael, OK, I see that the overall ratings suck for TSCC vrs the other Fox shows in terms of the 18-49 demo, plus I see that Terminator, while having a high rate of increase in DVR viewing, doesn’t even show up on the top 20 DVR’d shows.
But I didn’t see at that link anything saying that if you recalculated the Renew/Cancel index with DVR numbers added in, whether or how that would change the index, if at all. I’m curious to see if the DVR numbers for OTHER shows with large live viewer numbers affect the Index in the same way as shows like TSCC with low live viewer numbers but relatively high DVR numbers.
I agree with Garbage In that TSCC has potential – it always did. The problem is there’s no indication that with Josh Friedman in charge that the potential will be realized. I now believe that he just doesn’t get Terminator at all, despite being an alleged fan of the franchise. I think he’s obsessed with ONE character of the franchise, like a lot of the fanboy fans, and not with the overall concept.
It wouldn’t take much to change the existing TSCC into a major hit. It just needs;
1) More emphasis on the essence of the Terminator concept – the interaction between humans and AIs.
2) More action.
3) More realism.
4) More pushing the envelope.
5) A faster pace both for individual episodes and the overall story arc. Continually build up the momentum and suspense and tension.
Supposedly the back nine were going to do that, but four episodes in to the back nine, the only one that moved the story forward – and in a BAD WAY – was this past week’s episode. And the only action in that episode was the big Jesse-Riley fight.
:::Bill Murray lounge singer voice (to theme from Star Wars):::
“Flaaaaaaaaaaaame Wars! Nothing.but.flaaaaaame. wars. These.are.the.flaaaaaaaaame wars. la la la la.”
note to Bill: I’m just now seeing how you resolved the cancelled vs. canceled dilemma. That should work
Dollhouse has gotten better and better each epsiode. As the netowrk mandated a lot about the first three eipsodes, and the general concensus is that the show fully gells around episode 4-5, I’m not only looking forward to the next episodes, but I think you really can’t make an accurate decision about it until after midseason. I’ll be watching the full 13, and happy to do so.
No, I am with Kevin, if FOX is serious about the SciFi Friday thing, they need to grow the balls to move Fringe there. Depending on what Fringe costs them. The chances that TSCC recovers from this season are minimal and Dollhouse is not going to grow paired with an old game show or another new show of dubious quality.
I am not sure whether FOX should be serious about SciFi Friday, because I remember that being the way they killed Dark Angel’s momentum, but if they are serious, that’s what they need to do.
They could do a whole remote free night.
The C3 numbers would be dreamy.