Dollhouse held its 18-49 demo steady week to week, but it was still below its earlier 18-49 average which pulled the average down yet again. I've been writing all along that the ratings of the later episodes will matter more than the earlier ones. Now, we're getting to the "later episodes". There have been lots of reasons why Dollhouse might have done better, but excuses won't save the show. Don't kid yourself, Dollhouse will not come back with its current numbers. It has to improve and it will soon be running out of time to do it.
Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles season finale on April 10 will certainly be its series finale on Fox. Whether it might end up somewhere else, I couldn't guess.
Update: Good news, but no surprise. Fox has ordered 6 episodes of Bones for next 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, Renewal Announced.
| PROGRAM | Net | STD 18-49 (LIVE+SD) (000) | Network Avg. STD 18-49 | Renew/ Cancel index | Status |
| TERMINATOR: SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES (FRI) | FOX | 1,624 | 3,530 | 0.46 | |
| DO NOT DISTURB | FOX | 2,097 | 3,530 | 0.59 | cancelled |
| DOLLHOUSE | FOX | 2,189 | 3,530 | 0.62 | |
| TIL DEATH | FOX | 2,364 | 3,530 | 0.67 | renewed |
| PRISON BREAK | FOX | 2,988 | 3,530 | 0.85 | final season |
| American Dad | FOX | 3,612 | 3,530 | 1.02 | |
| KING OF THE HILL | FOX | 3,718 | 3,530 | 1.05 | final season |
| Bones | FOX | 4,013 | 3,530 | 1.14 | |
| Simpsons | FOX | 4,155 | 3,530 | 1.18 | renewed |
| FRINGE | FOX | 4,586 | 3,530 | 1.30 | |
| Family Guy | FOX | 4,593 | 3,530 | 1.30 | |
| 24 | FOX | 5,051 | 3,530 | 1.43 | |
| Lie To Me | FOX | 5,369 | 3,530 | 1.52 | |
| HOUSE | FOX | 6,231 | 3,530 | 1.77 |
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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.
Based on Til Death being renewed, does it look like Dollhouse doesn’t have to move up much to be capable of renewal? There’s only a .05 difference! What was it about Til Death that got it renewed with such bad numbers on its part?
Still, of course, it would be better if DH were at 1.00 or above! But I can’t see it moving up 1.4 million viewers to match or beat the average in the next half dozen episodes.
Doesn’t look good.
Richard, Sony made Fox a great deal for ‘Til Death,like Bill said, because they wanted to syndicate ‘Til Death. No one wants to syndicate a 13-episode show.
Working on these at night? You’re scaring me, Bill. (of course, I’m reading them at almost midnight, so excuse me a second while I take this call from Kettle. She thinks I called her black.)
I wonder what Fox is bringing in next year. If you take away Sunday nights, their audience skews pretty old. House and Bones go a little younger, but 24 is definitely for the older crowd.
And also Dollhouse is much more expensive to produce, Til Death just needs 22 more episodes to get syndication
I think dollhouse is a goner. Fox, after all, isn’t NBC.
Missed that part in the post about the Sony deal.
Would be nice if WB makes the same deal for TSCC with somebody, if not Fox.
But what makes the studios make those kinds of deals? Where it seems like they’re losing money? In this specific case of Til Death, was it because they hope to get a syndication deal if they put out enough episodes, and would that make the show profitable to the studio?
FOX has some gaps to fill in the schedule especially in the autumn/fall when 24 and American Idol are on. Out of all the pilots, I think Human Target would be a good choice and maybe Magge Hill if FOX wants a compatible show for House.
Patrick in the Pacific Time Zone prime-time has just begun!
I wonder what Nick C. thinks?
I think they’re better off keeping their shows, unless they are losing a lot of money. TSCC and Dollhouse aren’t being rejected by audience, they just aren’t getting the best ratings, and it may be due to :
1) Friday move; and movie premieres affecting it
2) 2 month break causing an audience disconnect
3) The new explosion of new episodes after writer’s strike; notice how nothing is a repeat on FOX.
You gotta stop looking at the wrong numbers… If you look at Viewers, you will see jumps everywhere, but viewers can be deceiving because of other events. Look at ranking, that tells you RELATIVE viewership based on the whole network. It’s more accurate.
Notice that TSCC was the TOP 10 of FOX shows, on Monday nights for the first 10 episodes which weren’t even that good (the show got better later).
Then a 2 week break, it dropped a relative average “5 ranks”, then another 1 week break… That’s almost a month of audience disconnect. How do you expect an audience to keep up with this serialized series ?
It was stable at an average 13-15 rank… Then they moved it to Friday, dropped to like 16-17 average rank.
People don’t FOLLOW show schedules, they watch a show, and if they like it, they keep watching it, they flip channels, they look at whats on at certain times. On Friday, they are not looking. On Mondays the show was not performing badly; maybe not as good as House or 24, but those shows are a lot older and didn’t have the competition TSCC has.
I think it can improve. Especially considering this last Friday it still managed to get 4.1 million despite being up against Battlestar Galactica 2hr. Finale as they appeal to the same 18-49 sci-fi crowd.
Also, it probably brought in more viewers who did not want to watch the NCAA basketball game.
Jonathan, we’ve been over that stuff. The Friday move was expected to cause a drop in numbers – then it KEPT bleeding until the last episode or two. Too little, too late.
The movie premieres are irrelevant, too. While Watchmen MAY have affected it a little, it was what, 150,000 viewers at most it added the following week?
TSCC was getting killed on Mondays compared to season one. The steady drop of viewers and the all-important demo ratings was unmistakable. It moved to Fridays and continued to drop until it hit some baseline core of fans.
Fox put it on Mondays against serious competition because it was supposed to be TERMINATOR. It was getting killed on Mondays because it WASN’T TERMINATOR, despite the “Terminator of the Week” stand alone episodes. In fact, because of them the show’s overall story arc went no where.
TSCC was most definitely being rejected by the wider audience. The comments on many TV sites were explicit – it wasn’t TERMINATOR. Everybody was confused as to what the show was intended to be or where it was intended to go. The episodes were all well written (mostly), well directed, beautifully acted – but the focus was wrong and the pacing was horrible.
Y, Dollhouse may improve but it needs to go up another 1.5 million viewers to get near the network average. Very unlikely.
FOX is in good shape. The only programs are currently low in their ratings are their 2 friday shows.
“But what makes the studios make those kinds of deals? Where it seems like they’re losing money?”
Syndication packages. Sony wouldn’t make such a sweet deal (the exact terms I don’t think were announced, but most everyone I’ve heard talk about it says “basically free”) if it were costing them money, and it’s not.
I was just over at the Fox Terminator Wiki and got pointed to a Wired article Josh Friedman wrote about Terminator. It appears to be his “mea culpa” and a plea for sympathy after having wrecked the most likely guaranteed hit in ages.
Turns out the entire show is about his attack of cancer he suffered a year or two ago before he did the pilot! And that he always thought it was a “family drama” from day one!
Now it all comes out just how screwed up his notion of Terminator really was.
With that article, I predict his future career as a sci-fi producer is shot to hell.
How anybody could be that obtuse about the nature of the Terminator franchise is utterly beyond me.
Why is The Simpsons down compared to last week? They had a 3.0 rating, they shold’ve had 4,200 or more, the average should go up.
If the index is correct, TS had less than 4,000,000 18-49 viewers, less than last week when they had a 2.8.
Richard Hack, as a person who watched all Terminator movies, I must say that TSSC is exactly what a serial show must be about Terminator Franchise. I also like the work of JF and his stuff.
Do you have to say exactly same things in EVERY day in every thread about TSSC. Do you have a job or something?
Bill Gorman says:
March 24th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
Patrick in the Pacific Time Zone prime-time has just begun!
What I meant was you’re not really a 9-to-5 type posting these up at 8:30PM. Of course, at the time, I was dealing with some serious insomnia issues, but that’s me.