The premiere of In the Motherhood generated ratings that only a mother could love. ABC has already cut the original episode order in half. Enjoy it while you can, it will not be back next season. Samantha Who? returned from hiatus behind Motherhood and did poorly. If ABC had a strong scripted lineup, it might get into trouble, emphasis on "If".
Castle continues to drop from its premiere ratings, which were good enough for renewal. Its recent airings have fallen solidly into the danger zone and its Index continues to drop. It's only a matter of time before it falls into the cancelation range.
Better off Ted continues its slide into ratings oblivion. It will not be back either.
This is a breakdown of ABC 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 |
| ACCORDING TO JIM-TU 9:30P | ABC | 2,183 | 3,580 | 0.61 | final season |
| ELI STONE | ABC | 2,264 | 3,580 | 0.63 | canceled |
| PUSHING DAISIES | ABC | 2,365 | 3,580 | 0.66 | canceled |
| SCRUBS-WED 8PM | ABC | 2,374 | 3,580 | 0.66 | final season |
| SCRUBS-TU 9PM | ABC | 2,447 | 3,580 | 0.68 | final season |
| ACCORDING TO JIM-TU 9PM | ABC | 2,460 | 3,580 | 0.69 | final season |
| SCRUBS-TU 9:30PM | ABC | 2,543 | 3,580 | 0.71 | final season |
| DIRTY SEXY MONEY | ABC | 2,549 | 3,580 | 0.71 | canceled |
| BETTER OFF TED | ABC | 2,571 | 3,580 | 0.72 | |
| BOSTON LEGAL | ABC | 2,856 | 3,580 | 0.80 | final season |
| IN THE MOTHERHOOD | ABC | 2,901 | 3,580 | 0.81 | |
| LIFE ON MARS | ABC | 2,958 | 3,580 | 0.83 | canceled |
| UGLY BETTY | ABC | 3,011 | 3,580 | 0.84 | coming back |
| SAMANTHA WHO? | ABC | 3,508 | 3,580 | 0.98 | |
| CASTLE | ABC | 3,722 | 3,580 | 1.04 | |
| Private Practice | ABC | 4,108 | 3,580 | 1.15 | |
| BROTHERS & Sisters | ABC | 4,687 | 3,580 | 1.31 | |
| LOST | ABC | 5,834 | 3,580 | 1.63 | coming back |
| GREY'S ANATOMY | ABC | 6,630 | 3,580 | 1.85 | |
| Desperate Housewives | ABC | 7,309 | 3,580 | 2.04 |
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Notes:
According to Jim: After 8 seasons, and recent horrible ratings, but presumably great sydication profits, ABC's According to Jim looks like its prime-time run is coming to an end this season as one of the stars says the stage has been bulldozed. That seems pretty final to me.
Scrubs: Eight seasons is the end for Scrubs as well. Update: Or perhaps not. I am doubting that retraction, I believe he spoke the truth initially and then got his hand slapped and tried to backtrack. I'm keeping it marked as final season.
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.
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.
SW? is slipping now that post-Dancing reality is kicking in.
I still think Castle will be renewed. Ted and Motherhood are gone. Cupid and Unusuals haven’t premiered yet but I doubt they will do any better. Suburbia will probably be renewed.
Here’s my thoughts
Already Dead: Boston Legal, Dirty Sexy Money, Eli Stone, Pushing Daisies, Life on Mars, According to Jim, Scrubs.
Likely for renewal: Grey’s Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, Lost, Ugly Betty, Brothers & Sisters, Private Practice, Samantha Who?, Castle.
Likely to be axed: Better off Ted, In the Motherhood,
Why does DHW have a 2.04 while Grey’s which has a higher 18-49 and total viewers gets a 1.85
The way I see it is Castle’s fate will be determined by how Cupid and The Unusuals do. If they can bring in better numbers Castle is a goner, if not Castle is likely to come back. I also think Samantha Who? will be back just because they need a sitcom next year that has been on for more than a few weeks.
i agree with u melissa except in the case of Cupid. it had it’s episode count reduced earlier, so I doubt it’ll will be renewed. Castle will probably be competing with Unusuals for quirky cop show.
aleph19, DHW 18-49 demo average is higher than GA’s. Perhaps you are mixing up the numbers.
I agree Jared, I expect Cupid to be a flop, but stranger things have happened. It will be very interesting to see what Unusuals does. I’m sure it will get a high sampling the first week coming out of Lost, but I wonder what it can do long term.
Castle will come back regardless, since ABC always has a midseason show that they save (What About Brian, October Road, Eli Stone) Cupid unfortunately will be gone after its 7 episodes and competition from SVU and Without a Trace. And The Unusuals unfortunately will not have a DWTS lead in and will likely perform the same as Life on Mars, badly.
I’m still thinking that Castle has a chance for renewal due to the fact that it’s ratings index is still higher than Ugly Betty’s numbers, and being that it’s on a fairly competitive night as a mid season replacement it has a great shot at a season 2. The network may want to move it to another night (Like Tuesday at 10PM) where there is less competition to try to built an audience. If Cupid and The Unusuals bomb (and I’m pretty sure that at least The Unusuals will if not both) Castle will be the Networks only new show with mediocre success besides Surviving Suburbia – and if Surviving Suburbia has vulgar humor that Bob Saget is know for I don’t think it will do that well either. NBC is the only network that can pull off the odd humor like Better off Ted and In the Motherhood (and look at how bad they are doing as a Network,) and if Surviving Suburbia is anything like that it will surely be a goner, I hope not as I am a huge Bob Saget fan, but ABC’s viewers are more family oriented and may not appreciate the humor of the show.
bill, in response to aleph19′s Q: wouldn’t this be a case of the previously discussed topic where a show that reruns more is dragged down in STD numbers? Housewives almost never repeats due to sunday specials, while Greys does. Aleph is quite right if stating that Grey’s has a higher (almost identical, i think) average if only counting original eps.
Castle needs to stop dropping before you can say it has a chance at renewal. It will definitely be under a 2.5 in the finals for last night. If it keeps dropping, it doesn’t matter how badly The Unusuals and Cupid bomb, it will be gone.
B&S, DW, and GA have been announced to come back next season for at least a month.
Holly I understand where you are coming from but I look at it like this. ABC will renew at least one of the shows that premiered this season. And depending on how the next few new shows do with ratings I think that Castle has the best shot of being renewed. I could be wrong but I think it will end up being the best performer of the bunch. I know last season was short due to the writers strike but look at how many poor performers they held onto (Pushing Daisies, Dirty Sexy Money, Eli Stone) Unless Cupid or the Unusuals can perform better than Castle I think that Castle will be the show that ABC decides to stick with seeing how I doubt the production costs are very different between the shows.
Motherhood and Who were up against American Idol.
ABC tends to give shows doing OK second chances when given an abbreviated first run. See “What About Brian?”, “What About Joan”, and “October Road” and a few others, even though they didn’t make it past S2.
My point was they might keep Better off Ted.
ABC will renew at least one of the shows that premiered this season
That’s where I disagree with you. Depending on ratings and their pilots, they could very easily scrap all of them and write-off this season as strike damage.
The prospect of ABC canceling every new show from this season is absurd. It would kill advertising prospects for any new pilots for next season. Not to mention ABC shows more love to hour long dramas than they do half hour sitcoms when it comes to renewal.
Please, please, please don’t let them cancel “Better Off Ted!” It just started and I’m already in love with the characters. I really want to see what else they can come up with. And, to be honest, since they are following (final season) Scrubs and going up against American Idol, those numbers are downright impressive!
Tommy it does more damage to advertiser relations to keep shows that are under performing. If everything ABC debuts this year performs badly then they should cancel it all and start with a clean slate again next year. I do however think if ABC axes everything then someone has to fall on the sword at ABC and take the blame for poorly performing shows.