Despite being in an ideal premiere timeslot, the animated newcomer Sit Down, Shut Up had ratings slightly below what seems necessary for renewal. Any ratings slippage at all in future episodes and the show is likely to be canceled.
It's all over but the shouting for Dollhouse. Even the shouting's done for Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles.
Starting this week, instead of using the 18-49 viewership for the calculations, I’m going to instead use the 18-49 rating, which simply is the percentage of the US 18-49 TV adults population. (There are an estimated 132 million US adults 18-49 in TV households, so a 1.0 rating is equal to 1.32 million adults 18-49). Since we only get 18-49 demo ratings for each show on an overnight basis, that makes the values in the Renew/Cancel Index easier to compare with the overnight demo ratings results.
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 Rating (LIVE+SD) | Network Avg. STD 18-49 rating | Renew/ Cancel index | Status |
| TERMINATOR: SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES (FRI) | FOX | 1.25 | 2.7 | 0.46 | |
| DO NOT DISTURB | FOX | 1.6 | 2.7 | 0.59 | canceled |
| DOLLHOUSE | FOX | 1.6 | 2.7 | 0.59 | |
| TIL DEATH | FOX | 1.8 | 2.7 | 0.67 | returning |
| PRISON BREAK | FOX | 2.2 | 2.7 | 0.81 | final season |
| SIT DOWN, SHUT UP | FOX | 2.3 | 2.7 | 0.85 | |
| KING OF THE HILL | FOX | 2.8 | 2.7 | 1.04 | final season |
| American Dad | FOX | 2.8 | 2.7 | 1.04 | returning |
| Bones | FOX | 3.0 | 2.7 | 1.11 | |
| Simpsons | FOX | 3.1 | 2.7 | 1.15 | returning |
| FRINGE | FOX | 3.5 | 2.7 | 1.30 | |
| Family Guy | FOX | 3.5 | 2.7 | 1.30 | |
| Lie To Me | FOX | 3.7 | 2.7 | 1.37 | |
| 24 | FOX | 3.8 | 2.7 | 1.41 | returning |
| HOUSE | FOX | 4.7 | 2.7 | 1.74 |
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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.
Considering the new format, maybe you want to change TSCC’s Monday average to its rating rather than viewers?
It’s really amazing how big a difference there is between House and everything else on FOX.
TSSCS average should be 1.3 not 1.2
Yeah, I’m as resigned to the cancellation of Dollhouse as I am to TSCC at this point.
At least I conclude, as opposed to TSCC, that the problem with Dollhouse was the focus on the wrong character (Echo) as opposed to the FBI agent Ballard who had a consistent characterization. That isn’t entirely different than TSCC’s focus problem, but Dollhouse wasn’t as egregious about it. At least Echo’s lack of characterization was in fact part of the premise. You couldn’t mess with her characterization like TSCC did with Sarah Connor because Echo really didn’t have a “character” to mess with.
The other problem might be simply that the premise was a bit hard to grasp for some people who weren’t prone to being intrigued by it as I was.
Another issue was that there wasn’t enough indication early on that the series had a bigger mythology than just the basic premise of a company renting out scrubbed people. You had to watch all the episodes and follow the dialog closely to realize that.
In fact, I think that was THE big problem with the show – the first five episodes seemed to be more formulaic than expansive. And this is a show that would not survive on “formula”. It needed to be more serial in the first five episodes than it was.
Even so, I think this might be one of those shows where somebody might reasonably proclaim that it had no “mainstream appeal”, whatever that actually means.
Probably the fact that I liked it pretty much proves that! LOL!
hagi, fair enough, had things shaved to 1 significant digit. Not that it will matter!
1.653 million / 1.32 = 1.252 rating
@Richard
I agree. I guess they gambled with the first five episodes, hoping to catch some unsuspecting males with Dushku and present them a ‘simple’ show they can easily get hooked on before changing into full gear. Well — it didn’t work out.
A further thought on what constitutes “mainstream appeal”. I think it has to do with whether once someone hears the premise of a show, they immediately have SOME idea where the show could go and whether that fits their world-view or piques their interest based on their own interests.
Take TSCC: Everybody knows what Terminator is. So the premise is known and is easily grasped by anybody. They immediate think, “OK, killer robots chasing a kid and his mother while they try to stop the end of the world. Oh, and there’s a hot female ‘good Terminator’ so obviously the kid and her get it on by end of the series.” Not hard to follow and promises sci-fi action/adventure (which it ended up failing to deliver consistently) and some titillating “will they/won’t they” (however creepy some people thought that idea was).
Easy premise, bad execution – canceled.
Now think about the Dollhouse premise: “A company sells people with reprogrammed personalities for various reasons.” It’s a lot harder to immediately imagine where that could go if you haven’t thought about such things – which obviously most people never have since they’re not Transhumanist wackos like me – and you don’t know Joss Whedon’s rep for going in odd directions in his past shows. So rather than think about it, you blow it off.
Hard premise, uneven execution – canceled.
Take Leverage: Bunch of criminals get together to run cons on corrupt corporations and individuals. Very easy to grasp. Obvious what to expect. So all that matters is are the characters engaging and the execution decent – which it was. End result: second season green lighted.
I think that’s all “mainstream appeal” is: most people can understand the premise without thinking about it too hard and it does it not weird them out or make it seem to hard to follow.
After that, it’s all execution.
Evil, I think you’re right. They REALLY over-emphasized the babe content of the show in the first several episodes, even though by shifting from “hot babe” to “babe wearing glasses” in episode one, they tried to make it seem like it wasn’t all about that.
The episode with the singer was the worst in that regard. First, the concept of “bodyguard who doesn’t know she’s a bodyguard” was a bit out there. Second, that whole episode was babes in skimpy outfits. Fine by me, but possibly boring to anybody who wants a more intriguing plot. Third, the acting was pretty bad in that one. It and the episode with the religious cult were the two episodes I really didn’t like much. And it’s no surprise those two stories didn’t go far in moving the overall mythology and story arc along either.
As some people have suggested, they should have made episode six the pilot episode.
They also slowed down in episodes seven and eight. Six and nine were their best episodes. But by then it was too late. I think the show died by episode six or even earlier – or even before it was aired because of the problem of the premise I indicated above: no “mainstream appeal”.
@Richard
However how do you think that Lost fits into that? While the premise might seem easy at first, that definitely changed with the later seasons and even though (at least in my opinion) the execution stayed on the same level, it definitely got more and more complicated and therefore hard to follow. So basically, Lost actually shouldn’t have any mainstream appeal.
Evil, I think the story with LOST is that it started out with mainstream appeal and gathered a following. By the time it got complicated, enough people were wrapped up in the show that it was able to hang on to a good sized audience, though it has lost a huge percentage from the first few seasons.
Wow….guys from Firefly with shows are in danger of being canceled. Again. At the same time.
List:
Summer Glau: TSCC = dead
Nathan Fillion: Castle = 50/50
Adam Baldwin: Chuck = 50/50
Joss Whedon: Dollhouse = almost certain not coming back
Talk about bad luck…..
P.S
And note Gina Torres guess stint on the following shows: “Pushing Daisies”, “Dirty Sexy Money” , “Eli Stone” “Boston Legal”….
Uh oh. That doesn’t bode well for V. Alan Tudyk is in the pilot.
I agree with Julia. I never watched Lost but my impression of the initial premise was basically a “weird Gilligan’s Island”. That’s sort of easy to grasp. But then they went wild on it, apparently.
I’m still not sure what the premise of “Heroes” is other than: kids with superpowers – X-Men without the uniforms (“Mutant X” interested me but then they had the “X” in there, which got them sued if I remember correctly). But just from that I can kinda grasp it and either get interested or not. The only reason I’m not that interested now is that I’d have a lot of catching up to do at this point. But I might look into it at some point. I mean, it DOES have Hayden Panettiere!
Alexis: Yeah, the Firefly cast needs to go back and make MORE FIREFLY!
How’s Jewel Staite doing on Stargate?
If u use single digit after decimal point, rounding must be proper, 1.25 rounds to 1.3… For its Monday numbers: 2.726 m/1.32=2.06=2.1
Hagi, it’s not coming back whether there are two significant digits or 20, but I agree it would’ve been simpler for Bill to just put it at 1.3 and leave it at that
About Fringe… didn’t I read an interview somewhere with some of the Fringe cast saying that they’d started filming Season 2 already? If that’s not an indicator of renewal, I don’t know what is?
I think V will have worse problems than Alan. I never got into that show back when the original aired. I doubt they can do better this time. Still Battlestar apparently did. But the new Battlestar, even the old Battlestar, had a better premise than V ever did.
V premise: “Nice” aliens turn out to be rotters.
That’s a “duh” premise!
i noticed Gina Torres was in all the ABC early cancellations but the currently records for show / ratings killing goes to Rena Sofa she adds Dirty Sexy Money to her endless list that impressively includes even bringing down Heroes and 24
Kirk Acevedo (aka Charlie Francis) apparently confirmed in an interview that he was shooting a stand alone episode for season 2. He also mentioned a “coming war” – which means there definitely will be more going on in season 2 to further the overall concept.
The numbers say Fringe will be back, there just hasn’t been any official announcement – which is why Bill has it in green!
So did the latest Fringe episode satisfied you, RSH? Lol
I think the real problem is that the moment you put an intelligent show on in america most of the populace doesn’t understand it and stops watching. Granted that makes it so everyone else has to suffer from terrible television with hilariously simple premises and extremely predictable plot lines. That and reality TV. Why must reality TV exist? Can’t someone make reality TV go away?