Our Renew / Cancel Index predicts potential renewal or cancellation for scripted broadcast primetime shows for the 2010-11 season (results through November 8, 2009):
- Likely To Be Canceled By May, 2010
- Some Danger Of Being Canceled By May, 2010
- Likely to Be Renewed For The 2010-11 Season
| Program | Renew/ Cancel Index |
| The Beautiful Life: TBL (P) | 0.49* |
| Melrose Place (P) | 0.61 |
| 90210 (P) | 0.82 |
| Smallville (F), (P) | 0.87 |
| Gossip Girl (P) | 0.93 |
| One Tree Hill (P) | 0.94 |
| Supernatural (S), (P) | 0.98 |
| Vampire Diaries (P) | 1.38 |
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For most broadcast shows, exile to Friday means your network thinks the show is past its time, and should peacefully fade away without damaging the ratings of shows on Sunday-Thursday. That's likely the idea that the CW had when it put Smallville on Fridays this season. But defying conventional wisdom (and to many fans, the wishes of CW chief Dawn Ostroff), not only has Smallville refused to go quietly, it was tied for second best adults 18-49 rating on the CW last week. I know that the CW targets women 18-34, but be certain they sell advertising based on whatever attractive demo ratings they get. Those results cannot be ignored.
With Melrose Place the only show currently in the CW lineup certain to be canceled, fans await the return of Heather Locklear as potential salvation. Dream on.
I realize that with an Index of 0.82 Gossip Girl 90210 wouldn't be "green" for any other network, but its women's 18-34 ratings are above average for the CW (unfortunately we don't get the same level of data for that demo for me to be able to easily use it). That, plus the fact that show's the televised embodiment of everything Dawn Ostroff has staked her network on, guarantees it will be around as long as Dawn is.
*I have frozen The Beautiful Life's Index at its value the week of cancellation.
This is a breakdown of CW scripted shows and their renewal and cancellation prospects. Here are links to the other networks:
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Notes:
The Renew/Cancel Index is a show's Season To Date adults 18-49 rating divided by its network's Season to Date average 18-49 rating. If a show's season to date 18-49 ratings average equalled its network's 18-49 average, the show would have an Index of 1.00. Without special factors, scripted shows that were more than 10% below their network's average are typically canceled by the end of the broadcast primetime season.
Factors that could cause a show to be renewed with well below average index:
- (F) -Fridays: Shows airing on Fridays have been renewed with significantly lower than average Indexes.
- (S) - Syndication: Shows nearing syndication (66-88 episodes), often have economic factors that trump ratings leading to renewal.
- (T) - Third Party: Shows that have a portion of their cost underwritten by a 3rd party can be renewed with substantially lower ratings.
- (P) - Produced by the network's production company - For shows on the bubble, being produced by the network's corporate production company can be a survival advantage. For real losers, it's unlikely to help.
While I initially tried to designate shows with "plum" timeslots, I think that's hard to make that call at this point in the season. It's likely still a factor, but will have to be an "after the fact" call.
What's the History of the Index and How Did It Do In the Past? Check out the results from the 2007-8 season and the 2008-9 season.
Nielsen TV Ratings Data: ©2009 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved. All ratings used are Live+Same Day viewing.
Good for Smallville. I wonder how the show will do when Pam Grier guest stars as Amanda Waller. I wonder how the CW will promote that.
I’m enjoying this season of Smallville a lot more than the Doomsday arc of last season.
Also, excellent title for this post!
The .82 index is for 90210, not Gossip Girl.
If Melrose cancels, Im 2 for 2 since Eastwick just cancelled.
All i’ll have left are ABC comedies Modern Family and The Middle.
I don’t watch or follow Smallville’s ratings, but why exactly was it moved to Fridays? Were the ratings bad or start to decline in its regular time slot? I’m just really curious as to how Dawn Ostroff’s thought process works.
rob, you are correct. I will fix the post.
I haven’t watched Smallville for 4 seasons but I really enjoy season 9. It’s so much fun! I really hope Smallville gets a season 10.
@grr_argh: my understanding of the switch from Thursdays to Fridays was to usher in the new show The Vampire Diaries. The new show would die on Fridays, and is a good fit with Supernatural (both shows about monsters and the paranormal). The hope was that Smallville would still pull decent numbers so that CW could have some sort of ratings presence on Friday. So far the gambit has seemed to work out for them, The Vampire Diaries is a huge hit for the network, and Smallville’s audience keeps growing each week. All in all, I’m not a huge fan of the CW, but in this instance I think they made the right call. Now if only they’d put something other than America’s Next Top Model repeats on after Smallville they might have a solid Friday night lineup.
wasn’t Reaper in the green zone last season, we know how that turned out?
thanks Packy. I just thought Ostroff wanted to cancel the show but the ratings from Smallville wouldn’t justify the act. Therefore, she brewed up this brilliant plan by condemning Smallville to the friday night death slot. Guess that didn’t work out for her.
Supernatural and Vampire Diaries only share the most superficial of compatibilities. I really don’t think they share the same fanbase as Supernatural and Smallville did.
Bill why are you being so bias towards smallville? she show needs to end already.
Well using Travis (who has provided for all shows still producing new episodes the final numbers with both a18-34 and w18-34) numbers you can see a very different picture for the CW.
These are the raw numbers and not converted (like you do for your comparison) nor do they reflect reruns or Encore Performances).
Current average based on a18-49
Vampire Diaries 1.79
Top Model 1.52
Supernatural 1.25
Gossip Girls 1.15
One Tree Hill 1.14
90210 1.11
Smallville 1.04
Melrose Place 0.78
Same Shows (all originals) but using Adults 18-34
Vampire Diaries 1.99
Top Model 1.72
Gossip Girls 1.70
90210 1.55
One Tree Hill 1.53
Supernatural 1.36
Smallville 1.11
Melrose Place 1.04
Then we have want the CW states is their target Demo the W18-34 (again only originals)
Vampire Diaries 2.84
Gossip Girls 2.74
Top Model 2.63
90210 2.33
One Tree Hill 2.28
Supernatural 1.50
Melrose Place 1.44
Smallville 1.08
What surprises me is that Gossip Girl is doing better in that target demo then Top Model, and that 90210 is ahead of One Tree Hill (though that is very close).
But using adults 18-49 really doesn’t paint an accurate picture especially for Supernatural (A show I love) or Smallville. Both are doing considerable worse in the eyes of what the CW is targeting.
mark wood, What the CW aspires to target, and what it makes money selling advertising on (and may very well base its renewal decisions on) are potentially two very different things.
@chrisjozo: I agree completely, I was simply regurgitating an article I had read many months ago. I essentially paraphrased what Dawn said, and added a little commentary of my own. I think Supernatural would benefit greatly from having Smallville partnered up with it again, however; I don’t think Supernatural would be as resiliant as Smallville has been on Fridays. The other problem is that The Vampire Diaries doesn’t fit anywhere else in their schedule, and it certainly would have crashed and burned on Friday had it premiered and stayed there. The only choice was to partner it with Smallville or Supernatural. Smallville was the only show of the 2 that had any chance of surviving Fridays on the CW. Again, I’m not the CW’s biggest fan at all, but I do understand their scheduling decision.
Bill
Oh I know that why I used wording like “What the CW says it’s targeting”.
For the sake of the renewal index, I pretty much agree with the results, just not the comparison using the Adults 18-49.
And I actually liked the idea (on paper) of Smallville going to Friday (the mistake was not having real lead out programming). As the CW has enjoyed success with WWE. But unlike WWE, Smallville does have a female audience (well more so then WWE) and as a product produced by one of the partners of the CW generates off network revenue, WWE had nothing besides its network run that would benefit the CW).
Though I think you should do an index on whether you believe the CW will be around next season.
love smallville, but even there midseason replacments arent anything special, and i cant see them doing any better then the melrose timeslot
Smallville really has been a lot of fun this year.
Frankly we have no idea how Supernatural would do on Friday (at 8pm) or how Smallville would do on Thursdays at 9pm.
Smallville never aired in the more competitive 9pm slot during a normal season (it has a handful of times over the years had a rerun in that time period and those reruns did roughly the same as Supernaturals reruns of the week before or the week after, except during the holidays when it was considerable lower but that is typical).
And Supernatural has only aired on Friday once (during its original run on the WB when they aired an episode a night of Supernatural). But that was during the Holiday rerun period, and 5 years ago, so very hard to judge).
Supernatural has aired more (though still little to base comparisons) times at 8pm 1 rerun during Feb sweeps in season 3 (where it outperformed Smallville;s rerun average to that date and it faced increased competition due to Idol) and it aired 5 times this summer with reruns that not only beat Smallville Thursday at 8pm Summer rerun average, but 4 of them beat any Smallville Summer rerun).
So with what little data we have of the performance between Smallville and Supernatural airing at the same time, the actual facts show that Supernatural performed stronger. While there is precious little data to compare (and why I wont flat out make the claim that Supernatural (at least last year) would have outperformed Smallville if they switched time slots), the data hints that SN might just out perform Smallville.
On paper SN is the better match with VD based on the fact that SN has a more even balance between genders thus making it more likely that VD’s primary audience would stay with the CW.
That didn’t happen (well not to a large degree) and for the last 5 week’s SN audience is leaning (and its just barely) more male then female. Very much like it did with Smallville which I find very, very surprising.
But I am also surprised that Smallville is keeping roughly the same gender percentages on Friday that it had on Thursdays, and Friday’s viewers seem to me more female driven. I didn’t expect that, so that is pleasantly surprising.
The only reason Smallville is seeming to do so good is because all of the other CW programs not having to do with supernatural beings have sucky ratings.
Honestly Plymouth Rock probably won’t get a series order-but the CW should get a brain and realize people watch their sci-fi more than their dramas, and Plymouth Rock is the perfect series for them.
Why do you always come in a Smallville dominated thread and talk about Supernatural? Do you see Smallville fans doing that to Supernatural threads? Oh wait, NO! Just chill out, we get it, you LURVE Supernatural and you think it’s the bees knees!