Short term (4 week) ratings trends indicate the renewal prospects for Castle, The Good Wife, Heroes, Parks & Recreation and Law & Order have improved.
Since I am keeping individual show episode ratings this season (unlike in past years when I just relied on Nielsen averages), I'd been meaning to look at short term ratings trends explicitly at some point (instead of just eyeballing them). I meant to start including them in the regular posts this week, but the Nielsen power outage delay made that impractical. However, in preparation for next weeks posts, I set up the spreadsheet and did the calculations for this week, so I figured I would post them (not color coded).
Remember that on a season average basis, an Index of below 0.92 has in the past indicated a scripted show is in danger of cancellation. On a short term Index basis, I haven't checked the history. And to be honest, there's likely more in these numbers than I've drawn out from my cursory scan, but shows with 4 week Indexes over their season Indexes would seem to have improving chances. Whether that turns out to be the case, we shall see.
ABC
| Program | Renew/ Cancel Index | 4 Week Renew/ Cancel Index |
| Ugly Betty (S), (F), (P) | 0.39 | 0.42 |
| Hank | 0.52 | 0.50 |
| Eastwick | 0.63 | 0.58 |
| the forgotten | 0.66 | 0.69 |
| The Middle | 0.69 | 0.72 |
| Castle (P) | 0.75 | 0.86 |
| FlashForward (P) | 1.00 | 0.98 |
| Brothers & Sisters (S), (P) | 1.01 | 1.13 |
| Cougar Town (P) | 1.10 | 1.08 |
| Modern Family | 1.18 | 1.26 |
| Private Practice (P) | 1.23 | 1.30 |
| V | 1.45 | 1.60 |
| Desperate Housewives (P) | 1.53 | 1.70 |
| Grey's Anatomy (P) | 1.79 | 1.88 |
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CBS
| Program | Renew/ Cancel Index | 4 Week Renew/ Cancel Index |
| Numb3rs (F), (P) | 0.54 | 0.65 |
| Three Rivers (P) | 0.55 | 0.64 |
| Cold Case (P) | 0.60 | 0.68 |
| New Adventures of Old Christine (S) | 0.62 | 0.71 |
| Medium (F), (P) | 0.62 | 0.73 |
| Ghost Whisperer (F), (S) | 0.63 | 0.74 |
| Gary Unmarried | 0.67 | 0.76 |
| The Good Wife (P) | 0.86 | 0.94 |
| Accidentally On Purpose (P) | 0.92 | 1.06 |
| CSI:NY (P) | 0.98 | 1.09 |
| How I Met Your Mother (S) | 1.06 | 1.21 |
| The Mentalist | 1.09 | 1.26 |
| CSI (P) | 1.11 | 1.22 |
| Criminal Minds (P) | 1.12 | 1.22 |
| NCIS: Los Angeles (P) | 1.13 | 1.23 |
| CSI: Miami (P) | 1.21 | 1.35 |
| NCIS (P) | 1.37 | 1.55 |
| Two and a Half Men | 1.40 | 1.60 |
| Big Bang Theory | 1.49 | 1.72 |
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CW
| Program | Renew/ Cancel Index | 4 Week Renew/ Cancel Index |
| The Beautiful Life: TBL (P) | 0.49* | |
| Melrose Place (P) | 0.60 | 0.62 |
| 90210 (P) | 0.84 | 0.93 |
| Smallville (F), (P) | 0.89 | 1.10 |
| Gossip Girl (P) | 0.95 | 1.10 |
| One Tree Hill (P) | 0.96 | 1.12 |
| Supernatural (S), (P) | 0.99 | 1.12 |
| Vampire Diaries (P) | 1.41 | 1.60 |
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NBC
| Program | Renew/ Cancel Index | 4 Week Renew/ Cancel Index |
| Law & Order (F), (P) | 0.54 | 0.63 |
| Trauma (P) | 0.69 | 0.75 |
| Mercy (P) | 0.71 | 0.71 |
| Parks & Recreation (P) | 0.75 | 0.85 |
| Community | 0.83 | 0.85 |
| Heroes (P) | 0.92 | 0.99 |
| Law & Order: SVU (P) | 0.97 | 1.09 |
| 30 Rock (P) | 1.14 | 1.25 |
| The Office (P) | 1.56 | 1.71 |
The middle column Renew / Cancel Index numbers are calculated the same as they always have been. A show's season average adults 18-49 rating divided by its networks season average adults 18-49 rating. The 4 week Indexes divide a show's 4 week running 18-49 ratings average by the networks running 4 week ratings average. The number of repeats during a short period can cause misleading results. Not sure if I can do something simple to show that or not.
Note that the Fox numbers for the 4 week average would have been entirely useless because few regular shows aired more than once or twice, and the averages were heavily skewed by baseball, so I didn't include them at all. Next week I may figure out something special for Fox for the next few weeks.
With Heroes, I think this is very misleading. Four weeks includes the three weeks they were consistently at 2.5, which overshadows that they then fell to 2.3 in the fourth week. It also doesn’t take into consideration that they fell again to 2.2 this week.
It seems like everything at NBC is up, which suggests not so much that the shows have improved recently, but that NBC is softer as a whole in recent weeks.
Great, just piss in NBC’s Cherrio’s, Julia.
And Fox??
Actually, it’s not just NBC. Everything on every network, except FlashForward, Hank and Eastwick is up.
Dann, while I wrote about leaving Fox’s numbers out of the post, I didn’t expect *you* to read it.
Good to see Castle moving up even if it is still borderline.
Julia, indeed, while this shows a new set data, it has its own limitations. Whether it gets included in the regular posts is up in the air. It may make them too complicated. I may just keep the numbers as a backup for my predictions.
Julia, As for “most everything is up” there could be a variety of reasons, that I don’t currently have the time to look into but the most likely is that shows not in the tables (sports, reality) have in general fallen in the ratings since the beginning of the season relative to scripted shows.
What’s this? Some POSITIVE news on Castle? Predictions its chances of renewal are improving? From THIS site? Be still my beating heart.
Just kidding, Bill. Mostly.
Im happy for my shows they’ve all been picked up for a full 22-25 episode season! Now i get to enjoy the rest of the year with my shows! Hey does anyone know how many episodes trauma is getting since it got ordered for additional episodes?
If most shows are up the its nost sidnificant to look at shows that went up the most in each network. additiobally it says a lot whena show is down
Community and Parks & Rec are neck and neck. I’m hoping Parks is the one that gets a third season, I can’t imagine NBC renewing both of them.
How can V have an overall R/C index of 1.45, and a 4 week R/C index of 1.6, when there have only been 3 episodes?
Did the “up” trend get a boost with the daylight savings change?
“Community and Parks & Rec are neck and neck. I’m hoping Parks is the one that gets a third season, I can’t imagine NBC renewing both of them”
Looking at NBC’s carnage, I can see both getting renewed actually. They’ve got enough holes as it is.
They both do about the same as Old Christine and Gary Unmarried and CBS seems fine with those, so.
Samantha because the overall index is divided by the network’s season-to-date 18-49 average and the 4 week index is divided by the network’s running average just for the last 4 weeks.
The ratings average for V (which might only include TWO airings since the above is through last week) stayed the same, but what it was divided by changed.
Samantha, in V’s case it’s ratings average is unchanged (in either case for just 2 episodes, I didn’t use any of this weeks numbers), but since ABC’s 4 week average is lower than its season average, that pushed V’s relative Index up.
Catherine, since the Index measures ratings relative to each show’s network average, daylight savings time turn off might help early shows a bit, but it would hurt later shows relative ratings. However, that is only a guess, I didn’t look at timeslot specific trends.
Makes sense. (BTW, quick responses to questions make it seem like you guys REALLY care about the site and its commenters, which is awesome).
NBC scripted probably up since they had no football on November 1st so that would impact the last 4 weeks much more than the season to date averages. That plus Leno likely a little lower than the first couple weeks of season.
CBS – maybe no big football overruns the last 4 weeks? Other than that, I don’t know why everything would be up – their only reality is Survivor, Race, and 60 minutes so unless they dropped off big time, it seems odd all CBS scripted is up.
ABC – likely a combination of some of their shows really dropping off from their early weeks more than others and also DWTS being low so their mondays and tuesdays were likely down the last 4 weeks.
CW – not really sure why all scripted is up. Either Model is significantly down and/or the Friday encores slid and made everything else look better.
Thanks for posting this! Cool to look at. I agree also though that it might get a bit too confusing or may be too difficult to have meaning with shows on different repeat cycles. But still great to see!