Our Renew / Cancel Index predicts potential renewal or cancellation for scripted broadcast primetime shows for the 2010-11 season (results through November 22, 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 |
| Til Death (S), (F) | 0.20 |
| Brothers (F) | 0.24 |
| Dollhouse (F), (P) | 0.26 |
| Fringe | 0.59 |
| Bones (P) | 0.77 |
| Lie To Me (P) | 0.79 |
| Glee (P) | 0.92 |
| American Dad (P) | 0.93 |
| The Cleveland Show (P) | 1.13 |
| The Simpsons (P) | 1.16 |
| Family Guy (P) | 1.27 |
| House | 1.52 |
-
Note that the Index values for all Fox shows will continue to be very depressed for some time because the World Series ratings have unusually boosted Fox’s overall 18-49 average (3.6 vs. ~3.o before baseball). That will slowly subside as Fox’s average averages out post-baseball. For the time being, the order of the shows is far more important than the Index values.
I have already written a lot about Fringe's move to the brutally competive Thursday 9pm timeslot, and its subsequent ratings devastation. Fox will certainly be breaking the "rules" of the Renew / Cancel Index if it brings Fringe back next season, but they might just based on their limited expectations for the move. Or not. I have no way of knowing. Neither do fans. Nor entertainment writers fed PR spin. You just gotta believe. Or not.
Dollhouse, Brothers and 'Til Death are all canceled, either in fact or in practice. Dollhouse fans will see all its episodes that were produced, that's the best the other two can hope for as well.
This is a breakdown of Fox scripted shows and their renewal and cancellation prospects. Here are links to the other networks:
-
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 it'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.
friday is where shows go to die…. thursday is where shows go to get killed
Fox kept Fringe on Thursday, so I’m wondering if they are fine with the current ratings it has.
Your title sounds alot like the X-Files Slogan.
I Want To Believe.
Fringe is getting more and more awesome… and it was already pretty damned good. The real question is why does FOX keep sending it’s shows against ratings powerhouses, and then wonder why they don’t perform as expected? If they had put Fringe against Heroes on Mondays, I suspect viewers may have switched to Fringe’s superior sci-fi for both premise and acting.
On a personal note, I just may cry if Fringe is cancelled. I’m completely hooked.
I gotta believe…
that Fox has no love for Fringe, that they would rather burn a prime post-AI timeslot on some silly child genius reality show.
Or at the very least, that Fox loves Fringe far less than Human Target, that keeping HT out of Lost’s way outweighs Fringe collapsing on Thursdays.
I furthermore believe that only a combination of failures – HT being DoA, 24 not coming back, AND Lie to Me fizzling once it returns – are the only chance Fringe now has.
Yeah, Fringe basically needs multiple other shows on Fox to collapse in order to survive.
The thing is Human Target and likely Lie to Me have Idol lead-ins, so that almost guarantees they’ll outperform Fringe’s current squalor. And 24 will surely break 2.0s. Past Life will bomb no doubt, but with the order cut Fox expected that anyway.
It’s just, I look at Fox’s schedule. It’s pretty crammed as is, since they only have two hours of primetime, and they’ve got a number of strong performers they won’t want to move around.
Fringe’s only real hope is if Fox decides to timeshare it for half a season next year. No way it can get a full season with its poor numbers.
Jump American Dad, Glee! Though it’s Fox’s #2 hourlong right now, I wonder how it’ll rank in the spring.
I see no reason why Bones, Fringe, or Kitchen Nightmares would beat it. Past Life isn’t getting a particularly good timeslot, possibly for a reason. Our Little Genius better fail. So I see it in the top half; Idol & House in the lead, probably 24 behind that, then Glee vs. Human Target in the post-Idol slot war. Which hopefully Glee wins.
Saying Fringe’s 0.59 is less impressive than Lie To Me’s 0.79 is like saying my B in AP Calculus is less impressive than my A in Home Economics.
I think it’s pretty clear FOX is still standing behind the show, and trying to keep its numbers afloat. They’re protecting it from the Olympics, still keeping it for the first week of Feb. sweeps as well as all of May’s sweeps, etc. etc.
While FOX’s opinion may change in the future, saying Fringe is on the verge of cancellation right *now* is a pretty short-sighted conclusion (and woefully ignorant when considering other factors IMO, or in this case, not considering them when you should).
First I love Fringe.
Second Fox has effectively killed it with the timeslot and I while I would like them to move it, I think that they will not get the audience back. A show like this cannot be presented in dribs and drabs. You need to put it on and keep a continuous story in play week after week.
Oh well, I hope Murdoch pulls all his properties off of the google index and fox dies a slow death like FireFly and TSCC and now Fringe.
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2009/tc20091124_203544.htm
They should jus…not cancel it :]. MOVE THE FRIGGEN SHOW TO A BETTER TIME! HOW HARD IS THAT??
I think there are two view points you can take with Fringe one is that Fox is still standing behind the show and giving it as many chances as it can to succeed (letting it avoid the Olympics etc.) or alternatively Fox is giving the impression of standing behind the show and giving it as many chances as it can to keep JJ Abrams happy so that come the end of the season they can say we protected you as much as we could and gave you a full season to rebuild an audience and then cancel it.
Should Fox have moved it back behind Idol? I don’t think so nor do I think they should move it away from Thursday night although its worth mentioning that since Human Target will likely end its run before Fringe is scheduled to return it might still move off and Thursday and behind Idol on Wednesday, I assume that will depend on what Lie To Me and perhaps to a lesser extent Our Little Genius look like and shape up. If Genius catches on I wouldn’t be hugely surprised to see more episodes produced for the Wednesday slot after Human Target finishes. Although where that would leave Lie To Me is anyone’s guess.
In general terms though my problem with moving Fringe is that I’m not sure what it accomplishes. If the show needs to have a big lead-in from House or Idol to get an audience then what’s the point in keeping it on the air? Fox aren’t going to be able to give it those slots for ever, they need to launch new shows and Fringe got incredibly good treatment last year. I also refuse to believe that being opposite Grey’s is doing that much damage to Fringe, the audience overlap there has to be minimal to say the least. Personally I think they should axe Fringe but I’m not convinced they will. Despite it making no sense from a numbers perspective I’m more worried about Lie To Me than Fringe just because unlike Fringe the expectation for its performance this year would have been much higher than its achieved.
Why is this site SO negative these days?
FOX will obviously be disappointed with FRINGE’s performance in its original season two timeslot; they thought they finally had a Thursday night powerhouse to hold its own against the other networks and soon realised they didn’t. But that doesn’t mean it’s an unsuccessful show: its target audience is simply more niche than that of CSI/Greys et al. Once FOX realise that, I’m sure they’ll give it a chance to compete in a more realistic timeslot.
FOX gambled on Fringe being more mainstream that it actually is this season. The gamble failed. But that doesn’t mean cancellation is imminent: FOX now know that they have a killer, niche sci-fi show on their hands, and I’m sure their scheduling next season will reflect that revelation.
“Saying Fringe’s 0.59 is less impressive than Lie To Me’s 0.79 is like saying my B in AP Calculus is less impressive than my A in Home Economics.
I think it’s pretty clear FOX is still standing behind the show, and trying to keep its numbers afloat. They’re protecting it from the Olympics, still keeping it for the first week of Feb. sweeps as well as all of May’s sweeps, etc. etc.
While FOX’s opinion may change in the future, saying Fringe is on the verge of cancellation right *now* is a pretty short-sighted conclusion (and woefully ignorant when considering other factors IMO, or in this case, not considering them when you should).”
Nicely put.
They should put Fringe on Wednesday with Glee
With a few exceptions, most of Season 2′s episodes really aren’t grabbing my attention. Season 1 had a great underlying mythology (“the Pattern”) and the story arcs fit very nicely into that mythology. This season Fringe is becoming more like the X-Files; there is no real solid underlying mythology and the story arcs are for the most part the monster of the week.
Well by the renew/cancel FOX is already cancelling 3 shows that are doing very badly (sorry dollhouse fans).
I think Fringe will be around next season, maybe on another night
I want to believe.
If they renewed Dollhouse for a second season, against all odds, who knows, everything is possible.
So… I want to believe.
Rich, Fox doesn’t appear to be in a position where they’d need to bring Fringe of all things back to fill holes in the schedule – its too expensive if nothing else. As things stand my guess is that Fox axes Dollhouse, Brothers, ‘Til Death, Past Life and one of Lie To Me or Fringe and assuming Human Target hits 24 will end its run this year.
That gives them 5 or so hours to fill over the course of next season, an hour of that will likely be via repeats on Friday and four new hours is (I think) on par with what they debuted this year.
There are number of factors at work.
1) Does FOX really want the show to continue?
2) What is its cost structure since moving production to Canada? Is it profitable enough? It does have a small core cast of likely low priced actors.
3) How Past Life performs in its place – if it implodes, that would help FRINGE’s case. Another FOX show imploding would help even more.
4) Sell it to NBC – they need something to replace the dying HEROES.
5) Maybe FRINGE will stay on the air in the alternate universe where William Bell is hiding and a syndication deal with the alternate universe version of FOX will be made; since in that universe the ratings are much higher since they left it in its old Tuesday time slot. At least thats what August told me before he died.
Just because Thursday is a tough time slot, doesn’t mean that moving Fringe is the answer. To move it somewhere, they’d have to move something ELSE to that Thursday slot. And just because there are shows that each of us, as individuals, would like to see go there to die/get killed, FOX clearly has to look at the big picture.
It seems to be FOX has been supporting Fringe as best they can, thinking it is the strongest show they have for the slot. If they had a purposefully weak show, I’m sure they’d just as soon not have a weak show at all than keep a weak show because of a need to fill a slot to get beaten…