My esteemed colleague Mr. Gorman says in response to someone crying about ABC's scheduling of FlashForward's return against the first night of the NCAA men's college basketball tournament:
You can make lots of excuses for FlashForward, but CBS last night wasn't much higher than it was last Thursday, and Fox and the CW ran all repeats. Nobody watched it because nobody wanted to watch it.
There's more than meets the eye with the 18-49 numbers
Ultimately regardless of any analysis, Bill's conclusion is correct -- not enough people wanted to watch it. Whatever the reasons, that is still true. But was the dismissive wave of the hand that the NCAAs didn't have any impact overly dismissive? It's true there wasn't much difference between CBS's overall 18-49 this week versus last week, but the overall composition of those numbers this week was very different. In the spirit of informing and enlightening...
Men Men Men Men
Get a load of CBS's averages this week versus last week:
| CBS 8pm-10pm Avgs | 11-Mar | 18-Mar | Change |
| Overall 18-49 Rtg | 3.5 | 3.8 | 9% |
| Men 18-49 Rtg | 2.9 | 5.0 | 72% |
| Women 18-49 Rtg | 4.0 | 2.7 | -33% |
| Men 18-34 Rtg | 1.5 | 4.5 | 200% |
| Women 18-34 Rtg | 2.4 | 2.2 | -8% |
=
Ah, sports. They find the elusive males 18-34!
Now, just for grins, we'll compare the 8p-9p hour on December 3rd (last FlashForward airing) to last night's two hour averages.
| Flash Forward | 3-Dec | 18-Mar | Change |
| Overall 18-49 | 2.2 | 1.9 | -14% |
| Men 18-49 | 1.9 | 1.5 | -21% |
| Women 18-49 | 2.4 | 2.3 | -4% |
| Men 18-34 | 1.7 | 1.4 | -18% |
| Women 18-34 | 1.9 | 1.9 | 0% |
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So did the NCAA's make any difference to FlashForward? The above charts are by no means conclusive. What we do know is that FlashForward showed its biggest decreases with men, and last night CBS had substantial week over week increases in men despite the overall rating changing by only 9%. My personal conclusion is that the NCAA's certainly took a toll. Perhaps the difference between a 1.9 and a 2.1.
How much would that really matter?
Not even a little bit, really, at least in terms of the show's renewal prospects. But there is more to the numbers than sometimes meets the eye and sometimes its worth digging beneath the overall 18-49 averages.
Here's why FlashForward won't succeed whereas V might after it's hiatus. 3. factors to consider. 1. The plot in FlashForward is harder to understand and more confusing than Vs. There's no definite good guy or bad guy in FlashForward. Whereas in V there is a side the viewer knows to root for. The new showrunner in V, Scott Rosenbaum, seems to know what he's doing. Whereas in FlashForward, I don't get the sense that any of the showrunners know what the show is or who the good guys are. They're not advancing the plot. The showrunners in FlashForward are having the characters do almost nothing but run around without learning anything new. Whereas in V, although the episodes have been dull prior to Scott Rosenbaum, at least in each episode we learned something new. 3. The timeslot. FlashForward has no lead in. V has Lost as its lead in. While Lost as a lead in, it hasn't worked in the past, V might be a different story because the storyline appeals to the Lost crowd, is a simple to understand and stars Elizabeth Mitchell, one of the stars of Lost.
ABC is just plain dumb for bringing it back last night. You know guys (like me) were not in the mood to watch a show last night, unless it was Community.
Great analysis Robert and spot on! Last nights ep was the best of the entire season…truly! I remember males being the demo for FF.
Meh, no one cares about the numbers for FlashForward, but it would be very interesting to see the Men and Women 18-49 average ratings per night for the whole week to see which nights skew the most either way for all the networks.
An0m, you don't care, but many people do and way more people care about that than ratings by gender, by network, by night.
I'd be interested in looking at that, too, but unfortunately we don't see good seasonal averages by night (or even by show) for gender. Doing it for any single week probably isn't all that illustrative, but I might pick a week during May sweeps and do it anyway.
Well I get that, and I did take note of FF's rating this morning because I watch the series, but this proves that more men than women watched basketball last night, and I could have told you that yesterday.
So could I have, but what you couldn't have told me yesterday was how much Flash Forward's male viewing would decrease versus last time or the percentages by which male viewing on CBS went up and female viewing went down.
If you don't like the numbers, or they don't interest you, I suggest you ignore them. Thanks.
We do need a gender ratings chart…CBS although is the only US TV network that cares about men still from what I've been told.
From what you've been told? Their current primetime programming certainly does not cater to men. Look at Tuesdays for example, or Fridays from here on… GW, Medium, Miami Medical. Real male skewing nights!
The only network that cares about men? The SciFi shows certainly are not targeted toward women and ABC and Fox has them on their rosters plus 24 is certainly geared to men. And I'll bet the comedy block on NBC is younger male versus female though not dominant.
Bingo. To further that I would say there's not even one show on CBS current schedule for which you could make any reasonable argument that it is geared toward men.
I'm not sure I'd say that. FOX certainly caters toward men with the animated comedies, 24, and Human Target; probably Fringe as well. The CBS procedurals skew female (though not nearly as much as the ABC shows).
“Did March Madness Hurt “FlashForward?””
No, FlashForward's concept hurt FlashForward. See y'alls own piece about serial dramas on network television.
Well that's true in the general scheme of things but last night specifically FF was hampered by basketball and the analysis proves it.
I'm a big fan of the show. Last night's two hour episode took a drastic turn. I think it definitely advanced the plot much better than the fall episodes. Introduced many twists and took the focus from Fiennes, who was bringing down the show in my opinion.
I was disappointed in the numbers, but they are what they are. I just discovered this site a few months back and am really enjoying seeing the daily numbers, quite a set up you have.
Well I am sure NBC was hurt by the BB tounament also. I'm sure the comedies skew more male than female with the exception of The Marriage Ref.
No stranger to the digging beneath the numbers (and having it produce no different conclusion) myself, but in this case your guessed at difference that the NCAA tournament made after the detailed calculation (1.9 vs. 2.1, 10.5%), is hardly different than the overall change in CBS's 18-49 average for the night (3.7 vs. 3.4, 8.8%) which was my implied effect. Although I await the return comment that it was not implied enough!
And to many folks, pretty much all *scripted* broadcast primetime programming *except* the Fox animated shows skews female. As Robert said, its too much trouble to do it all the time, but looking at the gender breakdowns for a whole week once would be interesting.
Here in Madison, we had the High School boys BB tournement take over ABC ALL DAY. Flash Forward wont show here until 2:30am on Sunday night!!!!!! WTF!!!
I think the tournament impacted FF a little, as I believe it skews male. I have a related question – does the NCAA rating include the West Coast, as most games are over when prime time starts out here?
The difference in end result (10.5% and 8.8%) isn't much different, but I would not have, and definitely do not, assume that any CBS gains, even with men, all came at the expense of any individual show.
As an aside, one thing that did surprise me that I forgot to include in the post: this week actually had slightly fewer men 18-34/18-49 watching TV in primetime. That could simply be a case where the nature of live events really threw those numbers off in the case of CBS.