It’s still too early to say for sure that FOX has a bona fide hit with its new serial killer cult drama The Following, but at this point it surely seems headed in that direction. The show actually improved on its debut numbers as it pulled a 3.3 rating in the 18-49 demographic and 10.1 million total viewers with its second episode on Monday. And while that’s only an increase of one tick from the 3.2 rating that the premiere had, it’s quite rare for a show to improve it numbers after its debut. Most often, the numbers for a show drop after the premiere, sometimes just a little, sometimes by a lot. The increase in the numbers for The Following suggest that it got some good word of mouth after its debut which led more viewers to check it out (or those that DVR’d the first episode liked it so much that they tuned in for the second episode live). In any case, the early indications are that this show will not follow the same trend as last year’s Alcatraz which debuted strong but then saw a steady decline into an early cancellation. And I’d say its still up in the air as to whether The Following truly counts as a genre show, but I know that I am definitely enjoying it. This show has moved to the top of my must-watch list (at least until The Walking Dead returns on February 10th), and I’d like to see it stick around.
Syfy’s Monday block of scripted shows saw a bit of a boost this week as Being Human improved its numbers and Continuum eked its way into the Top 100 cable shows for the first time. The latter show pulled a 0.6 rating in the 18-49 demo with 1.4 million total viewers, up from the 0.5 it had for its first two Season 3 episodes. Continuum managed a 0.4 rating with 1.2 million total viewers, a signficant improvement from the 0.2 it had for its U.S. debut. And Lost Girl also had a 0.4 rating with just over one million viewers. Those last two shows are Canadian imports and don’t rely as heavily on U.S. ratings for their survival (Continuum has already been renewed for a second season in Canada and Lost Girl is on its third season). But it would still be nice to see them do well here so that Syfy will keep airing them as both are pretty decent shows (though it wouldn’t surprise me if the Science channel were to pick up Continuum if Syfy kicked it to the curb).
ABC’s Once Upon A Time has gone into hiding for a couple of weeks but will resume new episodes on February 10th. Keep an eye on the Cancellation Watch Twitter Site for the early returns from the rest of this week’s shows and you can see the Cancellation Alert status of all the shows currently airing plus the final results from prior seasons at my Cancellation Watch page. And for questions on how the ratings work and my Cancellation Alert statuses, you can see the Cancellation Watch FAQ.
Ratings Source: TV by the Numbers
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