Cancellation Watch: Time After Time and Making History Drop, The Walking Dead Improves, Plus the Scorecard.

Unless otherwise noted, the ratings numbers below are based on the final overnights and may vary slightly from the preliminaries reported on the Cancelled Sci Fi Twitter Site.

Ratings Results of Interest: The weekend ratings are finally available after the Nielsen outage!  (Which I believe was caused by H.G. Wells going back in time to change the results and save Time After Time, but it didn’t work.)  That show slipped to a 0.6 rating based on the overnights for the 18-49 demographic with 2.3 million total viewers on Sunday (despite Wells’ best efforts) and I am expecting it to get yanked from the schedule at any time now. On FOX, Making History slipped to a 0.7 rating with 1.8 million total viewers, and I don’t believe that one can survive long at those levels. Over on AMC, The Walking Dead improved slightly to a 4.9 rating with 10.7 million total viewers, slowing the Walking Dexit for at least a week.

On Saturday, Samurai Jack pulled a decent 0.76 rating with 1.6 million total viewers for its fifth season debut, and you have to wonder if Adult Swim might rethink this being the show’s final season.  Over on Disney XD, Guardians of the Galaxy could only scrape up a 0.07 rating with 200k total viewers for its Season 2 debut.  But that show’s survival is more closely tied to merchandising, so those ratings may not matter too much.

On Friday, MacGyver slipped back down to a 1.0 rating with 7.7 million total viewers after airing a repeat the previous week, but it is still at renewable levels for a Friday show.  Over on FOX, Sleepy Hollow remained low at a 0.4 rating with 1.7 total viewers and it continues to look like this will be that show’s final season.  On The CW, Vampire Diaries improved slightly to a 0.5 rating with 1.2 million total viewers for its series finale.  The Originals takes up the 8 PM EST timeslot starting this week.

Scorecard: Both Making History and Time After Time dropped further on the Scorecard with their ratings declines in their second week.  Guardians of the Galaxy entered on the low side, but as mentioned above, that may not matter much.  Since Samurai Jack is in its final season and I don’t have much comparative data for Adult Swim, I will not be including that one in the Scorecard.

The scorecard ranks all of the sci fi & fantasy shows’ ratings performance vs. their network’s ratings benchmark (see definition below).  Shows at or above their benchmark should be okay, whereas those slipping notably below are getting into iffy territory.

Scorecard based on the ratings through March 12th (metric definitions below):

Rank (PW) Series Net Std Avg Net Bench % Var Live+7 Avg Rtg Status
1 (1) The Walking Dead AMC 5.48 0.60 812.9% 8.27 Renewed
2 (2) American Horror Story FX 1.58 0.60 162.5% 3.16 Renewed
3 (3) The Flash (O) CW 1.10 0.53 108.1% 1.97 Renewed
4 (4) The Magicians Syfy 0.35 0.20 75.0% 0.80 Renewal Likely
5 (5) Supergirl (O) CW 0.79 0.53 50.1% 1.41 Renewed
6 (6) Star Wars Rebels DXD 0.14 0.10 44.7% 0.33 Renewed
7 (7) Westworld HBO 0.80 0.60 33.8% 1.50 Renewed
8 (9) Arrow (O) CW 0.68 0.53 28.7% 1.23 Renewed
9 (8) Legends of Tomorrow (O) CW 0.67 0.53 26.6% 1.19 Renewed
10 (10) Z Nation Syfy 0.25 0.20 24.3% 0.42 Renewed
11 (12) Son of Zorn (O) FOX 1.28 1.07 19.9% n/a Renewal Possible
12 (11) Supernatural (O) CW 0.63 0.53 18.6% 1.15 Renewed
13 (13) Shadowhunters Free 0.28 0.25 11.2% 0.50 Renewal Likely
14 (14) Gotham FOX 1.14 1.07 6.6% 1.88 Renewal Likely
15 (15) Lucifer FOX 1.08 1.07 1.8% 1.85 Renewed
16 (17) Stan Against Evil IFC 0.08 0.08 -4.7% n/a Renewed
17 (16) The Expanse Syfy 0.19 0.20 -5.0% 0.43 Renewal Possible
18 (18) The Librarians TNT 0.47 0.50 -5.2% 0.88 Renewed
19 (19) Channel Zero Syfy 0.19 0.20 -5.8% 0.38 Renewed
20 (20) The Last Man on Earth (O) FOX 0.97 1.07 -8.7% 1.53 Renewal Possible
21 (22) Colony USA 0.27 0.30 -10.7% 0.63 Renewal Possible
22 (24) The Good Place (O) NBC 1.25 1.46 -14.5% 1.91 Renewed
23 (25) The 100 (O) CW 0.40 0.48 -15.8% 0.70 Renewed
24 (26) MacGyver (O) (F) CBS 1.11 1.33 -16.7% 1.78 Renewal Possible
25 (23) Legion (O) FX 0.49 0.60 -18.0% 1.37 Renewed
26 (27) People of Earth TBS 0.33 0.40 -18.1% n/a Renewed
27 (21) Making History (O) NBC 0.80 1.00 -19.7% n/a On the Bubble
28 (28) Once Upon A Time (O) ABC 1.03 1.28 -19.7% 1.67 On the Bubble
29 (29) Incorporated Syfy 0.16 0.20 -20.0% 0.34 Cancelled
30 (30) Aftermath Syfy 0.16 0.20 -20.8% 0.33 Cancelled
31 (31) Van Helsing Syfy 0.16 0.20 -21.3% 0.30 Renewed
32 (32) Ash vs Evil Dead STARZ 0.16 0.20 -21.5% 0.34 Renewed
33 (33) Timeless NBC 1.11 1.46 -23.9% 2.07 Cancellation Likely
34 (34) Teen Wolf MTV 0.22 0.30 -25.7% 0.44 Final Season
35 (35) Vampire Diaries (O) (F) CW 0.38 0.53 -29.0% 0.75 Ended
36 (n/a) Guardians of the Galaxy DXD 0.07 0.10 -30.0% n/a Renewal Possible
37 (36) The Strain FX 0.42 0.60 -30.8% 0.85 Renewed
38 (37) Powerless (O) NBC 0.82 1.28 -35.9% n/a Cancellation Likely
39 (38) The Exorcist (O) (F) FOX 0.67 1.07 -37.1% 1.09 Cancellation Likely
40 (39) Agents of SHIELD (O) ABC 0.75 1.28 -41.5% 1.61 Cancellation Likely
41 (40) Beyond Free 0.14 0.25 -42.7% n/a Renewed
42 (41) Scream Queens (O) FOX 0.61 1.07 -42.7% 0.96 Cancellation Likely
43 (43) Grimm (O) (F) NBC 0.79 1.46 -45.9% 1.45 Final Season
44 (42) Emerald City (O) (F) NBC 0.69 1.28 -46.2% 1.23 Cancellation Likely
45 (46) Frequency (O) CW 0.28 0.53 -47.6% 0.51 Cancellation Likely
46 (45) Sleepy Hollow (O) (F) FOX 0.52 1.00 -47.8% 0.96 On the Bubble
47 (47) Salem WGN 0.08 0.15 -48.0% n/a Cancelled
48 (44) Time After Time ABC 0.65 1.31 -50.5% n/a Cancellation Likely
49 (48) Falling Water USA 0.15 0.30 -51.0% 0.30 On the Bubble
50 (49) Dirk Gentlys Holistic Detective Agency BBCA 0.09 0.40 -77.5% n/a Renewed

Metric Definitions:

Rank (PW): Current rank based on the variance of a show’s season to date ratings average vs. its network’s benchmark (see definition below).  The number in parenthesis is the prior week’s rank.

Series: (O) indicates the show is owned/produced by the network and/or a sister studio. (F) indicates the show airs on Friday when ratings expectations are lower. These typically just apply to the broadcast networks where they are more of a factor.

StD Avg:  The show’s season to date ratings average based on the overnights for the 18-49 demographic.

Net Bench:  (Network Benchmark) For the broadcast networks, this is the net’s season to date average rating based on the overnights for the 18-49 demographic for non-sports, non-special, non-repeat broadcasts (for FOX, Empire is also excluded because it counts as an outlier).  For the cable channels, this is the lowest level at which a show is typically renewed by that network if there are enough genre entries on that channel to provide a decent sample.  But note that with cable entries intangibles such as international and/or streaming partnerships can play an important factor in a shows survival and that is not measured here.

% Var:  The percent variance between a show’s season to date average and the network benchmark as defined above.  The higher the variance, the better a show is performing vs. the benchmark.

Live+7 Avg Rtg:  The show’s season to date ratings average based on delayed viewing up to three days past the live broadcast.  This data is not available for all shows.

Status: My assessment of the likelihood that a show will get renewed or cancelled. The statuses are Renewal Likely, Renewal Possible, On the Bubble, Cancellation Likely (plus Renewed and Cancelled/Ended)

Ratings Source: ShowBuzzDaily and TV by the Numbers

Author: admin

2 thoughts on “Cancellation Watch: Time After Time and Making History Drop, The Walking Dead Improves, Plus the Scorecard.

  1. just a small mistake.. you have Sleepy Hollow listed as an NBC network but should be FOX 😉

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