The final episode of NBC’s shortened series The Player did not show a drastic boost in ratings. Finales typically show a rise, especially with Live+3 and +7, but The Player rounded out its run with about a 0.79/0.8 rating of adults 18-49. This is a very slight increase in the ratings from last week. Still no word from NBC about whether or not the show is officially canceled, but fans on Twitter have been relaying their sentiments to The Player‘s account, and saying how it will be missed.

The social media strategy of the final episode continued the trend of the previous episodes. There were plenty of live tweets and retweets of fan reactions to the episode. Among these were a couple of the “Place Your Bets” Sweepstakes campaign tweets. This is where fans can reply tweet their guesses and bets to a tweeted question, and a monetary prize is promised to the winner. In line with past episodes, it asked fans to find Alex, or guess what he will do, before the show does.

This week, The Player had a slight increase in the 18-49 adult ratings. However, the .7 to .73 increase isn’t as monumental as NBC would hope. In other news, the show has been taking advantage of its Twitter account a lot recently. They are using many different strategies to build their social media following and audience support.

They are constantly retweeting any positive responses to the show, and tweeting in relation to the plot line in the form of teaser tweets. However, the biggest appeal they are using currently is a prize method. They have come out with a sweepstakes and contests where viewers and followers can tweet responses and show predictions in order to win money. In addition, they are live tweeting the show and communicating with their fans to encourage them to be more interactive. Twitter (social media) appeals, in general, tend to be a way to reach out to the younger generation. The show’s share to rating ratio isn’t changing much from week to week, so I would say their reach to the 18-49 crowd is an intelligent one.

This week in the ratings, The Player received a 7.0 in adults aged 18-49, with 3.22 million viewers. This isn’t a large change from last week, it is only slightly lower. The Player seems to be evening out, and I don’t see a the ratings changing drastically in these last few episodes. Because the show was cut short to a 9-episode order, The Player will be wrapping up this semester in two short weeks. Taking this into consideration, I don’t anticipate seeing The Player continuing, or making any major moves that would make canceling any less eminent than it looks.

According to Rotten Tomatoes, my predictions are being echoed by other viewers and critics alike. The Critics Consensus is described in the following way, “The Player‘s convoluted premise weighs down a game cast, bringing nothing original to the table.” The harsh, but honest, take on the show is something that can’t help the ratings.

After a surprising rise in ratings the week of October 22nd, The Player has once again dropped down to 0.7 rating among adults ages 18-49. The Player still has 3 more episodes in its season, but I’m afraid it’s not looking like the ratings are going to get much better than the recent ones we have seen. There is absolutely a downward trend. Looking at this past week in particular, CBS’s Thursday Night Football went up to a 6.0 in the ratings which is absurd in comparison to the other shows on Thursday nights. The next highest rating is a 2.3 for ABC’s Scandal. The football programming is taking the majority of the masculine target audience that The Player attempts to sway with its high intensity action.

Although NBC had tough competition such as Thursday Night Football and ABC’s How To Get Away With Murder, the network does not seem to be cutting the show any slack. They have already committed other programming to the show’s timeslot. The new show starring Jennifer Lopez, Shades of Blue, will be premiering on Thursdays at 10pm at the start of 2016.

After a couple weeks of tracking ratings and making predictions, I finally have some concrete insight into The Player‘s future. Variety recently released some bad news for The Player. It seems that NBC has trimmed the episode order to 9 because of its low ratings. A typical season will lean toward 12 episodes, so this is a quarter of the season cut. It is not a decision you make lightly. This won’t come to a surprise to many of the critics who give The Player primarily poor reviews. Most complained that the concept was too absurd, or that there were too many complex rules to explain to an audience who wasn’t hooked enough to pay close attention.

What might come as surprise is that this decision was made after the first increase in the ratings The Player has had since its premiere. This past Thursday’s ratings in the adults aged 18-49 was a 0.9. This is over a tenth of a point up from last week’s ratings.

This week I widened my search for feedback on The Player. I stuck to TV By The Numbers for the concrete ratings, but then I checked out Metacritic to see what other critics and industry professionals predict for this years’ fall shows. The ratings on TV By The Numbers continued to drop this week. The Player went from a rating of 1.0 in adults 18-49, to a rating of 0.7 this past Thursday. This downward trend is a contrast to the other Thursday night shows, such as The Originals, Grey’s Anatomy, and Thursday Night Football, that all boosted up in the ratings.

Metacritic has started to release its picks for fall show renewal, and The Player is nowhere to be found. However, NBC isn’t completely in the hole. Heroes Reborn is mentioned as a Thursday night show that is likely to return. The critics gave a majority of negative and mixed reviews on the site, whereas users gave a majority of positive reviews. Unfortunately, critics tend to have more influence where return is concerned.

The Player is on a downward spiral, and this is not just referring to its ratings for the first two weeks. However, that is what caused TV by the Numbers to put it at the top of its list of “canceled by May 2016” shows. The Renew/Cancel Index is the ratio of a show’s adult 18-49 rating in comparison to other new episodes of shows on its network. When analyzing NBC network’s other shows in comparison to The Player, it is no surprise that it is on the chopping block according to the Index.

NBC’s most popular show in the ratings right now is Blindspot (which I happen to be a big fan of). The show is reviewed as “fresh” and “eye-catching,” where as it’s sibling, The Player, is described as “absurd” and “not worth betting on.” When looking at the ratings, we see that The Player is grasping at a measly 1.0, whereas Blindspot is soaring at a 2.85. This rating is 1.15 over the next leading rating of 1.7 (Chicago PD). I would not be surprised if The Player saw a move to Saturday nights, and was then promptly booted off the network.

The second week of The Player airing did not prove very promising for the new show. It dropped from an adult age 18-49 rating of 1.2 to a 1.0. Its number of viewers also dropped from 4.68 million to 4.58 million. On the whole, this does not bode well for The Player. It was fighting against its ABC competitor in How To Get Away With Murder, who surprisingly also fell this week. Starting out on its air date on September 24, it decreased from an adult age 18-49 rating of 2.6 to a 2.3. This means a viewer decrease from 9.06 million to 7.53 million.

I would have initially blamed The Player‘s drop on its ABC counterpart, but now I’m not convinced. My money is now on CBS’s Thursday Night Football which airs from 8pm-11pm. This cuts right into the showtime of both programs, 10pm-11pm. Conversely, Football increases its ratings from week one to week two. Beginning on September 24, it started out with an adult age 18-49 rating of 1.4. October 1 brought that rating up to a 1.6, so I predict that the viewers of both shows went to CBS.

This past week on September 24th, at 10pm, The Player premiered on NBC. There were plenty of skeptics who didn’t think the show was enough of a powerhouse to compete against How To Get Away With Murder, and others who believed it would be just absurd enough to draw The Blacklist‘s audience to itself. However, when this first week of ratings came through, they fell flat.

TV By the Numbers showed the incredibly stacked line-up on Thursday, and told us who grabbed the audiences. Spoiler alert, it wasn’t The Player. In the adults 18-49 range, The Player had a rating of 1.2, in comparison to How To Get Away With Murder‘s 2.6. This still seems to be low, so we look to CBS and Thursday Night Football (8pm-11pm) as intruding on the 10pm-11pm time slot with a rating of 4.0 in adults 18-49. The audience I assume The Player wanted to grab, was the overflow from NBC’s Heroes Reborn at 8pm-10pm. Unfortunately, the show to show change was sizable drop from a 1.9 to a 1.2. I’m curious to see if The Player‘s ratings will rise as the season goes on, or continue to drop until it’s dropped.

After digging into some more research, I have found a critic who has some more risky and bold predictions for The Player, as it premieres tomorrow night, Thursday, at 10pm. Although NBC has put a majority of advertising campaign and strategic planning into its other premiering show, The Blindspot, one critic believes this might all backfire. The Blindspot might be more in the public eye, but the line up does not flow the same as the Thursday night show. For example, The Player follows The Blacklist and Heroes Reborn in a smooth transition of high energy, dramatic television.

Conversely, The Blindspot premiered on a Monday night following NBC’s The Voice. These are bound to be two very different audiences: light-hearted vs. intense and calculating. There is also The Player‘s star appeal. Where The Blindspot‘s original plot is what will draw new audiences to the show, The Player has Wesley Snipes and all the bells and whistles of an action dramedy. In future blogs, I look forward to comparing two of the shows NBC has decided to launch.