How many episodes does it take to renew a freshmen comedy on NBC? The world may never know. In this last post of the semester on “AP Bio” I want to provide my own feedback on if it is likely to be renewed. In short, I think will get renewed but likely could get moved to a show that airs in the off season during less competitive times when it can earn slightly higher ratings.

I read an argument today that AP Bio would likely be renewed for a regular season time again because NBC usually renews one weak show a year and currently this show is the strongest of the other weaklings like “Champion”. However looking at examples of past shows that article listed such as “Undateable”, & “Great News” they had slightly stronger ratings than AP Bio currently has. These shows seemed to average out closer to a high .8-1.0 range for their first seasons. AP Bio currently has a .76 average rating, though this is boosted by the episode that aired after the olympics closing ceremony which had a 1.4 rating, the only episode to earn a rating above a .9

Apparently the ABC Tuesday 9:30pm timeslot has become somewhat of a death sentence the past few years for the network. Since Fall 2016 four shows have now occupied this time slot; “The Real O’Neils” & “Imaginary Mary” last season, “The Mayor” in the Fall & now “Splitting Up Together”.

Currently its a bit difficult to determine exactly how “Splitting Up Together” as its ratings are still on an initial decline and have yet to level off. Although this past week the ratings did dip down to a 1.0 rating with 3.62 million viewers. While this does seem like a strong performance it is worth noting that “The Mayor” also had ratings of a 1.2 with 3.8 million viewers in one of its early weeks as well and that show got cancelled. “Imaginary Mary” also had an average rating of 1.02 and was cancelled so it will be important in the coming weeks to keep an eye on the shows ratings to see if it can break the mold in this Tuesday comedy block. One last thing worth noting is that “Imaginary Mary” had ratings that slid as low as 0.5 later on its run so as long as “Splitting Up Together” doesn’t slide that far it may be safe.

ABC’s Alex, Inc. aired episodes on back-to-back nights last week. The show’s usual Wednesday air date was preceded by an additional episode on Tuesday, April 17. Interestingly, the untraditional air date gave the show its highest ratings yet. That night, Alex, Inc. received a 1.3 rating and garnered 4.85 million total viewers. The next night, the show slipped to a 0.6 rating and 2.86 million viewers. It is notable that the show saw its best and worst night in terms of ratings in the span of two calendar days. Perhaps a rescheduling of the program’s air dates could result in higher ratings. Alex, Inc. is by no means doomed, though, as the future is still uncertain. The show sits at three cancellation bears from TV By The Numbers, meaning it is too early or unclear to make an assumption about its future. The show returns to its regularly scheduled air date this week.

This Tuesday, April 17th, the season finale of Black Lighting will premiere. As promised, this will be the show’s 13th episode, and it is titled “Shadow of Death: The Book of War”. With the closing of the season 1, the show has proven their spot on The CW. With a constant rating of .5 for audiences 18-49 and a share of 2, Black Lighting is the third most-watched show on The CW (only a .01 difference from Supernatural).

With the renewal of the second season, The CW has many options on how they choose to continue to promote and increase viewership of the series. As mentioned before, the cast and well-known writers of the show completed serval interviews months before the premiere. They however mainly focused on gaining audiences already interested in comic book characters and to the Black community. For the future of the show, there may have to be different areas/demographics that the network chooses to focus their marketing strategies.

This upcoming summer will be a critical time for the network, especially considering the close of season 1.

Sources:

CW 2017-18 Season Ratings (updated 4/17/18)

Now three weeks into Alex, Inc.’s run on ABC, the ratings for the premiere episode appear to be the show’s ceiling. On Wednesday, April 11^th, the show’s third episode aired to a 0.9 rating and 3.56 million viewers. Comparatively, the program received the same 0.9 in the previous week but had a slightly more impressive 3.83 million total viewers. The pilot episode, though, which premiered to a 1.1 rating and 4.6 million viewers, seems to be the mark to which ABC wishes to return to. As I noted in a previous blog post, the ratings Alex, Inc. received for its pilot episode were similar to those of ABC’s Speechless, which was renewed. However, the last two weeks illustrate that the show cannot maintain those ratings, at least not without an improvement in the program’s overall quality. As of now, there is no definitive news regarding the future of Alex, Inc. on ABC.

In its eleventh week on the air, I have begun to run out of things to discuss since NBC has yet to renew the show still. So this week I have decided to analyze the way the show is engaging with its viewers on social media, particularly twitter.

The show does not seem to have a very strong following on social media, (only ~7,000 followers) but it does do an excellent job of engaging with those followers that it does have. The show constantly will reply to tweets that viewers have tweeted at the show, usually replying with some snarky comment or other humor. Additionally the show did a live Q&A twitter thing with one of the shows leads last week to engage the viewers as well outside of just the show.

So while the show may be struggling to get more viewers, its engagement technique is likely to be effective in retaining the viewers that it does have by keeping them constantly engaged with the show. This could be a benefit for the show if it were to get renewed as it is working to keep the base it has and thus hopefully retain similar ratings were it to survive for a second season.