Life in Pieces is now well into its first season, having aired its seventh episode this past Thursday night. The episode drew in 7.99 million viewers for an 18-49 rating of 1.8, which is pretty consistent with numbers from the past five episodes. Though Life in Pieces is still receiving luke-warm reviews from critics, it seems to have found a pretty considerable core audience. The numbers have certainly proved strong enough for CBS, who ordered a full 22-episode in late October.

Interestingly, while Life in Pieces has consistently stronger numbers than other sitcoms that have premiered this season, its social media following is much weaker. The official Life in Pieces twitter account only has about 3,700 followers. FOX’s two new comedies this season, The Grinder and Grandfathered, have 7,000 and 11,500 twitter, respectively. On Facebook, Life in Pieces has 32,000 likes while The Grinder and Grandfathered have 91,000 and 200,000 likes, respectively.

Twitter accounts for Life in Pieces and fellow freshman comedies, The Grinder and Grandfathered (both on FOX)

Ultimately, this is indicative of a core audience that is large but not particularly passionate. While Life in Pieces has already received a full first season order, their audience might be too passive to keep the show around for the long run.

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.

CBS is known for having exclusive digital content for their network shows, and they have a whole department dedicated to the digital aspect of Television Programming. Code Black is no exception, and the show has a lot of interactive and additional content on CBS.com. In addition to streaming all of the episodes of CBS All Access, CBS.com has behind the scenes photos and videos of the cast, reactions from real doctors about the show, and even a Code Black interactive digital game called the Code Black challenge.

In this online game, fans get to choose if they want to be a male or female doctor, and then are given the task of caring for the patients in the ER. In the center stage in the red square, are the patients who need critical attention. Their status become worse as the game goes on. In order to pass a level, you must clear all patients before time runs out. The levels increase from Code Green to Code Black as the amount of patients increase, in order to simulate the stressful environment of the show to give fans a way to creatively interact with the show.

The game is just one way for fans to connect with the show when they aren’t watching it, which is a good marketing strategy in my opinion. The additional online content makes the show not only more interesting, but more relatable and personable as well.  Viewers must think so too, because since it’s premiere, Code Black has maintained about 80% of its audience. We will see in the upcoming weeks if this leads to a full season order.

Taking a different path since last years female dominated comedy line-up, Fox relies heavily on the grey fox appeal this season to gain viewership. A recent A.V. Club article provides a side by side comparison of the network’s two new comedy series starting with Grandfathered. At 8MP, viewers watch as heartthrob John Stamos gives up his fast-paced bachelor lifestyle and comes to terms with his new life as a grandfather. Filling the 8:30PM slot, The Grinder showcases Rob Lowe as a TV star, hometown hero who has coasted through life and decides to return home in hopes of joining his father and brother in the family law firm practice.

Robe Lowe & John Stamos

Critics claim “the network essentially ordered two more-or-less promising treatments of the same concept: a middle-aged man getting through life based on charm and good looks” (A.V. Club). Rest assured, The Grinder secured a full season on Fox despite its slowly decreasing ratings.

A.V.Club Article comments– Take a look!!                                      

Viewer comments provide insight otherwise not noted–for example user Persia attributes this season’s success to the male dominated leads as opposed to females in last season. This is an interesting viewpoint worth sharing.

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.

Life in Pieces returned to TV this week in its new Thursday night timeslot. The shows sixth episode pulled in 7.88 million viewers and had an 18-49 rating of 1.9, making it the second weakest week since the show’s premiere.

A new timeslot means new competition for Life in Pieces. CBS is the only network airing two half-hour comedies in the 8:00 pm to 9:00 pm timeslot on Thursday nights. Thus, Life in Pieces
is going up against the second half of Grey’s Anatomy, Heroes Reborn, and Bones. Life in Pieces failed to beat out ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy, which had 8.5 million viewers and a 2.3 rating this week. However, Life in Pieces had significantly better numbers than NBC’s Heroes Reborn and FOX’s Bones, which had total viewership of 3.97 million and 5.34 million as well as ratings of 1.3 and 1.1, respectively.

Overall, it seems like the timeslot shift didn’t affect Life in Pieces too much. While the numbers did decrease this week, they only decreased slightly, which leads me to believe that Life in Pieces will be able to hold their own on Thursday nights.