World’s Funniest Fails continued it’s streak of .8 ratings throughout the last two weeks (5/6). That marks almost 5 straight weeks in a row that the show reached a .8. While the numbers don’t sound significant, WWF outperformed the previous show FOX had originally slotted in it’s place. The ratings are heavily impacted by the fact that the show is on at 8pm on Friday nights, aka the death slot. However, the continuous streak of .8 ratings (with slightly under 3 million viewers) suggests that World’s Funniest Fails may have found and maintained a loyal audience for their show. It could be that Terry Crews does indeed have a sufficient amount of followers, or it could be a spillover from people who loved watching him on Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Regardless, I think FOX hit the nail on the head by selecting him as their host. He definitely knows how to host a game show and it was good to see him flourish in another role. Let’s be honest, who doesn’t like Terry Crews?
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One Big Happy: Steady Ratings
I am pleased to report how well One Big Happy has been doing in the ratings. A show that was once highly criticized by viewers has become loved by many. Last week’s episode had a rating of 1.1 with about 3 million viewers. Many critics are now getting on board with the show, stating that its characters become more and more likable each week, and that the storyline keeps them laughing from week to week. The ratings remained steady this week at 1.1 with 3.9 million viewers. If the show continues to do well, I am sure it will return for another season.
Life After The Slap
As far as the internet is concerned, The Slap never existed. Where many shows, The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones come to mind, engage viewers the entire year (including the off-season), The Slap has had little to no activity since its finale. On April 7th, five days after the season/series finale, its Twitter and Facebook posted the same thing. They each posted the same quote with a picture of the cast. The most recent news article is from April 4th, just two days after the finale. This seems like a surefire sign that the rumors of cancellation are true. If no one is talking about a show, there’s no reason to keep it on air.
The quote on the social media posts was, “At some point you’ve got to decide what kind of person you’re going to be.” The Slap had to decide what kind of show it wanted to be. It apparently chose to be a show that no one was really going to miss.
Weird Loners – Blog Post 9
Surprisingly, Weird Loners has managed to stay fairly consistent in their numbers. The week of its premiere, it had a 0.7 rating with 1.91 million viewers from 18-49. This past week, it maintained its 0.7 rating with a slight decrease to 1.72 million viewers from 18-49. That’s pretty good given the reviews it got!
I know I have given Weird Loners a lot of grief, but I think it’s important to establish some factors that have contributed to the demise of this show…
- Competition:
- Not going to lie, its competition is pretty weak. The only real “competitor” is also a new show — One Big Happy — which has also been struggling to find a loyal audience. That said, Ellen has been promoting this show like no other (makes sense given that she is an executive producer on it). I can imagine the fan-base for Ellen may be more impressive than that of New Girl (which then leads into Weird Loners).
- Time Slot:
- It’s never easy to excel on a Tuesday night at 9:30pm c. I would argue that anywhere from 6-9:30 pm is a difficult time slot to fill. It’s, at the very least, a ‘transitional’ part of everyone’s day. The fact that it starts in the middle of the hour — at 9:30pm c — as opposed to 9pm c, adds an additional stress to this show. I can tell you, personally, that I would never watch a show in them middle of an hour for a half-hour if I didn’t like the show before it (New Girl).
- Difference in Writing:
- As mentioned earlier, New Girl leads into Weird Loners. I think the network made this decision because they thought that both shows were very similar. Well, folks, these shows are NOT two peas in a pod. In fact, there is such a stark difference with regards to writing style and content that it would be unfair to clump these two shows together under the umbrella term “sitcom.”
As we near the season’s end, I will be curious to see if this show is able to make a comeback or if it will continue to descend to its imminent cancelation. Thanks for reading!
Last Man on Earth- Week 6 *RENEWAL*
Fox has renewed Will Forte’s Last Man On Earth for a second season. Following the good debut demo rating, rising to a 3.3 in L+3, and the premiere attracting 1.3 million streams in the first three days, Last Man On Earth had followed a ratings course consistent with a episodic series, falling to, 3.0, 2.6 and 2.7/2.4 in L+3 (18-49) for the most recent back-to-back originals. But those are good numbers, Last Man does very well in the younger/male demos, ranking as the N.1 new comedy this season in adults 18-34 and men 18-49. It wins its Sunday 9:30 PM slot in adults 18-49 and 18-34, repeatedly builds onto its Family Guy lead-in, and the network brass had been happy with the Forte’s creative direction.
This announcement was huge because Last Man and other comedies like Weird Loners were ordered direct-to-series last spring. Fox has renewed three new winter series including Gotham, Empire and now Last Man.
David Madden president of Fox Broadcasting Company entertainment was quoted saying, “It’s one of those rare shows that continues to add depth and dimension to its unique premise, week after week. We are so thrilled that this incredibly bold, original and inventive series has been embraced by both fans and critics, and we cannot wait to see where the creative genius and inspired vision of Will, Phil and Chris take us in season two.”
One Big Happy: ratings increase
My past predictions for One Big Happy were false. I thought the show was going to flop because of its worn out comedic strategies, but I was wrong. Critics were still harsh about the show last week but more and more viewers say that the show is growing on them. Last week’s rating (March 31st) was 1.2 with 3.9 million viewers. This week, the rating increased to 1.3 with 4.7 million viewers. I believe the reason for this increase is One Big Happy’s compatibility with its lead in show, Undateable. After doing some research, I was also able to find that the show ranks number one at 9:30 PM among the “Big 4” in women 18-49 and 18-34. It tied for number one in adults 25-54. The show also generated NBC’s third highest 18-49 rating in its time slot since November 18, 2014. Now that the show has grabbed the attention of a decently large audience, it needs to do what it can to keep that audience loyal. Ellen will have to continue promoting the show due to her high celebrity status and the success of her talk show. There has been no predictions for a show renewal.
The Dovekeepers: Critical Reaction
Post broadcast of The Dovekeepers, the reaction from critics and fans alike has been anything but glowing. The show earned a 33% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 46 on metacritic. The majority of the reviews were average to mixed, noting the talent of the actors but panning the writing and story structure of the script.
Mark Perigard of The Boston Herald said “The miniseries frames the story in a way that robs it of its power. It opens with Jewish historian Josephus interrogating two of the survivors of the siege, Shirah and her surrogate daughter Yael…The repeated cutaways to their confessions across the two nights dump gobs of exposition. Relationships begin and end off-camera.”
Mary McNamara of the LA Times praised the actors but was baffled at how terrible the story was despite the source material. “De Pablo and especially Brosnahan do their level best, but the camera is far more interested in how great they look beneath their head scarves than anything else. It quickly becomes difficult not to long for the terrible finale and just as difficult not to hate yourself for longing for it.”
Fans had mixed reactions as well, as evidenced by the 10% decline in the 18-49 demographic and 2.6 million viewers lost between night one and night two. Though Twitter was abuzz about the talent of Cote dePablo, with fans praising her talents, there were an equal amount picking the story apart, tearing down Roma Downey’s attempt to adapt a beloved novel.
American Crime- Slight Dip in Ratings, Renewal Up in the Air
As American Crime enters its fifth week on the air, its ratings are holding fairly steady with just a slight dip in the April 2nd episode. The show posted a 1.1 rating among adults 18-49, which is below the 1.3 rating it had been hovering around for the previous couple of weeks.
The media has given this show very little buzz in the last couple of weeks, which might suggest that it simply doesn’t have enough fanfare to really move forward. Nonetheless, USA Today has not totally given up hope on the series yet, and says that its status for renewal is currently “on the bubble”.
The End of The Slap
The Slap finished this week with 3.13 million total viewers, a number mostly on par with the rest of the season. The episode seemed to wrap everything up nicely. The slapper received his punishment, the parents of the slapped child were taught a lesson and, in a time jump, they all learned to coexist. For a show called The Slap, it doesn’t seem like there is anywhere to go from here. Though one of the producers of the show was holding onto hope that there would be a season 2, it looks like that is not going to happen. According to tvseriesfinale.com, NBC has confirmed that Thursday’s episode was its last. The mediocre ratings could just not justify continuing with the show. Plus, with a Metacritic score of 62, it wasn’t exactly a critics’ darling that could score the network any prestigious awards.
The Slap has been through a lot of criticism in its 8 weeks. It’s hard not to argue the show’s wasted potential. With such a great cast, big names behind the scenes and the support of NBC, this show could have been a very interesting turn for the struggling network. Instead, it filled its episodes with wildly unlikable characters and became yet another one season wonder. In this day and age, it is always possible this show will find new life elsewhere (i.e. Netflix, Hulu) but I highly doubt it has that kind of dedicated fan following.
Last Man on Earth- Week 5
Going against The Walking Dead finale at 9pm, ABC’s Secrets and Lies once again beat out its CBS drama competition in the hour by 18% in Adults 18-49 (1.3/4 vs. 1.1/3 for Madam Secretary/The Good Wife), and tied Fox’s back-to-back episodes of The Last Man on Earth (1.3/4).
The reviews of this week’s two episode have been positive. People are saying Last Man is funny and that there’s certainly still room for it to explore that extra bit of depth that the pilot tapped into.
Following Last Man 
on social media I see trend in making short videos and GIFs out of the funniest moments. This has been getting a lot of buzz out with re-tweets and shares. People seem to be enjoying the weird but funny cast and the bizarre premise.