A Bear of a Program

There are some interesting stories around bears. In college, a friend of a friend ran into one in the Wyoming wilderness and called out, “Whoa, bear!” and we took up the quote and used it for anything that was surprisingly shocking in our lives. Being college students these instances weren’t as dramatic as one thinks though when thinking of a bear.

When in Alaska I met many people who wanted to see a bear and I had to remind them of what that actually meant and they retracted. No one actually wants to see a bear like our Wyoming friend above.

Neither do TV shows.

I came across an interesting ratings system this week on TV By the Numbers called the “Cancel Bear” at the bottom Cancel Bear lists itself as someone who “tracks and devours low-rated TV shows.”

And guess who made the list?

9JKL

On the whole of the CBS lineup, it is the only show that has two bears.

The bears look cute, but like those in the wild, they are dangerous. Unfortunately, the reasoning is legit behind the potential cancellation. Viewership dropped 43% with Superior Donuts as a lead-in last week as well as a time change.

Could Cancel Bear be wrong? Maybe. Tomorrow is a new day and the second time 9JKL will air at 9:30 pm. Maybe it will pick up viewers again that had a week to adjust or perhaps it will stay the same or continue to fall and get eaten by Cancel Bear.

With baseball season over, CBS’s Wisdom of the Crowd’s ratings went back up for its 6th episode; Trojan Horse. It reached 8 million viewers with a rating of 1.1. The data reveals that Jeremy Pivon’s sexual accusations have not affected the ratings. After a week and a half since these accusations were brought to light, no evidence has yet been found proving them true. Social media took well to the past episode for highlighting teen suicide. This is not the first time the show has used social themes, such as last week when it viewed racial injustices and police brutality. Both CBS shows, WOTC and NCIS: Los Angles, which airs right after WOTC, has yet to have been renewed even though both do well with audiences. Also CBS newcomer, 9JKL, according to TV by the Numbers, is likely to get cancelled by May 2018 based on ratings. However, it looks very likely that Young Sheldon will get renewed even though only one episode has been released. Its fan base from The Big Bang Theory has made that apparent in the retention rate.

Even though there are negative stories that are shaking up Hollywood at the moment, there is positive news that regarding The Orville, the news that we have all been waiting for.  It has been announced that The Orville has been renewed for a second season! The president of Fox Michael Thorn said the following about the renewal: “Once again Seth has struck a powerful chord with viewers.”  The news comes as viewership still hover around the high three to low four million per episode and the 18-49 demographic rating averages around 2.5.   Fox views this science fiction series as renewal worthy given the competition of the programs on other networks.  Fans of the show are very excited to hear about this renewal and have taken to social media to express their elation.  Season two will be scheduled to air at some point in 2018.  It will be interesting to see how the plot line will develop from season one to two.  

Although Will & Grace has been doing so well and getting almost double the amount of viewers of other sitcoms on the air, it was a little worrisome that each week’s numbers have been dropping. Well, I’m happy to say that this week there’s great news! The numbers are back! After dropping to 6.51 million viewers, our buddies are back with 6.78 million other friends watching. Of course this is nothing compared to our first week of 10 million viewers, but it’s a good start at making our way back up there.

Here’s my prediction on where viewership will go. After the first week Will & Grace took a huge nose dive loosing about 3 million viewers, our next two weeks went slowly down by 200 thousand each week- and although this was a loss, the somewhat stabilization is better than another 3 million nose dive.

This week viewership was raised by 300 thousand. All of this information has lead me to believe that we are now at a stable point in viewership and ratings wont be dropping much more but will stay somewhat at this level as long as the content stays as loveable as it is.

This weeks ratings for Valor are the highest posted since the show’s premiere a month ago. There were 1.2 million viewers tuned in, receiving a rating of .3. The increased viewership is interesting considering the show’s lead in, Supergirl, had a drop in viewership from 3.67 million to 1.86 million that same night. Because there were almost 2 million viewers for ‘Supergirl’, there is a chance Valor’s rating increase is partly due to ‘Supergirl’ fans staying to watch the military drama following it. In other words, there may be less viewers for ‘Supergirl,’ but the amount of those audiences staying to watch ‘Valor’ right after could be increasing.

There have recently been casting calls for local actors in Atlanta to be extras on the show’s upcoming episodes. These postings indicate the show’s continued filming, and dispute the rumors of cancellation. This week’s spike in ratings was imperative for the show’s survival, especially amongst these talks of being cancelled. If the ratings continue to remain above a million and casting calls remain for extras on upcoming episodes, ‘Valor’ has a decent chance of living out the entire season.

According to Variety, November 8^th seemed to be an overall satisfying ratings night for the 9pm time slot. In total, ‘Valor’s’ ratings improved over 40% in the key demo and over 20% in total viewers in comparison to the previous week. At the same time, competing military drama ‘The Brave’ was up in both measures for NBC as well.

 Slicing and Dicing

Thus it begins… The first cancellation of the season on CBS.

Per the comments on Deadline Hollywood, most were surprised that it wasn’t 9JKL, but the other freshman series, the single-camera, Me, Myself and I.

The timeslot didn’t fare well, but some thought it was maybe Bobby Moynihan that had difficulty carrying the show.

The Eye instead gave a second season earlier than anticipated to Man with a Plan, starring Matt LeBlanc.

9JKL is now moving to the 9:30 pm time slot effective immediately. This could lead to the death of that show though because moving a freshman comedy barely a month in may not bode well with new viewers who are just becoming accustomed to a new schedule. Also, that timeslot was one of the big reasons that apparently killed Me, Myself and I.

A good concept, popular with critics, but not with audiences it seems. Moving timeslots may not resurrect the ratings, but make them worse.

That saying, “getting set up to fail,” seems to be what is happening for 9JKL.

A re-run of The Big Bang Theory will be put in 9JKL’s former time slot next week then, Man with a Plan takes the 8:30 pm time slot the week following.

Just last week the network wanted to try and not move the timeslots of the freshman comedies, but with this move to 9:30 pm, 9JKL could be on the cutting board next.

The new Kevin Can Wait lead in saw a huge drop in ratings for 9JKL unlike

The Big Bang Theory. How big? According to The Wrap 9JKL lost 49%, almost half, of its audience last Monday.

The good news is that CBS ordered 3 more episodes of 9JKL, so they’re hopeful. It will be interesting to see if they will continue to order more episodes later. However, without The Big Bang Theory lead-in, who knows?

What is interesting are these changes make for an all multi-cam comedy lineup Monday nights for CBS until Scorpion finishes out primetime.

After weeks of mixed news, some good news has come out this week for Fox’s “The Orville” series. It has earned the superlative of being both the most watched and highest rated launch series on Fox since 2015.  The Orville’s nonlinear 35-day audience, only beaten by mega-hit empire, is a whopping 2.6 million viewers.  Although The Orville did not air last week, this week it came back with a bang , racking up the highest ratings since week two’s episode.  One of the biggest pieces of news that has come out of this week is that The Orville has gotten the green light for international expansion beginning in the U.K.  The Orville is set to premiere in the U.K on December 14th, 2017.  Fox officially made the announcement on October 30th on social media and star of the show Seth McFarlane reacted with joy. Even though this is great news, there is still mixed growth in the 18-49 ratings and no official word on if the show will get a second season.

This past week was a great week for Will & Grace. It may not look like that on paper because viewership was down almost 1 million, but in reality there is still a silver lining to this week.

To me its okay that Will & Grace was down this week because almost every show this Thursday had a drop in viewers. Gray’s Anatomy hit a season low this week showing that it wasn’t Will & Grace’s content that brought viewership down, but it was just a lower viewer rate in general across the whole board.

The silver lining to this week is that Will & Grace tied with the NBC hit Grey’s Anatomy for top entertainment in this demo. Getting the top anything is always a plus for any content (unless its “top horrible show”) and although viewership is down, we still have a win in one category this week. Plus, this is huge to tie with Thursday night’s top show in any category!

Cynposis 10/30/17