Well, after a hiatus for the NCAA Basketball tournament, The Odd Couple did not have a triumphant return to the CBS Thursday night line-up. Despite its lead-in from the hit comedy, The Big Bang Theory, the Matthew Perry and Thomas Lennon vehicle, has hit a major speed-bump. As TV Media Insights succinctly put it, “While no one expects any show to hold the “Big Bang” lead-in, slippage of this magnitude is too severe. Five-week household overnight track for “The Odd Couple”: 8.1/13 – 7.1/11 – 7.6/12 – 6.6/11 – 5.8/10.” (http://www.tvmediainsights.com/tv-ratings/cbs-tops-thursday-recent-entry-odd-couple-slipping/). Therefore, without some major adjustments, The Odd Couple may find itself off of the CBS fall schedule. The drop in audience does not surprise me, because on a night with such unique comedies on CBS, The Odd Couple, interrupts the Thursday night CBS comedy flow. Compared to The Big Bang Theory and Mom, The Odd Couple appears to be derivative, very formulaic and more importantly, mediocre. Nostalgia is big on TV now, we see that with revivals of shows, such as Hawaii Five-O and Girl Meets World and even Hot In Cleveland taps into this, through its cast, featuring four sitcom veterans. However, this version of The Odd Couple, is lacking the magic spark that gives viewers that warm fuzzy feeling that they first had when watching the original 1970s version, coupled with that feeling of satisfaction of watching something modern and contemporary. I would not be surprised if The Odd Couple is missing from the CBS 2015-2016 schedule.
Tag Archives: Thursday Nights
The Odd Couple 2.0: A Look Back at its First Revival
As The Odd Couple continues its hiatus because of the NCAA Basketball tournament airing on CBS, I thought it would be a good opportunity to take a look back at the history of the show. Particularly, at the fact that this new version of The Odd Couple is not the show’s first TV revival. In anticipation of the series’ return back in February, USA Today ran a great article on the program’s history (http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/tv/2015/02/25/odd-couple-tv-film-broadway/23980183/). While the critics were not too enthusiastic about this new CBS version of the show, the ratings have not been dismal. However, turning the clock back to October 29, 1982, when the first revival of the show premiered on its original network, ABC, this new African-American version was panned by critics, even reused scripts from the original series and was canceled after a run of just eighteen episodes. What is more, the failures of The Odd Couple adaptations are not just limited to the small screen. According to IDBD.com, in 1985, Neil Simon (the creator of The Odd Couple) updated his original play, this time with an all-female cast, featuring popular television personalities Rita Moreno and Sally Struthers as Olive Madison and Florence Ungar. The show flopped and ran for only eight months, compared to the original 1965 production, which was huge hit and ran for nearly two and one-half years (http://ibdb.com/production.php?id=4375). Therefore, given the track record of The Odd Couple derivatives, it will be interesting to see whether or not the show finds its way onto the CBS Fall 2015 schedule.
Trending Now: The Odd Couple
Since The Odd Couple will be on hiatus for the next two weeks because of the NCAA Basketball Tournament airing on CBS, I thought it would be a good time to take a look at the show’s social media presence. As now more than ever, social media presence is an integral part of a television show’s success, it appears that The Odd Couple is taking full advantage of all that twitter has to offer. For example, as a nice tie-in with CBS’s NCAA coverage, the stars of The Odd Couple have filled out NCAA brackets and the show’s twitter feed is encouraging viewers to see how their brackets measure up with those of the stars, Matthew Perry and Thomas Lennon. Additionally, the stars have been live tweeting and the show has been posting photos of the different cast members tweeting for both the east and west coast feeds. They even suggested a drinking game, consisting of everyone taking a drink every time that Matthew Perry wears a blue shirt that matches his eyes! So far, they have 3,263 followers, which is a drop in the ocean, compared to ABC’s rival new spring 2015 sitcom, Fresh Off The Boat, which has 16,700 followers. Therefore, The Odd Couple has a way to go before being the number 1 new comedy on Twitter.
Odd Couple Update #5
After losing some of its initial audience in its second week, The Odd Couple rebounded after its third airing. The new CBS Thursday night sitcom won its 8:30 pm time slot on March 5, 2015 and according to Variety, it came within one tenth of a percentage point of its series premiere rating (on February 19th). It still looks like CBS’ hammock approach is working; while it is not scoring the numbers that its time slot predecessor, The Big Bang Theory is achieving, The Odd Couple is growing in viewership week-to-week and is benefiting from the lead-in. It will be interesting to see the numbers for The Odd Couple’s fourth showing, which will be on March 12th. Following the March 12th broadcast, The Odd Couple will be on hiatus for two weeks while CBS broadcasts NCAA Basketball. It will also be important to track whether or not the two week disruption will affect its aforementioned audience growth.