One more night of premiere week, one more preview! I apologize a lot for all the delay in getting this one posted and I know it sucks that it is coming out so close to the overnights being released, but real life got in the way and I got stuck with work yesterday, there was really no way I could have gotten this one done before. Since I did not want to delay this any further, the FOX lineup will be part of the Friday post since it just premieres next week, so it really shouldn't make a difference anyway. Once again, I apologize and I hope you can still find the read interesting, even if you only stumble upon it after the premieres (you can then laugh at all my so far horrible guesses for series premieres!).
Timeslot: NBC, Thursdays at 8pm
Lead-in: Local Programming
Lead-out: The Blacklist
Episode Order: 13 episodes
Competition: Grey’s Anatomy, Thursday Night Football | The Big Bang Theory & Life in Pieces, Bones, The Vampire Diaries
Pros
- The first time Heroes rolled around with the original premise of ordinary people finding out they had abilities it was a resounding success, with one of the most successful first year seasons for any drama on the books! Going back to the original premise could pay off dividends in a major way!
- This is something that has been in the works for so long and that has been so buzzed about that awareness should easily be very high.
- Most of the rejection the original series got throughout its run was from people who loved the concept but were put off by the poor execution. That means that if the buzz is positive about the execution, it could actually bring back those old viewers!
- It will get to air only in the fall/ winter, so it should avoid the depressed viewing levels from post DST Spring!
Cons
- By the end of its run, Heroes was pulling truly awful numbers, which, after accounting for the league average decline, are equivalent to a 1.22 today. And there weren’t any signs that the decline was slowing dun! Tough to come back from that!
- The last revival of this kind, 24, didn’t exactly manage to grow from its original run numbers either, and that one wasn’t nearly as rejected during its run as Heroes ended up being. Why should this one go any better?
- The slot is as tough as they come, particularly with the CBS competition, since there should be a lot of overlap between this and TNF/ The Big Bang Theory. Plus, those viewing levels aren’t exactly optimal.
- A show that was rejected this much just can’t come back from that. People sampled it, loved it and were so severely put off by what went on creatively during the later years that they simply are not willing to try it again.
Bottom Line This is a really tough one to call. History sucks for this one. And the closest comparison we do have, 24, isn’t exactly inspiring. 24 fell 10% from its last season to the revival one (After accounting for the league average decline). If Heroes follows suit, that one mean something like a 1.1 would be in the works. The trick here is to understand whether the horrible reaction the original run got will help it or hurt it here. Does the fact that so many people were disappointed means that the original was undervalued at the end and hence more people will come out now or does it mean that even the ones that stuck with it until the end were just eager to have it gone and have no interest in round 2? I do not know. Ultimately, I am playing it safe and saying that it doesn’t quite fall the 10% that 24 did, but doesn’t manage to grow either, thus mirroring the numbers from Season 4. 1.22
Timeslot: NBC, Thursdays at 9pm
Lead-in: Heroes Reborn | ????
Lead-out: The Blacklist
Episode Order: 22 episodes
Competition: Scandal, Thursday Night Football | Mom & Angel from Hell, Sleepy Hollow, The Originals
Pros
- This show really got dinged last year from the surrounding Thursday environment! If Heroes Reborn succeeds and The Player works to some degree, this show could really improve its condition and ride it up to better numbers. And even if these two shows do not succeed, can they really fall to a larger degree than Allegiance and The Slap? Seems like such a tough act to follow!
- Scandal dwindled down last year, Sleepy Hollow will most likely be a very weak entry and the CBS competition will be a pair of solid but unspectacular female skewing comedies. So once TNF is gone, the competition is actually okay manageable.
- The show has gotten so many complaints about the pace it has that, at some point, something ought to be done about it to make sure the audience sticks around to watch live instead of binging it. Maybe this is the year they change it up? Last season finale certainly opened the door to do so.
Cons
- The surroundings were awful last year, probably some of the worst ones I remember any show ever having to endure on a systematic basis but even accounting for that The Blacklist underachieved. Some of the audience is just done with the show!
- Yeah, it is very easy to say that NBC can’t really go worse than they did before on Thursday but how many times have we all said that same sentence, only to be proven wrong afterwards? When all the dust settles and the hype is gone, we could see Heroes on a level that is below the Dateline lead-ins The Blacklist got in the late half of its Thursday run!
- The lead-in that this show will find after Heroes is gone is a question mark that really worries me. The last time NBC did this we ended up with The Slap there. While I ought to think they’ve learned their lesson to some degree… it’s NBC. They could severely mess it up and The Blacklist might just end the spring in the exact same conditions as last year!
- Thursday Night Football is an opponent that will cause much more damage to this show than anything Scandal could have done last year at its peak. NBC was able to protect it last year, but not so much luck this year. That will dinge the show to a hole that it just can’t come out of in the winter.
Bottom Line Let’s be perfectly clear here: the conditions were absolutely awful last year and NBC put its crown jewel in an absolutely impossible situation in which it could never win. This being said, the show still underachieved big time. Look no further than the mediocre string of low to mid 2s that the show was pulling in the fall after The Voice and it is clear that it was already a rather significantly weaker show than it was in the first season when all the buzz in the world was helping it out. So some damage is already there and it won’t suddenly be reversed. Still, some part of what happened was also a result of the awful conditions. Can those be improved? I tend to think so, but not in a significant way at all. Heroes should be at its highest level the early weeks when TNF is still there, so that sort of cancels it out. And then NBC has that question mark of the spring lead-in which has me very, very worried. I just can’t be optimistic. 1.31 (-37%)
Timeslot: NBC, Thursdays at 10pm
Lead-in: The Blacklist
Lead-out: Local Programming
Episode Order: 13 episodes (possible 22-24 episode extension)
Competition: How to Get Away with Murder | The Catch, Thursday Night Football | Elementary
Pros
- The Blacklist, even diminished, is still a solid piece of lead-in support! And, even better, it should be very compatible, with both shows coming from the same producers and all!
- For a show with this type of concept and for a network with the skew of NBC, this show has managed to create a surprising amount of noise in pre-season tracking matters. It could be that expectations are just playing me a trick here, but I would expect a staggering difference between this one and Blindspot, when in reality they weren’t that far off.
- If it is able to get past the Thursday Night Football weeks, then it gets the super easy Elementary dud competition from CBS. And while How to Get Away with Murder will remain there, in theory both shows could skew to different enough audiences to coexist.
- If Heroes launches big, this show could very well manage to be very well sampled.
Cons
- Yeah, The Blacklist may have looked like a solid piece of lead-in support before but it has been so badly weaken that it could be that it really isn’t the case anymore.
- Although NBC has been trying to sell the whole compatibility angle, this one seems much more action oriented than The Blacklist and I am not really sure the audience from one show will be the same for the other one.
- While it is true that if the show manages to get to November in good shape the competition will ease up to a considerable degree, just getting past Thursday Night Football will be a hail mary for a show like this, since that appears to be exactly the crowd this show is trying to appeal to.
Bottom Line I have been slightly surprised with the more positive tracking indicators this one have gotten than what I expected but that could easily be just the case of my expectations being too low to begin with. I could see that also being the trend with this show, in the sense of it overachieving expectations that were already very low to begin with. But the timeslot is tough as hell and launching it against Thursday Night Football is just the worst thing that could be done for it. So while I think it will do slightly better than expected, it still won’t be good. 1.07
Timeslot: ABC, Thursdays at 8pm
Lead-in: Local Programming
Lead-out: Scandal
Episode Order: 25 episodes
Competition: Thursday Night Football | The Big Bang Theory & Life in Pieces, Bones, Heroes Reborn, The Vampire Diaries
Pros
- What Grey’s Anatomy did last year was simply unbelievable. It moved to a tough timeslot and it held up in a sensational, almost unrealistic way, withstanding those pesky lower viewing levels like the big pro that it is. A sudden collapse after such a remarkable hold would be surprising.
- As last year, Grey’s Anatomy is getting more promotional attention than it got in years at 9pm. The TGIT promotional machine is in full work and Grey’s Anatomy is able to ride the wave once again!
- The competition really isn’t getting any tougher. The Big Bang Theory is slowing down, Bones is a non-threat and even if Heroes succeeds (big question mark), it should go after a different enough audience for it not to matter.
Cons
- Grey’s Anatomy infamously killed of its leading man late last season and there was a surprisingly loud volume of backslash for the show afterwards. While I am always very dubious to believe these backslash effects, maybe there is something to this one.
- Like I said above, this show is so old and overachieved to such an insane degree last year that it is hard to expect it to replicate it again. It feels due to even it out at some point!
- Late last season, there were some shy signs of some slowing down when the viewing levels started to heat up and the trend probably would have looked at ad worse if not for the big spike late in the season when Derek was killed off. No such spike will exist this year, which means that the y2y comparisons in the spring will not look pretty!
Bottom Line Grey’s Anatomy had such a phenomenal behavior last year that I can’t really call for it to go down much all of the sudden. Sure enough, part of it was a result of the huge spike late in the spring and that won’t be there this year so it will go down by then and sure enough it is possible that killing off Derek has some impact, but I just can’t see it being all that big. Ultimately, I think this continues to be rock steady at 8pm and is the more stable out of all the TGIT shows. 2.01 (-15%)
Timeslot: ABC, Thursdays at 9pm
Lead-in: Grey’s Anatomy
Lead-out: How to Get Away with Murder | The Catch
Episode Order: 22 episodes
Competition: The Blacklist, Thursday Night Football | Mom & Angel from Hell, Sleepy Hollow, The Originals
Pros
- Scandal underachieved a lot in the spring and a lot seems to have been related with the storylines taking place. With a more clear focus this year and with dropping the storylines that weren’t pleasing people, Shonda is able to control the in-season bleeding this year, making for a much more reasonable spring drop!
- Another big portion of the drop was probably connected with ABC replacing Murder with a dud like American Crime as its lead-out. The Catch should allow for a much more cohesive block this year, allowing ABC to keep the TGIT promotional machine alive all season long, thus benefiting Scandal.
- Shonda Rhimes is the master of gimmicks and I think that although she will never publically state it, she probably understood what she needed this show to be last year upon the reaction of Season 4B. I think explosive twists (think in the lines of OMG Fitz was shot, OMG there is a plane crash on GA) will eventually come and bring Scandal back some of the buzz.
Cons
- Yeaaaah, everything I said above is pretty and all, but that spring decline was just plain awful. There are a million excuses we can come up with to justify it but it still plain bad and really not promising for Season 3.
- While the competition is still nothing to be worried about, it seems to be more competent across the board. NBC is replacing the fall comedies with The Blacklist, FOX is replacing Gracepoint with Sleepy Hollow and even a female skewing comedy like Mom could be more hurtful to Scandal than similarly rated male skewing Two and a Half Men. That’s not good for a show in need of a rebound.
- How many serialized shows like this are actually able to rebound once big drops like this have occurred?
Bottom Line Early in the spring, when Scandal started dropping so fast, it seemed so unbelievable to me that I kept coming up with excuses and excuses for what was happening. Ultimately, most of them were not proven right when Scandal didn’t even manage to rebound when the big Grey’s Anatomy spike came late in the season and Scandal was still stuck at its low level. That was pretty scary and it makes it really tough to be optimistic heading into the new season. But I am a pretty big believer in the power of Shonda Rhimes and I think she can turn it around. She knows how to bring buzz like no other showrunner I’ve ever seen and Scandal is a show that lives on buzz. The presence of The Catch in the spring should also be a relevant factor in helping out the block later in the year. I think it is down in the fall and the winter but could actually have a shot at being up in the spring. 2.36 (- 18%)
Timeslot: ABC, Thursdays at 10pm
Lead-in: Scandal
Lead-out: Local Programming
Episode Order: 15 episodes
Competition: Thursday Night Football | Elementary, The Player
Pros
- Viola Davis just won an Emmy! That seems to have helped another ABC big hit to grow in the early years, Modern Family, so why not Murder?
- Unlike other limited series shows (Under the Dome, The Following, Sleepy Hollow), there wasn’t really any worrying trend later in the Season 1 run, neither was any sort of critical backslash of the show, so Murder is very well positioned to be the first show to break that curse!
- The TGIT promotional machine is freaking on and all over about this!
- The competition should still be ridiculously non existent and it should once again benefit from airing only in the better viewed fall and winter months!
- Even reduced, Scandal should remain a powerful lead-in!
Cons
- It’s a limited series! And that simply hasn’t ended well for broadcasters yet. Why should this one be any different?
- If Scandal really doesn’t rebound from what happened last spring, the numbers will be so ugly that there is only so much Murder can do at 10pm.
- While the show did not struggle creatively at all last year, it was a pretty self contained history. When shows like that try to continue spinning it, the critical backslash tends to show up. That’s certainly a big risk for this sophomore!
Bottom Line I cannot ignore the dammed curse of limited series. It seems that there are just too many shows out there for the audience to truly care for a show after it has been off the air for so long. Out of sight, out of mind. Still, I think the buzz here is significantly stronger than it was for any of the other returning shows and I did not detect any signs of creative bankruptcy last year. It may be my bias for the show talking because I personally find it fantastic but I just do not know why tones of people would suddenly reject it. That doesn’t mean it does what it did last year since the curse should have some effect here, but it should still be a pretty strong entry, especially because the timeslot will continue to be pretty awesome. 2.27 (-23%)
This is all I have for today! What about you? Let us know in the comments below what your guesses are for these shows, both in terms of premieres and seasonal averages! If you happen to stumble upon the post after the premiere date has been released, feel free to speculate about how the trend will go for the rest of the season or to just mock me for how far off my predictions were!
