So the fall season is well underway already but most of the networks have decided to have some super late fall premieres this year. That means that it is time for yet another round of predictions! As always, please let us know in the comments what your guesses are, both for the seasonal averages and for the premieres!
Timeslot: CBS, Mondays at 8pm
Lead-in: Local Programming
Lead-out: Scorpion
Episode Order: 13 episodes (possible 22 episode extension)
Competition: The Voice | ??, Dancing with the Stars | The Bachelor, Gotham | The X-Files, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend | ??
Pros
- It’s one of the most hyped shows of the season and has more awareness than god knows that.
- As if it needed any more awareness, its season premiere is leading out of the show that centers the comic book fans themselves, which just happens to be one of the biggest shows of the decade, The Big Bang Theory.
- Other than Friday-bound Constantine, no comics book based show has exactly flopped on TV recently and all of them have managed to at least open pretty big!
- While not an easy timeslot, it will at least manage to premiere at a time in which the voice blind auditions are past it. And Gotham, its likely most compatible piece of competition, has mostly collapsed.
Cons
- To say that this is a bad fit for CBS is the understatement of the century. The mismatch in audience is pretty clear here. How much will that end up mattering is anyone’s guess, but it will certainly be a challenge for this show to overcome.
- The Voice’ blinds may be past it for now but wait for them to come back in the spring! And hey, Gotham may be weakened now, but what about The X-Files? Throw in some Bachelor to the mix too while we are at it and the timeslot certainly isn’t an easy one.
- Most of those comic book based TV shows haven’t flopped but most have also had a common feature: abnormally high post premiere drops (At least on networks not named CW). This seems prime to be another one of those.
- Reactions to the pilot have been pretty mixed at best.
Bottom Line This is certainly one of the most promising and intriguing ones of the season, but I am trying to hamper my expectations somehow since the other two apparently bigger ones, The Muppets and Scream Queens, have been big disappointments in the ratings department. This has a lot of good things going for it but it also has a few worrying signs. To call the timeslot easy would be foolish – we can say it is easier than it would have been in the early fall but it is certainly still insanely hard. And I do worry very much about the way CBS is giving its audience something so different. Will people that normally don’t watch CBS go out of their way to watch this? Because it feels to me that usual CBS customers won’t be the ones doing it. How I Met Your Mother survived years on an island on this very slot though so I do think it’s possible at the end of the day, even if it’s still a challenge. At the end of the day, I think this will open pretty big based on hype and Big Band lead-in but have epic post premiere declines like Gotham and Shield. Many will call it a disappointment but I guess it stabilizes at a good enough level for it to be a reasonable success for CBS, especially if it brings them the younger viewers they lack so much. Essentially ties Gotham’s last year’s average at a 1.97
Timeslot: ABC, Tuesdays at 10pm
Lead-in: Marvel’s Agents of Shield | Marvel’s Agent Carter
Lead-out: Local Programming
Episode Order: 10 episodes
Competition: Chicago Fire, Limitless
Pros
- Anthology series have quietly started becoming a trend, with AHS being the most obvious example of that success!
- This is not a total mismatch with the Marvel shows I guess and at least has a better chance of appealing to that crowd than a procedural like Forever.
- Limitless and Chicago Fire are decent to good performers but not exactly impossible to beat competition.
Cons
- Excluding Agent Carter, which has the important caveat of being a Marvel show (and whose renewal wasn’t exactly a no brainer even then), I do not remember any period drama being successful on broadcast lately. And while people can point me to cable, even critically acclaimed shows on cable like Mad Men, The Americans or Masters of Sex were never setting the world on fire ratings wise, on the contrary.
- While it would be possible for ABC to do worse in terms of compatibility with Shield, that really isn’t saying much. The compatibility is still pretty forced here.
- This really doesn’t feel like the kind of thing you want to break for holidays. ABC is doing it a disservice by forcing it to start now just to have something on or Sweeps.
- From what I can tell, awareness for this show is minimal to say the least.
Bottom Line This seems like such an afterthought even for ABC itself that it is hard for me to be positive. The initial plan of having it air alongside Agent Carter in the winter wasn’t a bad one but throwing it to the schedule in November like that is just not something I can see working well at all. I don’t think it will fit well with Shield and I don’t think people will drop Limitless or Chicago Fire to check this out. I definitely also don’t think this is the show that breaks the period drama curse. 0.83
Timeslot: NBC, Fridays at 9pm
Lead-in: Truth Be Told
Lead-out: Dateline
Episode Order: 22 episodes
Competition: Shark Tank, Hawaii Five-0, ??, America’s Next Top Model | ???
Pros
- Grimm is back to 9pm! That means it can put the horribly viewed 8pm behind it! The higher viewing levels will certainly benefit it!
- Its competition is trending down noticeably, particularly Shark Tank! That will certainly help!
- While the lead-in won’t be good, this show should have enough of a following by now for that not to matter that much, especially since it airs at 9 and not at 10pm.
Cons
- Yeah, Grimm is back at 9pm but that is for now. Who know which jerkarounds NBC has in store for the show? If they decide to blow up the comedy block, which certainly seems possible, the spring schedule may just end up being Grimm | Dateline | Dateline again.
- Have you seen the numbers Truth Be Told is pulling? Yikes… And let’s not even talk about compatibility there. Double Yikes!
- The show is just aging and it was giving signs of that last year even when it was still airing at 9pm.
Bottom Line I happen to think the -18% trend last year wasn’t really nearly as bad as some people made it out to be since 8pm is so much worse than 9pm. I mean, for the first 13 episodes (when it still aired at 9pm) it was only down 14% so it was barely a decline higher than the league average one. Sadly though, I am not sure how much that means since 1) I am not sure whether or not the damage done when it moved to 8pm was permanent and 2) I am not sure it will really manage to stick around this slot for another year. It’s tough to make any guess without knowing 2), but since I need to pick something, I am going to say last year has damaged it enough for it not to rebound but it also has also probably made it more resilient so it endures whatever NBC throws at it midseason better. 1.00 (-13%)
Timeslot: CBS, Thursdays at 9pm
Lead-in: Life in Pieces | ??
Lead-out: 2 Broke Girls
Episode Order: 22 episodes
Competition: Scandal, The Blacklist, Sleepy Hollow | ??, The Originals
Pros
- Some of the more promising data points from this show actually happened late in the spring when it was holding up very nicely even as the rest of CBS Thursday was trending down fast. That is very promising!
- The critical acclaim for this show continues to be very much present – Allison Janney just won yet another Emmy.
- While it probably doesn’t get to benefit from a Big Bang Theory lead-in this year, it will still be in its orbit and the pairing with 2 Broke Girls is better than the weird pairing with a repeat it got last year.
- Stability is never a bad thing, so if CBS keeps this Mom | 2BG combo in place for the entire season, Mom should benefit from that, as last year it was asked to air in all 3 half hours on Thursday at some point.
Cons
- No Big Bang Theory lead-in is bound to hurt!
- The pairing with 2 Broke Girls sounds nice, but will a reallocated 2 Broke Girls really be a better match than repeats of The Big Bang Theory?
- Scandal was trending down fast late last spring when Mom had to face it at 9pm but the show is holding up surprisingly well so far this year. That is bound to hurt Mom a little.
- The late fall schedule for CBS Thursday is absolutely atrocious this year and it will hurt even more than last year.
Bottom Line The show did promising enough last year for me to feel good about it now, even when it was thrown to 9pm in that weird arrangement in the Spring. Still, this late fall schedule absolutely sucks and the loss of Big Bang Theory will undoubtedly hurt, so it is bound to fall back to earth. I do think it will held up surprisingly well throughout the season though. So even if it starts out weaker than it finished last season and then looks fairly bad in December, it gets most of it back in the winter and doesn’t let go for most of the spring. 1.886 (-18%)
Timeslot: CBS, Thursdays at 9h30pm
Lead-in: Mom
Lead-out: Elementary
Episode Order: 22 episodes
Competition: Scandal, The Blacklist, Sleepy Hollow | ??, The Originals
Pros
- Mom is certainly going to be a higher rated and more compatible lead-in than what the show got from local programming last season on Monday.
- Scandal is fierce competition but I don’t really think it is any worse than the double whammy of NBC and ABC reality that it got on Monday!
- The show’s trend for last year looks ugly but that is mostly because it is being compared with episodes that aired post How I Met Your Mother. If you account for the different circumstances, the trend last year was surprisingly respectable.
Cons
- A move to another day like this is bound to confuse viewers and this one feels even more prone to it since it was announced with little advancement. It just feels prone to get lost in the shuffle!
- For all the good results the show had for most of last year, some of the worst data points actually happened very late in the Spring. That isn’t a good way to head into the new season.
- Again… CBS Thursday late fall schedule absolutely sucks and it is bound to hurt a reallocated show even more.
Bottom Line I think this show will do okay but I do think it will look pretty bad in its initial Thursday airings (I remind everyone that the third one is on Thanksgiving Eve), probably even more so than Mom. Still, I think it will have a great dynamic with Mom, similar with the one Mike and Molly had with itself last year. It fully retains Mom on most occasions, maybe even builds up a bit if Mom has to start with a very low audience from Life in Pieces or whatever is airing post Big Bang at 8h59, and is only a tad weaker than it in few occasions. So I am giving it an identical average, which would actually be sizable growth after accounting for the league average decline. 1.886 (-7%)
Timeslot: CBS, Thursdays at 10pm
Lead-in: 2 Broke Girls
Lead-out: Local Programming
Episode Order: 22-24 episodes
Competition: How to Get Away with Murder | The Catch, The Player | ??
Pros
- This show fell so much last year that it feels almost unbelievable to me that it will continue to do so again. Certainly some leveling off from last year’s huge underachievement has to happen.
- The lead-in will be such a massive improvement over most of what it got last year that it is hard for it not to benefit, even if they probably continue to be somehow incompatible.
- How To Get Away with Murder is still huge, but it is less of an impossible thing than it was last year. And NBC is even more out of the map than it was late-fall/ winter with Parenthood!
- The show has started airing in syndication. Maybe the additional exposure helps?
Cons
- Competition in the late-fall/ winter will probably be easier but The Catch will almost surely improve on American Crime later on and it is hard to imagine NBC doing worse than Allegiance and The Slap as well!
- The benefits of a higher lead-in are probably somehow limited here since the raunchy 2 Broke Girls doesn’t exactly feels like a good fit with the more cerebral Elementary.
- Again, and I do know I sound like a broken record but it bears repeating: CBS Thursday late fall schedule absolutely sucks.
Bottom Line This reminds me a lot of Nashville’s situation last year: a mostly weak show that had an absolutely disastrous previous season but that could, at least in part, be explained by the horrible lead-in it had and that it is getting a major lead-in upgrade, even if it isn’t one that is particularly compatible. Nashville managed to grow a tiny bit in that situation but I think that is too much to ask here since the competition dynamics aren’t quite as favorable as they were on Wednesday last season. But I think the situation is similar enough for the show not to really decline a whole lot more than the league average decline. 1.09 (-15%)
Timeslot: NBC, Tuesdays at 9pm
Lead-in: The Voice | ??
Lead-out: Chicago Fire
Episode Order: 13 episodes (possible 22 episode extension)
Competition: NCIS: New Orleans, Marvel’s Agents of Shield | Marvel’s Agent Carter, Scream Queens | ??, iZombie | ??
Pros
- The Voice lead-in! And it is a lead-in that has seemingly helped parent show Chicago Fire a lot in the past, which means there is every reason to expect compatibility here!
- The Chicago Empire is a proven thing on NBC. This one should fit right in, especially since it will he sandwiched between aforementioned Voice and the parent show Fire at 10pm!
- The 9pm competition is shockingly easy between ABC’s and CBS’s moderately rated dramas and FOX’s continued Tuesday struggles!
- As part of the Chicago empire, the show will always be prone to those wonderful crossovers that boost the shows so much!
Cons
- While The Voice lead-in sounds wonderful in theory, State of Affairs tells the tale of what happens when that lead-in is given only in November when The Voice is nowhere near as potent as during the Blind Auditions and when the show is afterwards asked to start after a much weaker lead-in. In this case, said winter lead-in is a total unknown and odds are that it is weaker than Celebrity Apprentice ended up being on Monday last year.
- It’s only been 2 airings so far but I find the numbers for Chicago Fire somehow disappointing this season considering how much promise it showed last year when it grew so much from the underwhelming comedy lead-ins it had.
- The last time the voice led into a medical drama was The Night Shift and we all know how that ended up.
- Crossovers are a very nice way to boost shows but usually the first show in the crossover event doesn’t really benefit and Med will always be that show due to the way the shows are scheduled. That means those boosts will be limited.
Bottom Line I have been somehow worried about what I view as underwhelming airings from Fire so far but I don’t want to be overly pessimistic just based on that either (especially since those two airings were still pretty decent on the context of NBC). I also think the medical drama genre isn’t something the networks should be actively invested right now. Finally, I do believe the schedule is much worse than the whole “voice lead-out” thing suggests and I worry about what NCB will throw at 8pm in the winter. Despite all of these, it is the bread and butter of NBC and while it won’t set the world on fire, it will do enough to be renewed. 1.60
And that's it for today! Remember to let us know in the comments what your predictions are for both premieres and seasonal averages!
