Comments on: Renew or Cancel Index: Valentine Most Likely To Be Cancelled

By: Jessica

Jessica — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 18:36:21 +0000

CW does a poor job of advertising their Sunday line up. It is no coinicidence that the top two most likely to be cancelled shows come from those spots.

Valentine is a good show and would have a much better chance if the CW invested some time into marketing it.

By: ormon

ormon — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 21:48:02 +0000

i think they shuld cancel one tree hill,it’s stupid show.Not valentine,valentine is charming show

By: Anna

Anna — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 01:43:54 +0000

Out of the CW line-up on Sunday night, Valentine is defintely one to watch. I hope it does not get cancelled. We need more GOOD romatic comedies like this show. Too many shows this day are about who has the coolest special effects and biggest explosions, rather then quality plot and script.

By: Dan

Dan — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 22:56:30 +0000

The CW sunday night shows shouldn’t be on the list. They are probably going to get cancelled however they are obligated to finish there 13 episode orders, and maybe one of them will be renewed no matter what. Everybody Hates Chris and The Game are doing terrible but they do air on friday so maybe the CW will give both shows a break until they develop new comedies. The Ex List will probably be axed after another airing but Ghost Whisperer and Numb3rs won’t be cancelled no matter what there results are. Life and Pushing Daisies are examples of freshman shows that started out ok last season but are doing bad now in there slots and Life airs friday night at 10 pm.

By: eydie

eydie — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 22:15:03 +0000

i can tell you what happened to “pushing daisies.” i loved the show last year. then the writer’s strike interferred. but that wasn’t what kept me from watching. this year fox is airing “bones” against “pushing daisies.” since i love “bones” as well, i had a choice to make. i chose “bones” and i suspect many others are as well. i had my son dvr pushing daisies, but it isn’t the same as watching.

By: Rachel P

Rachel P — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 08:48:41 +0000

That’s awesome!! At least this will give the writers a chance to give proper closure to the show assuming Fox ends it then.

By: Joseph H

Joseph H — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 04:37:28 +0000

For those T:TSCC fans out here… it appears Fox has ok’d writing two additional episodes past the original 13.

http://fox.com/blogs/terminator/2008/10/09/status-update/

By: Aaron

Aaron — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 20:29:50 +0000

Pushing Daisies was cheated out of a full season last year. How awful would it be if the show got cancelled before receiving a full season this year? After only 11 episodes total, it has nearly topped my list of favorite shows, and out of all of them it is the only one I would truly be upset about if it were cancelled. That’s what I don’t like about television. Shows get cancelled, not because they aren’t good, but because not enough people watch them to be considered a “success”. Hopefully ABC lets Pushing Daisies last a little longer. After all, the shortened first season and 9 and 1/2 month hiatus is probably the biggest reason Daisies isn’t doing as well right now. With time, I think it will be able to pick back up its numbers. That’s the reason that so many good shows are cut off after only a few episodes: they aren’t around long enough for people to discover them.

By: Joseph H

Joseph H — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 18:48:12 +0000

I would prefer Chuck be cancelled.

By: Johnthemon

Johnthemon — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 17:48:53 +0000

@ Andrea

If Chuck and TSCC are targeting the same market (as everyone seems to agree they are) then moving/cancelling TSCC would have a positive effect on the ratings. I hope it’s a move for TSCC (to the 9:00 slot on wednesday) and not cancellation, but I would rather TSCC be cancelled than Chuck. Although Chuck’s cancellation is a long shot at this point.

By: Bill Gorman

Bill Gorman — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 16:09:51 +0000

Diane, these numbers should just be for the regular timeslot airing of Life, but I have been known to make mistakes. I will double check.

By: Julia

Julia — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 15:51:09 +0000

Family Guy was not a ratings loser. It was taken off the air due to its extremely controversial content. But then it had such huge DVD sales that FOX decided money was worth the controversy.

By: moonlightfan

moonlightfan — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 15:23:06 +0000

I suspect so as well, but I watched those episodes of Eureka that had the degree commercials and that season did better than I had anticipated, and they had some cool episodes despite the product placements. I was hoping for a long shot at best with the show, but I won’t give up untill next fall. You never really know, on account of what happened with family guy and all.

By: Robert Seidman

Robert Seidman — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 15:05:14 +0000

I’m in the process of moving residences and do not have my normal Internet access so I have seen nothing about directv and moonlight. I imagine it is just rumor due to news around Friday Night Lights now airing on DTV but the truth is I have absolutely no idea…

By: Dianne

Dianne — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 12:58:43 +0000

Although Life’s Friday numbers were low, the Monday airings were better – does that get factored in?

By: joanx

joanx — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 08:42:49 +0000

NOOOOOOO about Pushing Daisies. I can’t believe crap shows (90% of the list) are getting high ratings.

By: moonlightfan

moonlightfan — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 07:33:35 +0000

Hi Robert,

Have you heard anything about Direct Tv maybe picking up Moonlight? Is it just a rumor? I read somewhere that Direct TV was in talks with Scifi Channel, and look what happened with Eureka, they got Degree deodarant to sponsor their shows and got a 21 episode deal out of it, but I know that they are a cable network show and don’t expect as big ratings as the major networks. Is it possible for SCIFI to take this approach with Moonlight, if Degree sponsored this show I would switch deodorants.

By: Christian

Christian — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 05:34:51 +0000

Just a few thoughts, since I am a little new to this .92 Cancellation/Renewal, which I do find very interesting.

I’m surprised by “Pushing Daisies” being so low on the scale, given the buzz the show produced in the Fall of 2007. It likely proves the damage that a writer’s strike can cause, and probably be chalked down as one of the casualties if the numbers don’t improve soon. Maybe this one will be a show that improves drastically because the numbers are so skewed early in the season?

I’m surprised that “The Simpsons” does so well in the demo after 20 years…but I suppose it makes sense that the majority of their core audience is still in this age range. I don’t go out of my way to DVR the show, but if it happens to be on when I am around in live time…I suppose I will still watch.

I’m happy for the poor CW for showing so well on the list with 90210. And, perhaps a little embarrassed to admit that I have been watching the show as a 33 year old guy!~ Sorry, it caught my curiosity and it stuck with me — for now. Maybe I’d rather watch this show than check my 401K balance? Yeah, I think so.

Maybe I should have a list of shows that “Make Me Forget About Our Economic Crisis The Best”
List? LOL. If so…this is how it would go for me for the first month or so of the 2008-2009 season… (This doesn’t mean anything about quality ranking…HAHA)

#1 90210 CW 4.0 Stars (Out of 4 stars) : I forget everything
#2 Desperate Housewives ABC 3.5 Stars: Premiere good, 2nd Episode “okay”
#3 Amazing Race CBS 2.5 Stars: Saw the premiere, but thats it so far.
#3 The Family Guy FOX 2.5 Stars : Last 2 shows “okay”…used to be better.
#5 Deal or No Deal NBC 2.0 Stars : In Fast Forward. Hey, got $1 million!!
#6 Two And A Half Men CBS 1.5 Stars: Premiere good, but can’t get into it again.
#7 Top Model CW 1.0 Stars: Eh, the tranny was interesting. Stopped
watching after a few episodes, though.
#8 Heros NBC 0.0 Stars: Stopped watching after the strike….Sadly

Outside of prime time Saturday Night Live gets 4.0 Stars and ties with 90210.
And, when Lost returns that will return back to the top of my “shows that make me forget about the economic crisis”.

By: Joseph H

Joseph H — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 05:11:28 +0000

I noticed both Prison Break and Terminator increased their index value by .05 from last week. This puts Prison Break near the .92 cut off and close to the safe area? Monday’s Terminator numbers were bigger than the previous week. So can we expect better placement on the chart for Terminator next time this chart is published? Perhaps there is some hope for us fans of these shows…

By: Bill Gorman

Bill Gorman — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 03:25:01 +0000

Jason, while everyone *you* know has a DVR, only about 25% of US households have one.

The day when everyone watches TV when they want to will arrive, but it’s not today.

By: Jason

Jason — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 02:33:07 +0000

I do not understand why it matters in this day and age when something is on. everyone i know anymore has a DVR. Every cable company and satellite company provide DVR’s I suppose some people out there do not have DVRs yet. Just like some people still use VCR’s (archaic technology). Like our house i have 2 DVRs going because on some nights i have 4 programs recording at once between cable and network and sometimes its a few days later before i get them watched.
I read somewhere that shows that are watched live or dvr same day get 1 rating and ones not watched till later in the week are another.

I think pushing daisies is to complicated and the repetitive of the so many hours days minutes seconds old someone was when they died gets old after awhile.

Knight rider had a chance to be a great show but the whole transforming kitt is a little much.

I think the nielsons are still not correct. There is no way to be 100% accurate unless all households had a ratings box. They always seem to cancel some good shows but then put junk on TV.

By: Robert Seidman

Robert Seidman — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 18:40:39 +0000

I agree that share is mostly redundant, still especially at the granular level it’s sometimes useful. For example a week ago Monday Gossip Girl with a new episode place second (to Dancing with the Stars) out of the broadcast networks among 18-34 females race. You could have seen this by the ratings points too of course, but people say stuff like “Yes, but not many 18-34 year old women are watching TV to begin”. Share allows you to say, “OK, BUT of the all the 18-34 year old women who WERE watching TV that hour, 89% of them watched something other than Gossip Girl”.

Also, because of the general lack of cable data we have access to, the share info also allows us to intuit quite about about where broadcast is more and less dominant relative to cable.

By: Bill Gorman

Bill Gorman — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 17:46:24 +0000

Steve, to a certain extent this Index is a product of the data we get and what predicted last season’s renewals and cancellations.

Is the 18-49 average the best indicator for show futures on the CW? Probably not. It’s probably the 18-34 average. Even more specifically, the female 18-34 average. But we don’t get any season to date 18-34 data for individual shows, so we use what we have. And that worked pretty well in predicting renewals and cancellations last season.

To answer some of your other questions:

Total viewership is not the success/failure measure used by the networks to determine the future of their shows. They each care about age demographic groups far more, mostly 18-49, but the CW cares about 18-34, and news operations care about 25-54.

18-49 ratings are directly related to 18-49 viewership. A demo ratings point is 1% of viewers in that demographic group in the US>

Share is just the portion of a demographic group that watched a show in that group currently tuned into television. To me, its redundant information, but we report it because everyone else does too.

By: Holly

Holly — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 17:41:32 +0000

Steve, This list takes the average number of 18-49 viewers for a show and divides it by the average number of 18-49 viewers for the network. The demo numbers Bill and Robert use here are demo viewer numbers instead of ratings points, which are less accurate because they involve more rounding. If the demo ratings you posted are from one week, then the reason they are in a different order on this list is because this list averages the demo from all the episodes of each show.

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 17:32:09 +0000

Trying to make sure I get this. If we were to “rank” so to speak the shows on the CW in terms of success…and go by total viewers, (scripted only) we’d have #1 Smallville, #2 Supernatural #3 Gossip Girl #4 One Tree Hill #5 90210.

However, in terms of the list, it goes #1 90210 #2 Gossip Girl #3 Smallville #4 One Tree Hill #5 Supernatural. Now, how I understand this is this indicator is a measure of STD 18-49 (LIVE+SD) / the average of the network.

Do these numbers correlate more heavily to the 18-49 rating/share? Which has the five shows at … (assuming I understand these ratios correctly)

#1 GG 1.9/5 #2 90210 1.7/5 #3 OTH 1.9/4 #4 Smallville 1.6/4 #5 Supernatural 1.4/3

Clearly, that can’t be the order since SV/OTH are switched as well as GG/90210.

Do you see my confusion? Hopefully I explicitly stated my point. My final question is what the real indicator of network success is? Is Gossip Girl the “most successful” show on the CW, despite not having the most viewers? Also, Supernatural has increased its viewership by 42% from last season, more than any show on television. So is it really the 5th most successful show? That seems a little stilted to me, no?