Short term (4 week) ratings trends indicate the renewal prospects for Castle, The Good Wife, Heroes, Parks & Recreation and Law & Order have improved.
Since I am keeping individual show episode ratings this season (unlike in past years when I just relied on Nielsen averages), I’d been meaning to look at short term ratings trends explicitly at some point (instead of just eyeballing them). I meant to start including them in the regular posts this week, but the Nielsen power outage delay made that impractical. However, in preparation for next weeks posts, I set up the spreadsheet and did the calculations for this week, so I figured I would post them (not color coded).
Remember that on a season average basis, an Index of below 0.92 has in the past indicated a scripted show is in danger of cancellation. On a short term Index basis, I haven’t checked the history. And to be honest, there’s likely more in these numbers than I’ve drawn out from my cursory scan, but shows with 4 week Indexes over their season Indexes would seem to have improving chances. Whether that turns out to be the case, we shall see.
ABC
| Program | Renew/ Cancel Index | 4 Week Renew/ Cancel Index |
| Ugly Betty (S), (F), (P) | 0.39 | 0.42 |
| Hank | 0.52 | 0.50 |
| Eastwick | 0.63 | 0.58 |
| the forgotten | 0.66 | 0.69 |
| The Middle | 0.69 | 0.72 |
| Castle (P) | 0.75 | 0.86 |
| FlashForward (P) | 1.00 | 0.98 |
| Brothers & Sisters (S), (P) | 1.01 | 1.13 |
| Cougar Town (P) | 1.10 | 1.08 |
| Modern Family | 1.18 | 1.26 |
| Private Practice (P) | 1.23 | 1.30 |
| V | 1.45 | 1.60 |
| Desperate Housewives (P) | 1.53 | 1.70 |
| Grey’s Anatomy (P) | 1.79 | 1.88 |
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CBS
| Program | Renew/ Cancel Index | 4 Week Renew/ Cancel Index |
| Numb3rs (F), (P) | 0.54 | 0.65 |
| Three Rivers (P) | 0.55 | 0.64 |
| Cold Case (P) | 0.60 | 0.68 |
| New Adventures of Old Christine (S) | 0.62 | 0.71 |
| Medium (F), (P) | 0.62 | 0.73 |
| Ghost Whisperer (F), (S) | 0.63 | 0.74 |
| Gary Unmarried | 0.67 | 0.76 |
| The Good Wife (P) | 0.86 | 0.94 |
| Accidentally On Purpose (P) | 0.92 | 1.06 |
| CSI:NY (P) | 0.98 | 1.09 |
| How I Met Your Mother (S) | 1.06 | 1.21 |
| The Mentalist | 1.09 | 1.26 |
| CSI (P) | 1.11 | 1.22 |
| Criminal Minds (P) | 1.12 | 1.22 |
| NCIS: Los Angeles (P) | 1.13 | 1.23 |
| CSI: Miami (P) | 1.21 | 1.35 |
| NCIS (P) | 1.37 | 1.55 |
| Two And A Half Men | 1.40 | 1.60 |
| Big Bang Theory | 1.49 | 1.72 |
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CW
| Program | Renew/ Cancel Index | 4 Week Renew/ Cancel Index |
| The Beautiful Life: TBL (P) | 0.49* | |
| Melrose Place (P) | 0.60 | 0.62 |
| 90210 (P) | 0.84 | 0.93 |
| Smallville (F), (P) | 0.89 | 1.10 |
| Gossip Girl (P) | 0.95 | 1.10 |
| One Tree Hill (P) | 0.96 | 1.12 |
| Supernatural (S), (P) | 0.99 | 1.12 |
| Vampire Diaries (P) | 1.41 | 1.60 |
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NBC
| Program | Renew/ Cancel Index | 4 Week Renew/ Cancel Index |
| Law & Order (F), (P) | 0.54 | 0.63 |
| Trauma (P) | 0.69 | 0.75 |
| Mercy (P) | 0.71 | 0.71 |
| Parks & Recreation (P) | 0.75 | 0.85 |
| Community | 0.83 | 0.85 |
| Heroes (P) | 0.92 | 0.99 |
| Law & Order: SVU (P) | 0.97 | 1.09 |
| 30 Rock (P) | 1.14 | 1.25 |
| The Office (P) | 1.56 | 1.71 |
The middle column Renew / Cancel Index numbers are calculated the same as they always have been. A show’s season average adults 18-49 rating divided by its networks season average adults 18-49 rating. The 4 week Indexes divide a show’s 4 week running 18-49 ratings average by the networks running 4 week ratings average. The number of repeats during a short period can cause misleading results. Not sure if I can do something simple to show that or not.
Note that the Fox numbers for the 4 week average would have been entirely useless because few regular shows aired more than once or twice, and the averages were heavily skewed by baseball, so I didn’t include them at all. Next week I may figure out something special for Fox for the next few weeks.
With Heroes, I think this is very misleading. Four weeks includes the three weeks they were consistently at 2.5, which overshadows that they then fell to 2.3 in the fourth week. It also doesn’t take into consideration that they fell again to 2.2 this week.
It seems like everything at NBC is up, which suggests not so much that the shows have improved recently, but that NBC is softer as a whole in recent weeks.
Great, just piss in NBC’s Cherrio’s, Julia.
And Fox??
Actually, it’s not just NBC. Everything on every network, except FlashForward, Hank and Eastwick is up.
Dann, while I wrote about leaving Fox’s numbers out of the post, I didn’t expect *you* to read it.
Good to see Castle moving up even if it is still borderline.
Julia, indeed, while this shows a new set data, it has its own limitations. Whether it gets included in the regular posts is up in the air. It may make them too complicated. I may just keep the numbers as a backup for my predictions.
Julia, As for “most everything is up” there could be a variety of reasons, that I don’t currently have the time to look into but the most likely is that shows not in the tables (sports, reality) have in general fallen in the ratings since the beginning of the season relative to scripted shows.
What’s this? Some POSITIVE news on Castle? Predictions its chances of renewal are improving? From THIS site? Be still my beating heart.
Just kidding, Bill. Mostly.
Im happy for my shows they’ve all been picked up for a full 22-25 episode season! Now i get to enjoy the rest of the year with my shows! Hey does anyone know how many episodes trauma is getting since it got ordered for additional episodes?
If most shows are up the its nost sidnificant to look at shows that went up the most in each network. additiobally it says a lot whena show is down
Community and Parks & Rec are neck and neck. I’m hoping Parks is the one that gets a third season, I can’t imagine NBC renewing both of them.
How can V have an overall R/C index of 1.45, and a 4 week R/C index of 1.6, when there have only been 3 episodes?
Did the “up” trend get a boost with the daylight savings change?
“Community and Parks & Rec are neck and neck. I’m hoping Parks is the one that gets a third season, I can’t imagine NBC renewing both of them”
Looking at NBC’s carnage, I can see both getting renewed actually. They’ve got enough holes as it is.
They both do about the same as Old Christine and Gary Unmarried and CBS seems fine with those, so.
Samantha because the overall index is divided by the network’s season-to-date 18-49 average and the 4 week index is divided by the network’s running average just for the last 4 weeks.
The ratings average for V (which might only include TWO airings since the above is through last week) stayed the same, but what it was divided by changed.
Samantha, in V’s case it’s ratings average is unchanged (in either case for just 2 episodes, I didn’t use any of this weeks numbers), but since ABC’s 4 week average is lower than its season average, that pushed V’s relative Index up.
Catherine, since the Index measures ratings relative to each show’s network average, daylight savings time turn off might help early shows a bit, but it would hurt later shows relative ratings. However, that is only a guess, I didn’t look at timeslot specific trends.
Makes sense. (BTW, quick responses to questions make it seem like you guys REALLY care about the site and its commenters, which is awesome).
NBC scripted probably up since they had no football on November 1st so that would impact the last 4 weeks much more than the season to date averages. That plus Leno likely a little lower than the first couple weeks of season.
CBS – maybe no big football overruns the last 4 weeks? Other than that, I don’t know why everything would be up – their only reality is Survivor, Race, and 60 minutes so unless they dropped off big time, it seems odd all CBS scripted is up.
ABC – likely a combination of some of their shows really dropping off from their early weeks more than others and also DWTS being low so their mondays and tuesdays were likely down the last 4 weeks.
CW – not really sure why all scripted is up. Either Model is significantly down and/or the Friday encores slid and made everything else look better.
Thanks for posting this! Cool to look at. I agree also though that it might get a bit too confusing or may be too difficult to have meaning with shows on different repeat cycles. But still great to see!
Yay Castle! How many episodes are left? Hope it hangs on to its current ratings even after DWTS is done.
Bill, since nearly every show is up (except a few, including, most notably, Nikki Finke’s Pick To Click), I wonder if this is just more of a seasonal change than something that has anything to do with a show actually improving.
I’m not saying that is so, Bill. I’m just wondering. You would have to compare this set of four week averages to the same period of time over the last handful of season to know for certain, but it could just be that viewership in general rises slightly the deeper we get into autumn, in which case some of these improvements might be very misleading.
In other words, the improvements might just be because everything normally improves X amount at this time of the year. If that is so, then we have to look at whether the improvement over the last four weeks is more or less than the improvement should be.
That might be impossible for you to calculate with the data you have, but I thought it was a possibility worth throwing out there.
Or am I totally off base?
The new show leading in to CASTLE may surprise positively as the international version is a hit.
Quote from ew,com article:
“…It turns out Find My Family is already a hit in a bunch of English-speaking countries, and has been operating an international people-finding organization as powerful as the U.N. for over 20 years. According to this international promo, “It’s safe to say that if Find My Family can’t find a lost person, they’ve probably vanished from the face of the earth.” Whoa!”
Question, what impact does the World Series, which I assume was part of the 4 week equation, have on the overall #S?
Absolutely nothing, Diane, as Fox was left out of this list, due to World Series.
Not a surprise to hear this from me given my last comment on the site, Bill, but it’s cool to see you looking at new numbers to see if they shed some light on the subject. This index, especially over time, should more quickly weed out the effects of shows that started late and/or strong and faded fast, without unduly focusing on one week’s performance (which can be an outlier for a variety of reasons).
If nothing else, this index tells us how much stronger or weaker scripted TV is than other programs on each network at holding onto viewers.
The WS might have something to do with it, Julia, as FOX got a lot of extra viewers out of the Winter Classic. People who were watching the Boys of November were not watching other networks, thus possibly decreasing the overall network averages for the other three nets during that time, thus increasing the floating 4 week cancellation index.
Schmoker, but if that’s the case, the individual show ratings would be down as well, evening out the index.
Only on the nights the WS aired, Julia. It didn’t air every night, so we would have to check each show’s numbers vs. when it aired, and see if it did air vs. the WS, and if, in fact, it’s numbers were down during that week. I haven’t done that, but neither has anyone else, so it’s really impossible to say for certain.
But what you can check easily, and what may prove me wrong, is what the actual numbers were for the other nets during those two weeks. Where there overall weekly averages down during the WS or not? If they were, then you check which shows aired against the WS and see if their numbers were up or down. Then we would know.
One thing we know for certain, however, is that just saying it has absolutely nothing to do with it proves nothing. It’s just an opinion, based on no facts whatsoever. Or at least no facts that you cited to back it up. Sort of a Finke-like statement actually.
This is great, and just what I was looking for when I was asking for the trendlines.
Thanks for making this site even more like crack for me
I hope “CASTLE” doesn’t get cancel. That show is so good.
I very much hope Castle gets cancelled. Do we really need yet another cop show with some possible romance between the streetwary tough cop, and the unorthodox non cop “partner”. We already have the Mentalist, Medium, Psych and a host of others where some bozo with “unusual” perspective helps the cops because they can somehow manipulate people, and because they only care about solving the crime, not about the constitutional rights of people, or about anything else. There are enough shows for bored housewives out there.
Of course they really need to do something better then Nielsen ratings and find out what people are really watching. That includes people in the Midwest, the Pacific North West, and the East. Single people who move once every couple years or so are missed too. Right now all they tell you is what families who have lived in the same house for over five years are watching. Nothing else.
Go Castle, but without Dancing this show really isn’t going to hold up.
This index must have been done before last week because Parks and Rec got its first 4 share in the ratings, this after weeks of having at least a 5 share. “The Camel” episode had one of the series lowest ratings ever.
I think Castle’s spin-off merch, and that extra kick of revenue it brings in, adds a few ghost points to the score?
Peter, these numbers include ratings through November 15.
I’m sometimes surprised by the numbers you use on this site. I think the most significant point to the 4 week running average is that it does not include the premiers for most of these shows, both in the numerator and denominator. Consequently most shows went up.
If you were to run a 4 week average of shows last season, ending before the finales, would you still get 0.92 as the indication of a danger zone?
Parks and Rec is better than any other show in the history of TV. Freaks and Geeks, Seinfeld, Soap, All in the Family are all okay, except they don’t have that fierce talent that is Amy Poehler.
She is just so natural. She was born to do this…or annoy her underlings at PR firm, or voice her opinion at the PTA.
uhull gossip girl it’s good” Better then 90210, SAMLLVILLE and MELROSE *** GG ALWAYSS =))))))))))))))