Last week, ABC’s Summer entry The Whispers had its debut and pulled a decent 1.5 rating in the 18-49 demographic based on the overnights. That looked like a promising start for the show which suggested it could be a solid Summer entry for its network. This last Monday, though, its ratings dropped by one third to a 1.0 score with 4.2 million total viewers. That’s not a good direction for the show’s numbers and it could be a backlash from the slowburn of the season premiere. It’s not doomed yet, but it’s definitely on less stable ground now and I am bumping up its Cancellation Alert level to Moderate. I had previously theorized that ABC might be looking at this as just a burn-off run for the show seeing as it had originally been scheduled as a mid-season entry but instead got pushed off to Summer. The debut numbers suggested that may not be the case, but the new results have me back in that camp. It is still possible that The Whispers has international financing backing it that could help prop it up despite low ratings, but that’s always a hard call to make. If it rebounds next week, then it may still have a chance. If it holds at its current level or sinks further, then it Cancellation Alert will rise higher.
