Cancellation Watch: The Walking Dead Continues to Walk on Top of the Ratings; Almost Human Takes Another Scheduling Hit

Unless otherwise noted, the ratings numbers below are based on the final overnights and may vary slightly from the preliminaries reported on the Cancelled Sci Fi Twitter Site.

Ratings Results for the Friday through Tuesday sci fi / fantasy shows:

Ratings Win:  AMC’s The Walking Dead had its third season bow this past Fall with a staggering and record breaking ratings score of an 8.2 in the 18-49 demographic based on the overnights, though it did slip down into the 6’s as its season progressed (still eye-popping numbers, though, as it beat out almost all non-sports programming on the cable and broadcast networks).  I figured that the show would see a bit of a bump with its mid-season return this past Sunday (especially considering its wild Fall season finale), but thought that its days of stratospheric numbers might be in its past.  The show proved me wrong, though, as it matched its previous record with another 8.2 rating and 15.8 million total viewers.  Those numbers even beat out the Olympics in the 9 PM hour on Sunday in the 18-49 demo as the show continues to demonstrate that it has become a major force on television.  I would not be surprised to see the ratings drop by as much as a point for next week’s ep seeing as the mid-season return delivered a rather slow, Carl-centric episode that viewers might consider a comedown after the prison attack story.  But TWD is so high up there now that it has plenty of leeway and this show will almost certainly decide for itself when it wants to wrap up.

The Hot Seat: As if FOX’s Almost Human has not had enough scheduling challenges to overcome so far (late start, frequent preemptions), its network decided to run a new episode directly against the Olympics on Monday which resulted in the expected ratings drop.  That episode pulled 1.6 score in the 18-49 demo with 5.7 million total viewers (based on the final numbers).  Last week’s ep actually did decent (with a 1.9 rating) considering the two week absence that preceded it, but the Olympics just proved too much of a hurdle this week.  Over on CBS, Intelligence also got crushed by the Sochi games as it dropped to a 1.3 rating with 7.1 million total viewers.  And you might think the two networks for these shows would let them take a mulligan for the week considering the competition, but don’t count on that.  They will instead point to The Walking Dead and Teen Wolf (see below) and tell Almost Human and Intelligence to pick up the pace while ignoring the scheduling challenges they keep throwing at them.  Over on The CW, Beauty and the Beast seem unphased by the Olympics.  With its usual 0.3 rating and ~740k total viewers, its numbers stink no matter the competition.  On Friday, Syfy’s Helix improved to a 0.5 rating with 1.3 million total viewers.  If it can hold at that level for the rest of the season, then it should have a chance at getting a renewal.

Other Ratings News:  Over on MTV on Monday, Teen Wolf did not suffer too much from Olympics competition as it pulled a 0.9 rating with 2.1 million total viewers.  That’s a slight drop off from last week, but then it had matched a series high and it is still doing quite well for its network.  Syfy’s Being Human also did decent as it pulled another 0.5 rating with 1.2 million total viewers on Monday.  Seeing as Haven got a renewal after averaging a 0.4 score, Being Human seems to be in good shape at this point.  Syfy’s Canadian imports Bitten and Lost Girl both pulled around a 0.3 rating on Monday which should be decent enough for those two.

On Friday, both The Neighbors and Grimm were taking a break because of the Olympics (both returning on February 28th) and it looks like the rest of this week will bring no new episodes of sci fi / fantasy shows, though I will keep an eye out in case I missed anything.  I will go ahead and post the current numbers below and tell you to keep an eye on the Cancelled Sci Fi Twitter Site for any updates or breaking news.  You can see the current status for all this season’s genre shows at this link,  and for more information on the ratings numbers and how I determine the Cancellation Alert status of a show, see the Cancelled Sci Fi FAQ.

Here are the season to date numbers and standings through February 11th for all the shows that have bowed so far (sorted by most likely to get cancelled):

Ratings Source: TV by the Numbers and The Futon Critic

Nielsen TV Ratings: ©2014 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved.