Unless otherwise noted, the ratings results below are based on the preliminaries and could get adjusted when the finals are released.
Last night brought one more genre debut for the Fall season as Agents of SHIELD returned for its third year. And its numbers are up from where it ended its second season which is a bit of good news. The show pulled a 1.7 rating based on the overnights for the 18-49 demographic with 4.8 million total viewers (according to the preliminaries) for its third year bow. That’s an improvement on the series low 1.3 score it had for its season finale last year, though it is down by 20% from its Season 2 debut. It is also flying below the 2.0 rating that ABC is currently averaging for its non-sports programming this season. But I still count this as relatively good news for the show considering how low its numbers had slipped in the Spring and it should keep it safe from Doomwatch for now. If it can maintain these levels, that may be enough to keep the show alive, especially considering the fact that it is a third season show and it has Disney in its corner because they want to keep the Avengers franchise alive on television. If it starts to slip, though, I’m thinking that the backup plan ABC and Disney have in place is to slot in the spin-off series Marvel’s Most Wanted (more on that one at this link) and package the three seasons of Agents of SHIELD with Agent Carter for a syndication run. It’s too early to tell at this point, but the good news is that AoS at least saw an improvement in the numbers with its Fall return.
As for this season’s shows in their second week, FOX’s Scream Queens had a notable drop, going from a 1.7 rating for its debut to a 1.4 score this week. Those are some pretty tepid numbers and may not be good enough to keep this one going into a second season. Also dropping was FOX’s other new entry Minority Report. That one slipped from its poor debut numbers of a 1.1 rating to a 0.9 score which has that one in big trouble at the moment and it could get bumped from the schedule if the numbers get worse. Holding steady week to week were FOX’s Gotham (at a 1.6 rating) and CBS’ Limitless (at a 1.9 rating). That latter show is looking particularly good at the moment because it is performing relatively well in a rough timeslot and it improved on its lead in two weeks in a row. And for those interested, ABC’s Muppets revival took a big drop in its second week, going from a debut rating of 2.9 all the way down to a 2.0. I guess many of the curious onlookers from that show’s first episode didn’t see enough of interest to keep them around for a second week.
As I have said before, we are still early in the season so it’s hard to get a good prognosis on any of these shows at the moment (except maybe Minority Report). But as the dust settles over the next few weeks the picture should start to come more into focus. So keep an eye on the Cancelled Sci Fi Twitter Site for the latest numbers and on the Cancellation Watch posts on this site for my analyses.
