Cancellation Watch: Orphan Black Returns Down, Outlander and Fear the Walking Dead Slip; Plus the Ratings Roundup

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9 years ago

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 of Interest: Last Wednesday, Orphan Black had its fourth season debut on BBC America and could only muster a 0.08 rating based on the overnights for the 18-49 demographic with about 230k total viewers. Those numbers are definitely down from where it was performing last season, but I don’t know that there is too much reason to be concerned at the moment. It relies more heavily on its viewership in Canada on the Space Channel for its survival, so if it continues to perform well there it should be okay (I don’t have a good source for those ratings numbers). Still, Canadian shows don’t tend to go for as many seasons as those in the U.S., so this one could be looking at wrapping up around its fifth or sixth year (that is speculation only, though). On Saturday, Starz’s Outlander slipped to a 0.27 rating based on the overnights with 1.2 million total viewers which was down from the show’s Season 2 debut the prior week. Still those are decent numbers for that pay channel and the overnights are not as important because they aren’t selling commercial time during the episodes. I expect to hear word on a third season renewal for this one any day now. On Sunday, Fear the Walking Dead slipped to a 2.5 rating with 5.6 million total viewers for its second episode in the current season. That drop was expected and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it slip further over the next few weeks. But that is still higher that almost all scripted programming on the broadcast networks for the week and definitely the highest among cable offerings of late. It will be interesting to see how FWTD does when it goes up directly against Game of Thrones starting next week, but I don’t believe the show has any reason to worry and it has already been renewed for a third season.

Ratings results for the sci fi / fantasy shows airing Monday April 11th thru Sunday April 17th (metric definitions below):

Links are to the show pages on this site where status updates and season to date numbers have been updated through Sunday.

Series	Airs	Rating	% Chng	Tot Viewers	STD Avg	Net Avg	Cancel Alert
*Gotham*	FOX, Mon 8 PM	1.2	n/a	3.7	1.5	1.5	Renewed
*Supergirl*	CBS, Mon 8 PM	1.3	n/a	6.1	1.7	1.6	Low
*Lucifer*	CBS, Mon 9 PM	1.1	n/a	2.0	1.5	1.6	Renewed
*The Magicians*	Syfy, Mon 9 PM	0.3	-3.6%	0.7	0.3	n/a	Renewed
*Hunters*	Syfy, Mon 10 PM	0.2	n/a	0.5	0.2	n/a	Moderate
*Damien*	A&E, Mon 10 PM	0.2	+50.0%	0.5	0.2	n/a	Moderate
*Bitten*	Syfy, Mon 11 PM	Preempted	n/a	n/a	0.1	n/a	Final Season
*The Flash*	CW, Tue 8 PM	Preempted	n/a	n/a	1.4	0.6	Renewed
*Agents of SHIELD*	ABC, Tue 9 PM	1.0	+11.1%	2.8	1.3	1.5	Renewed
*iZombie*	CW, Tue 9 PM	0.5	+25.0%	1.3	0.5	0.6	Renewed
*Shadowhunters*	Free, Tue 9 PM	Season Ended	n/a	0.8	0.4	n/a	Renewed
*Stitchers*	Free, Tue 10 PM	0.2	+45.5%	0.4	0.2	n/a	Moderate
*Limitless*	CBS, Tue 10 PM	Preempted	n/a	n/a	1.4	1.6	Moderate
*Arrow (R)*	CW, Wed 8 PM	0.2	n/a	1.0	1.0	0.6	Renewed
*Supernatural (R)*	CW, Wed 9 PM	0.3	n/a	0.9	0.7	0.6	Renewed
*Legends of Tomorrow*	CW, Thu 8 PM	0.7	0.0%	2.0	0.9	0.6	Renewed
*The 100*	CW, Thu 9 PM	0.4	0.0%	1.1	0.5	0.6	Renewed
*Orphan Black*	BBCA, Thu 10 PM	0.1	n/a	0.2	0.0	n/a	Low
*Vampire Diaries*	CW, Fri 8 PM	0.4	+33.3%	1.0	0.5	0.6	Renewed
*Sleepy Hollow*	FOX, Fri 8 PM	Season Ended	n/a	n/a	0.8	1.5	Medium
*Slasher*	Chill, Fri 9 PM	0.0	0.0%	0.1	0.0	n/a	Low
*The Originals*	CW, Fri 9 PM	0.3	0.0%	0.9	0.4	0.6	Renewed
*Grimm*	NBC, Fri 9 PM	0.8	-11.1%	3.8	0.9	1.6	Renewed
*Wynonna Earp*	Syfy, Fri 10 PM	0.2	+20.0%	0.6	0.2	n/a	Moderate
*Outlander*	Starz, Sat 9 PM	0.3	-30.8%	1.2	0.3	n/a	Low
*Beowulf*	ESQ, Sat 10 PM	0.0	0.0%	0.2	0.0	n/a	Elevated
*Once Upon A Time*	ABC, Sun 8 PM	1.2	0.0%	3.8	1.4	1.5	Renewed
*Fear the Walking Dead*	AMC, Sun 9 PM	2.5	-17.9%	5.6	2.8	n/a	Renewed
*The Last Man on Earth*	FOX, Sun 9:30 PM	1.1	0.0%	2.5	1.2	1.5	Renewed

Chart Activity: As expected, Arrow slipped out of the Weeky Nielsen Twitter Rating Top 10 after its one week appearance meaning that no genre shows were in that chart for the week. Expect Game of Thrones to show up there starting next week, though. And despite its ratings drop for the week, Fear the Walking Dead improved to Number 1 in the cable Top 25 based on the overnights for the 18-49 demo and based on total viewers. No genre entries made it into the broadcast net Top 25 charts for the week.

(Updated for the broadcast network and cable Top 25 chart activity)

Series	Chart	Curr Wk Rank	Prior Wk Rank
Arrow	Nielsen Twitter Ratings Top 10	n/a	10
Fear the Walking Dead	Cable Top 25 (18-49 Demo)	1	2
Fear the Walking Dead	Cable Top 25 (Total Viewers)	1	3

Be sure keep an eye out for the latest numbers and any breaking news throughout the week at the Cancelled Sci Fi Twitter Site. You can see the status of all the currently airing sci fi / fantasy shows at the Cancellation Watch page and also the latest Sci Fi TV Power Rankings post. And for more information on where I get these numbers and how I make my Cancellation Alert assessments, check out the Cancelled Sci Fi FAQ.

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Metric Definitions:

Series: (R) indicates a repeat airing

Rating: Overnight rating in the 18-49 demographic for same day viewing based on the final numbers unless otherwise noted

% Chng: The percentage change +/- for this week’s rating vs. last week’s rating (if a new episode aired last week).

Tot Viewers: Estimated total viewers (age 2+) to tune in to the episode for same day viewing.

StD Rating: Season to date average for the rating metric tracked above.

Net Avg: The season to date average rating for the network for non-sports, non-special, non-repeat programming. This data is available for the broadcast networks only.

Cancellation Alert: My prediction of the likelihood that a show will get cancelled. From least to most likely the statuses are Low, Moderate, Medium, Elevated, and High.

Source: ShowBuzzDaily and TV by the Numbers