Cancellation Watch: Could the New Inhumans Series Replace Agents of SHIELD? The Walking Dexit Continues, Plus the Ratings Roundup

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.

New Series Announcement: ABC and Marvel Studios have announced plans for an Inhumans TV series that will be eight episodes long for its first season and will debut next Fall.  The interesting thing about this is that it will not spin-off from Agents of SHIELD, which already prominantly features several Inhumans, but will instead be based on the comic book series.  That would suggest that the new Inhumans entry could be replacing AoS on the schedule, which would not be a surprise considering how low the ratings have slipped for that show.  And I don’t believe that the Inhumans will take up the bridge-series slot that Agent Carter used to occupy seeing as they have announced a Fall start for the show instead of mid-season.  It is possible that Agents of SHIELD could still get a shortened fifth season that would air later in the year (and maybe bring in Peggy Carter for the extended cross-over we have all been wanting?), but I wouldn’t bet too heavily on that at the moment.  AoS has been pulling sub-1.0 numbers since its second episode this season and it is currently in the midst of a three-week preemption.  I believe that with the new Inhumans series, ABC may be positioning themselves to move on to other Marvel properties and to let AoS head off to its syndication encore run.

The Walking Dexit: On Sunday, The Walking Dead slipped to a 5.4 rating based on the overnights for the 18-49 demographic with 11.4 million total viewers which has it as its lowest ratings since its third season aired in 2012-13.  Of course, any of the the broadcast network executives would still sell their first born (and their trophy spouse) for those ratings, so don’t fret for the show just yet.  The backlash from the Season 6 cliffhanger and its ultra-violent conclusion has definitely taking its toll as we continue to see a “Walking Dexit” from the show.  But it has plenty of leeway and plenty of fan-favorite source material from the comic books to mine, so the show can still turn things around.  And even if it stays at these levels, TWD is still by far the top-rated scripted show on all of television and advertisers continue to line up to pay huge sums for commecial time during the live broadcasts.

Ratings Results of Interest: On Sunday, Westworld improved to a 0.78 rating based on the overnights for the 18-49 demographic with 1.7 million total viewers as that show just recieved its official second season renewal.  Over on ABC, Once Upon A Time matched its series low with a 0.9 rating and 3.4 million total viewers.  You have to start wondering if ABC and Disney might be considering wrapping that show up sooner rather than later.  Over on FOX, Son of Zorn improved to a 1.6 rating with 3.6 million total viewers, but as usual, that was trickle down from a strong lead-in from NFL Football.  On Saturday, BBC America’s Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency continued to sink as it could only scrape up a 0.08 rating with 250k total viewers.  That one will likely live and die on the strength of its Netflix partnership for international distribution. On Friday, MacGyver held steady at a 1.1 rating with 7.6 million total viewers, but it was lagging notably behind the other CBS entries for the night. That one’s numbers have not been great the last few weeks and CBS can be notoriously merciless with shows it deems as under-performing. Over on FOX, The Exorcist remained low at a 0.6 rating with 1.6 million total viewers and it looks like it will be done when it wraps up its ten-episode first season.  You can see my coverage of the Monday through Thursday shows from last week as well as the Scorecard at this link.

Ratings results for the sci fi / fantasy shows airing Monday November 7th thru Sunday November 13th (metric definitions below):

(Links are to the show pages on this site with season to date ratings results and status updates)

Chart Activity: Nielsen’s Weekly Social Net Rating Top 10 is back for the week and The Walking Dead is at Number 3 while American Horror Story has dropped out of site (it was at Number 6 about a month ago). TWD slipped in both of the cable Top 25 charts and American Horror Story fell out altogether, but that was because election coverage dominated those charts and I expect both shows to rise next week. FOX’s Son of Zorn managed to slip back into the broadcast net Top 25 based on the 18-49 demo, but that was because of the trickle-down from NFL football bleeding over in to the night. And MacGyver made a return to the broadcast net Top 25 based on total viewers at the Number 19 slot for the week.

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

Be sure keep an eye out for the latest numbers and any breaking news throughout the week at the  Cancelled Sci Fi Twitter Site and Facebook Page. You can see the status of all the currently airing sci fi / fantasy shows at the Cancellation Watch page and also the latest Cancellation Watch Hit List 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 Bench (Network Benchmark):  For the broadcast networks, this is the net’s season to date average rating based on the overnights for the 18-49 demographic for non-sports, non-special, non-repeat broadcasts.  For the cable channels, this is the lowest level at which a show is typically renewed by that network if there are enough genre entries on that channel to provide a decent sample.

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