Cancellation Watch: Emerald City and Timeless Slip, Colony Starts Off in the Upper Third of the Scorecard

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: On Friday, NBC’s new series Emerald City slipped to a 0.8 rating based on the overnights for the 18-49 demographic with 3.2 million total viewers for its second episode which has it at less than encouraging ratings levels. Last week’s debut at a 1.0 score had it at passable numbers for a Friday show, but as I said then, that gave the show little leeway for slippage. This one is certainly expensive to produce and it has already been labeled with the “event series” tag, so at this point I am not liking its chances of surviving into a second season unless NBC has significant international financing at play with the show. Over on FOX, Sleepy Hollow remained low at a 0.6 rating with 2.1 million total viewers which has it as FOX’s lowest rated scripted show for the season. It appears to be in its final season unless that international audience that FOX has been touting can keep it afloat. On Monday, NBC’s Timeless returned from hiatus but posted a season low 0.9 rating with 3.5 million total viewers (based on the preliminaries). That show’s lead-in was not as strong with Celebrity Apprentice pulling numbers notably lower than The Voice, but NBC has to be discouraged by the drop-off in the numbers for Timeless which keeps that one firmly On the Bubble. Over on FOX, Gotham and Lucifer returned mostly steady with their Fall averages with the former show pulling a 1.2 rating and 3.7 million total viewers and the latter pulling a 1.1 rating with 4.0 million total viewers.

Scorecard: USA’s Colony enters the Scorecard at the Number 14 slot, and that show looks to be in decent shape at this point despite its year-over-year ratings declines. Freeform’s Shadowhunters and Beyond both slipped several rungs because of their second week ratings drops, but I expect them to hold pretty steady from this point forward. That latter series has already received a renewal notice and I expect an announcement on Shadowhunters at any time now. Emerald City and Timeless both slipped, as expected, in line with their recent ratings drops.  Apart from that, most of the rest of the entries on the Scorecard remained mostly stable with only some incidental movement throughout the ranks.

The scorecard ranks all of the sci fi & fantasy shows’ ratings performance vs. their network’s ratings benchmark (see definition below).  Shows at or above their benchmark should be okay, whereas those slipping notably below are getting into iffy territory.

Scorecard based on the ratings through January 15th (metric definitions below):

Metric Definitions:

Rank (PW): Current rank based on the variance of a show’s season to date ratings average vs. its network’s benchmark (see definition below).  The number in parenthesis is the prior week’s rank.

Series: (O) indicates the show is owned/produced by the network and/or a sister studio. (F) indicates the show airs on Friday when ratings expectations are lower. These typically just apply to the broadcast networks where they are more of a factor.

StD Avg:  The show’s season to date ratings average based on the overnights for the 18-49 demographic.

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 FOX, Empire is also excluded because it counts as an outlier).  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.  But note that with cable entries intangibles such as international and/or streaming partnerships can play an important factor in a shows survival and that is not measured here.

% Var:  The percent variance between a show’s season to date average and the network benchmark as defined above.  The higher the variance, the better a show is performing vs. the benchmark.

Live+7 Avg Rtg:  The show’s season to date ratings average based on delayed viewing up to three days past the live broadcast.  This data is not available for all shows.

Status: My assessment of the likelihood that a show will get renewed or cancelled. The statuses are Renewal Likely, Renewal Possible, On the Bubble, Cancellation Likely (plus Renewed and Cancelled/Ended)

Ratings Source: ShowBuzzDaily and TV by the Numbers