Cancellation Watch: Emerald City Continues to Struggle, The 100 and Powerless Start Low in 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 Emerald City remained low at a 0.6 rating based on the overnights for the 18-49 demographic with 2.42 million total viewers.  Those numbers are far too low for a show as costly as that one and while it has been doubling those with delayed viewing, that doesn’t count for much on the broadcast networks.  Unless this show is pulling in a significant international audience, it will almost certainly be one-season-and-done.  Over on CBS, MacGyver returned down after several weeks off, pulling a 1.0 rating with 7.4 million total viewers.  It remains a Top 25 show based on its total viewership, though, so perhaps that will help it survive into a second season.  On FOX, Sleepy Hollow remained low at a 0.5 rating with 1.8 million total viewers as that one continues to struggle on Friday nights.  It has defied the odds before, though, so its not impossible it could pull out another miracle renewal.   I covered the ratings results for the Monday thru Thursday shows, including the three season premieres, previously at this link.

Scorecard:  The CW’s The 100 returned last week with a pretty tepid debut, and that gets the show started off pretty low in the Scorecard.  Its 0.4 rating for its Season 4 bow was below the network benchmark and it starts out in the Number 31 slot.  NBC’s new superhero comedy Powerless also had a less than powerful debut which starts its out two slots lower at Number 33.  Syfy’s The Expanse did much better as its debut numbers were better than its first season average and that one starts out at the Number 11 slot.

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 February 5th (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