We’re taking these last days before the broadcast networks’ midseason begins to scrutinize how those still-powerful dinosaurs fared during the fall. Yesterday we looked at ABC, and today it’s the turn of what was called (although not recently) the Tiffany Network.
CBS
Fall Primetime 18-49 Average (through December 28): 1.93, down 3.6% from Fall 2013
Grade: B-minus
The Season So Far: Nothing guarantees ratings like NFL Football, and the only reason CBS is down just 3.6% for the fall is that it was up 28% on Thursdays, thanks to the Thursday Night Football games that it carried for more than a month into the season. Without that boost, the year-to-year drop would be far uglier. (It should be noted that the NFL, for its own long-term reasons, sold the Thursday package to CBS on a one-year basis for what amounts to a “bargain rate,” so the network probably realized more profit from the games than pro football license fees usually allow.) The Thursday games also enabled CBS to move The Big Bang Theory temporarily to Mondays, which raised that night by 6% vs last fall despite the loss of How I Met Your Mother. Since the departure of Big Bang, ratings for the 8PM hour on Mondays are down around 50% (and Scorpion is down 20% at 9PM), and that’s not going to improve in the Spring. On a bigger-picture basis, with CBS the end is likely to come not with a bang but with a whimper, as its increasingly aged hits erode bit by bit. The network’s once-powerhouse Tuesday is down 19% from last fall, as NCIS and Person of Interest steadily drop, with NCIS‘s losses carrying the new NCIS: New Orleans down with it. Fridays are down 24% with an all-veteran schedule, and Sundays are down 14%. (Wednesdays are holding up better thanks to Survivor and Criminal Minds, down just 3% from last fall.) With the gigantic exception of Big Bang, CBS no longer has any comedy strength (although whatever airs immediately after Big Bang looks better than it is because of that huge lead-in, which is to say RIP The Millers). The McCarthys, the network’s sole new fall comedy, received a couple of back-order episodes for scheduling purposes, but it’s all but dead. Although the network has given full back orders to all its new dramas, Scorpion is merely OK on Mondays, Stalker is unlikely to survive to next season, and Madam Secretary is only a success in the limited way that The Good Wife is, with a relatively small but advertiser-friendly group of high-income viewers. CBS looks much better, of course, when total viewers rather than 18-49s are the metric, because of its old-skewing audience, but even CBS needs something on its air to attract audiences under 50.
Forecast: More of the Same. CBS is making the fewest midseason changes of any network, and there’s little to inspire hope of major improvement. The rebooted The Odd Couple, starring the rebooted Matthew Perry, will have the benefit of that Big Bang lead-in, and will no doubt look decent in the ratings as a result, but have we mentioned The Millers? Not to mention that The Odd Couple as a franchise is meaningless to viewers under 50. It’ll be interesting to see how long Odd Couple holds the 8:30PM slot if the relatively high-quality (and Chuck Lorre-produced) Mom falters when it moves to 9:30PM behind Big Bang reruns. Battle Creek, despite an extremely disappointing pilot considering its auspices (Vince Gilligan of Breaking Bad and David Shore of House) should hold its own in the Sunday 10PM slot against almost nonexistent competition (the dying Revenge on ABC and first Celebrity Apprentice and then the unpromising Odyssey on NBC), but hardly looks like a breakout hit. Similarly, CSI: Cyber is unlikely to significantly outperform Stalker when it takes over that show’s timeslot. The network’s gradual slide to a retirement village may well continue.
