What May Cause The Orville to be a Hit?
The show comes from (and stars) Seth MacFarlane, who is also behind Family Guy, one of the shows on FOX that is working at the moment (of which there aren't all that many of). In addition to that, FOX is giving that male-skewing audience a chance to be introduced to the show, with the two post-football airings. Its regular lead-in also should be a decent match with it, since Gotham is also a male-skewing show (the most male-skewing non-Sunday show on the network).
The Orville also has some impressive numbers online. The show is doing very well on social media, with 95K Facebook likes and 16K Twitter followers at the time of the writing of this article. That puts it ahead of FOX's other new drama, The Gifted, as well as most of the other new shows from the other networks. On Twitter it only falls behind ABC's Inhumans. In addition to this, the official trailer has more likes than The Gifted and the new shows from all of the other networks except for CBS's Young Sheldon.
What May Cause The Orville to be a Miss for FOX?
While Family Guy works, not all Seth MacFarlane projects do. FOX's most recent attempts with him (Bordertown and Dads) failed. In addition, those two attempts, especially Bordertown, are much closer to the Seth MacFarlane brand. A sci-fi dramedy is fairly different. Will Seth MacFarlane fans embrace it, when they didn't embrace Bordertown or Dads? Also, this show will have to air on Thursday nights, a night that FOX has been struggling to figure out for years now, and Gotham isn't that strong of a lead-in.
What May Cause The Gifted to be a Hit?
The superhero genre is still popular, so this already has a solid chance of working. To add on to that, The Gifted centers on a family, and the success of This Is Us showed us that audiences are interested in a family drama. This seems like the type of show audiences would want.
The official trailer for the show indicates that this is the type of show audiences are interested in. It has 13.8 million views, compared to 3 million for The Orville (and that is no small number of views for The Orville). And while it isn't doing as well as The Orville on social media, its 82K Facebook likes and 9,545 Twitter followers is still strong.
What May Cause The Gifted to be a Miss for FOX?
The CW's ratings this last season may be an indication that people are tiring of superhero TV shows. The network's superhero shows faced larger than usual declines this year, and Supergirl fell quite a bit over the course of its season. The Gifted may be able to find enough interest, but it will have to do so with Lucifer as a lead-in. While Lucifer isn't as bad of a lead-in as Rosewood was for Pitch last season, it still isn't a strong show.
What to Expect from FOX's Fall Dramas
I believe that there is enough interest out there to cause The Gifted to perform well. The Orville I feel is a real wild card. I don't believe that either show has to worry about whether or not they will get a backorder, because as far as I am aware they are both limited series. Over the course of the season, however, they will be competing with fellow new dramas The Resident, 9-1-1, and possibly others if FOX's off-cycle development produces something, for renewal.
What do you expect from The Orville and The Gifted? And what factors do you think will contribute most in making them a hit or a miss? Leave your thoughts in the comments!