Grey’s Anatomy Is A Franchise...
Kind of. ABC currently has Grey’s Anatomy and Station 19 in the way NBC has Chicago Med and Chicago Fire, and the decade started with ABC holding onto Grey’s Anatomy’s spinoff Private Practice as well. The flagship show here is Grey’s Anatomy, with its ratings looking stronger lately. Station 19 appears to be the kind of show that doesn’t have a ton of interest outside of its time slot, but is holding its own there nonetheless. Then again, so was Private Practice, which crashed when moved away from Grey’s Anatomy to the point where it was canceled.
...And Shondaland Had Its Ups and Downs
Shondaland, the production company of Shonda Rhimes, does not stop at Grey’s Anatomy and its spinoffs. The company has also given ABC other hits, such as Scandal. Scandal was a true success story, starting out modestly but continuing to build an audience to the point where it was one of the biggest hits on television. It came back down to average ratings by the end of its seven-season run, but still had ratings that any network would want. For a couple years, three Shondaland shows came together to form “TGIT”: Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, and How to Get Away with Murder. How to Get Away with Murder started off as a very strong show in the ratings and had very high ad rates, bringing in revenue and critical acclaim to ABC. It has since faded, but still ended up with a six-season run. Shondaland did have its fair share of flops, starting with Off The Map. Still Star-Crossed aired almost entirely as a burn-off after starting low in the summer as The Bachelorette’s lead-out. The Catch and For the People didn’t work out either, despite ABC’s efforts to keep them alive for two short seasons. As long as ABC has Grey’s Anatomy, they’re probably happy, but don’t expect to see Shonda’s presence to be huge in the 2020s decade now that she has a Netflix deal and ex-ABC head Channing Dungey has joined her.
The Bachelor Gets More Spin-Offs
The importance of The Bachelor franchise should not be understated. The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, and Bachelor in Paradise have all gotten much stronger on average in recent years, to the point where the 2019 cycle of The Bachelor rated almost double the average broadcast show’s ratings for the season. The Bachelorette and Bachelor in Paradise have helped ABC do more than just keep the lights on in the summer. They aired Bachelor Winter Games to counter-program the Winter Olympics in 2018, which didn’t do great but could plausibly come back if they’re trying to counter-program the Olympics with this franchise again. The only problem ABC has is finding a show to air after them, with most being short-lived or having iconically bad retention. Even Bachelor-related shows aren’t doing well after them. Bachelor Live lasted only one season, and Bachelor in Paradise: After Paradise had two low-rated seasons with poor retention. They couldn’t even get a Bachelor-derived show (The Proposal) to work. Still, the franchise is impressive, especially given it went into the decade with a below-averaged-rated The Bachelorette and a barely-passable Bachelor Pad that would go on to get canceled in 2011 after an abysmally low-rated season.
Seth MacFarlane’s Relationship with FOX is Complicated
Seth MacFarlane has publicly criticized FOX News, which up until recently had the same parent company as FOX. The broadcast network has been ordering his shows, but there’s not much to tell if they’re going to renew them or not. Family Guy has been chugging along throughout the decade, but its better days are clearly behind it in Live + Same Day ratings, and it no longer anchors an hour. American Dad! had around average ratings on FOX before it moved to TBS. A similar fate came to The Orville, which was doing decent before it was announced it would become a Hulu Original. It took several years to get Bordertown on the air, and it was quickly moved to 7pm in the spring. Dads was canceled with ratings that were low, but not abysmally low, Family Guy’s spinoff The Cleveland Show was cursed with a bad time slot for the latter part of its run, and Cosmos Season 2 has been in limbo for years. With Disney taking over ownership of Family Guy, it wouldn’t be shocking to see Seth MacFarlane off or almost off of FOX for most of the 2020s. He shouldn’t have much of a problem getting a deal elsewhere though, such as Netflix, Hulu, TBS, or Cartoon Network.
