NBC Renew/Cancel Week 2: La Brea Not Yet in the Pits

This week on the NBC Renew/Cancel, I examine the fates of two of the only four not-yet-renewed scripted series on the peacock network's fall schedule, which both debuted in the past week. Keep reading for my initial thoughts on La Brea and Law & Order: Organized Crime.

Certain Cancellation:
N/A

Likely Cancellation: 
N/A

Leans Cancellation:
Ordinary Joe (0.44, 0.36-0.52)

Leans Renewal:
La Brea (0.77)

Likely Renewal:
Law & Order: Organized Crime (0.60)

Certain Renewal:
N/A

Already Renewed:
Chicago Fire
Chicago Med
Chicago PD
Law & Order: SVU
New Amsterdam

Already Canceled/Final Season:
This Is Us

Coming Soon:
American Auto
The Blacklist
The Endgame
Grand Crew
Kenan
Mr. Mayor
The Thing About Pam
Transplant
Young Rock 

La Brea: Last week, The Wonder Years was the #1 new series debut of premiere week. Sadly, it only took a 0.67 to achieve that status. This week, La Brea was able to take that title away from it with its own debut, garnering a 0.8 on its premiere night behind The Voice. 0.8 isn't a huge premiere rating, but with La Brea's launch being the sixth-highest broadcast scripted premiere of the season (behind an NFL-inflated Simpsons and a bunch of Dick Wolf dramas), it's very respectable, even with a strong lead-in from The Voice. At this stage, it's certainly a favorite for renewal. However, new shows tend to have larger drops after premieres than most shows, and no shows have bigger post-premiere drops than sci-fi shows. Just look at the recently-canceled (then saved by Netflix) Manifest, which went from a massive 2.2 to a so-so (at the time) 0.9 in its first season. If it hadn't started so high, it's quite possible that it would've found itself in cancellation territory that season. La Brea didn't start anywhere near that high, and has a lot less room to fall. If La Brea recreates Manifest's 57% drop over its first season, it's going to find itself with 0.3s by the end of the season. While its prospects look good after this premiere rating, history suggests that the show's debut ratings won't even begin to tell the story. It starts, out of an abundance of caution, at LEANS RENEWAL.

Law & Order: Organized Crime: Its 0.6 premiere last week is very solid for a 10 PM show, rating ahead of all but one other 10 PM premieres last week. However, the Elliot Stabler drama has yet to truly stabilize, having dropped over the course of most of its short first season run. We still don't yet know the show's true strength, but one thing is clear: it is no SVU. While SVU is easily one of the most-successful dramas in television history, with both its longevity and continued strong ratings, Organized Crime looks like a more modest player. That's fine, you don't have to even come close to measuring up to the standard set by SVU. However, the drop from SVU to Organized Crime is a bit concerning for two shows that are so heavily intertwined. SVU was at a 0.88 for the second hour of its two-part premiere, making it the highest-rated scripted drama hour of the season thus far. For Organized Crime to slip to 0.6 directly after that is disappointing. It still looks quite safe, especially when a new Law & Order show (a revival of the original) is on the horizon, but once SVU begins to drop back down to the lower levels it was hitting last season, Organized Crime is probably going down with it. It's a LIKELY RENEWAL, and shouldn't have much to worry about, but I can't be certain yet that it'll be back.

What do you think of my predictions? What are you predictions? Let me know in the comments and make sure to vote in the poll of week!

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