Certain Cancellation:
N/A
Leans Cancellation:
On Brand with Jimmy Fallon (0.17, 0.14-0.22)
Leans Renewal:
Law & Order (0.22, 0.20-0.27)
Likely Renewal:
Law & Order: SVU (0.28, 0.21-0.33)
The Voice (0.34, 0.28-0.42)
Certain Renewal:
Chicago Fire (0.35, 0.29-0.39)
Chicago Med (0.34, 0.28-0.39)
Chicago PD (0.30, 0.25-0.34)
Dateline NBC (0.17, 0.15-0.20)
Saturday Night Live (0.65, 0.58-0.70)
Coming Soon:
The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins
Happy's Place
The Hunting Party
St. Denis Medical
Stumble
Surviving Earth
Brilliant Minds: Brilliant Minds had a few weeks where it didn't look like a complete eyesore. Those weeks are in the past. After hitting a pitiful 0.12 a few weeks back, Brilliant Minds managed a minor upswing, growing to 0.17 the next week and a 0.18 the week after that, beating CBS's fellow struggling sophomore medical drama Watson head-to-head. It still didn't look strong, and it was still the worst scripted performer on NBC, but it didn't look to be at the same levels of "pull me now" that we'd come to expect from it. Its 0.18 behind a 0.28 from The Voice was its best-ever retention from The Voice, though it was still pretty unimpressive. Making it look better was that it was just a few hundredths below the rating Law & Order achieved the previous week at a much better time. Still This week, it gave back nearly all that it had gained, sinking to a 0.13, even as The Voice was up a hair. It did have the added competition from the World Series, but again, The Voice rose, and the World Series wasn't that much higher than the MLB game it faced the week earlier (a decisive ALCS game that also featured the Blue Jays). So while it has an excuse to drop a bit, its lead-in was unaffected by the competition, and Brilliant Minds itself did much better against similar competition the week before. Given that Brilliant Minds has dropped this low before, I don't think it's unfair to say that this 0.13 will likely be a fairly common performance for the show. It's bound to rate somewhere in the vicinity of a 0.15, which is just not going to be enough to cut it. This show barely made it through last season, when its ratings were nearly a full tenth better. Just as concerning as this week's ratings drop is its recent performance on Peacock. It began this season by charting in the top ten for most - if not all - of the week on Peacock's top ten chart. Last week, it charted only one day, and this week, it's entirely MIA. That suggests that its performance on Peacock has been dropping off as the season goes on, and it didn't have any room to drop. As I said before, it was the only fall show that NBC did not boast about in their early-season press release, suggesting that either its performance is so poor that they can't possibly spin it positively or they don't even care enough to spin it. Neither of those scenarios ends in it looking at all likely that Brilliant Minds will get a third chance. It remains a LIKELY CANCELLATION, in spite of some recent above-average showings.
Law & Order: It's been a very disappointing season for Law & Order, which has averaged just 0.22 in the key demo so far - down 27% from last season's 0.30 average, which itself had seen a fairly steep drop off from the previous season. It looked pretty terrible at the start of the season, then SVU fell enough that Law & Order didn't look that much worse than it. Then SVU rose back to the 0.3 range, and L&O stuck out like a sore thumb once again, rating nearly a full tenth behind its lead-out and barely above the 10 PM repeat of the Peacock-exclusive season of Organized Crime. Last week, though, came a bit of relief for Law & Order, as the show rose to a more tolerable 0.27 in the key demo. That was easily its season high, even though it would've been nearly a season (and series) low last season. I don't like to upgrade (or downgrade) a show off of only one datapoint, especially one that still puts it below all of the other Dick Wolf shows, but I did think it was worth pointing that out and praising the show for seemingly getting out of that early-season rut it was stuck in. It's still underperforming, but a 0.27 is solid enough to not make it look like dead weight. If it holds up around here, an upgrade early next year is not out of the question. For now, it LEANS RENEWAL, as it remains the most vulnerable Dick Wolf show on a network that doesn't have much space in the first place.
| The TV Ratings Guide | 8:00 | 8:30 | 9:00 | 9:30 | 10:00 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mon | The Voice | Brilliant Minds | ||||
| Tues | NBA on NBC | |||||
| Wed | Chicago Med | Chicago Fire | Chicago PD | |||
| Thurs | Law & Order | Law & Order: SVU | Law & Order: Organized Crime | |||
| Fri | On Brand with Jimmy Fallon | Dateline NBC | ||||
| Sat | College Football on NBC | |||||
| Sun | Sunday Night Football | |||||
What do you think of my predictions? What are your predictions? Let me know in the comments and vote in the poll of the week!
