Select ABC Multiplatform Ratings: How The Rookie, Will Trent, 9-1-1, More Compare with Streaming Factored In

How’d They Do? Evaluating The Ratings of ABC’s 2019-20 Final Seasons

Welcome to this edition of ‘How’d They Do?’. The final season ratings of ABC shows which ended in the 2019-20 season are evaluated here. Note that this does not include cancelations, but rather shows that were announce to be ending ahead of time.

Credit for the ratings go to Programming Insider. Any missing numbers is a result of them not being reported. Some shows will have a column reflected their viewership in Canada, but numbers are only available for weeks where the show made the top 30. Averages in the Canada column are only visible when the vast majority of episodes have ratings reported.

Modern Family (2009-2020)
Modern Family brought new life into ABC’s failing comedy department. The multi-award-winning show anchored a night that included The Middle and Cougar Town when it first premiered, and went on consistently be ABC’s highest-rated comedy. Here are its ratings for the 11th and final season:

While Modern Family remained ABC’s highest-rated comedy this season, it is undeniable that it has seen significant declines in most demos. While this is to be expected as shows’ same-day ratings continue to decline as a whole, it must be disappointing to see a final season slip as much as it did. This is not to mention it did not have to face The Masked Singer this season.

It seems as though younger viewers ditched the show more so than older viewers, as seen by its modest 7% year-to-year drop in total viewers, compared to its roughly 17% drop in Adults 18-49 and Adults 18-34. This makes sense when looking at the show’s median age, which rose by over a year. With the median age getting farther away from 49, viewers steadily are aging out of the key demo. It is notable, though, that the Men 18-34 demographic looks so much better than the others in terms of year-to-year declines, and that the decline was largely because of the Women 18-34 demographic.

Modern Family deserves major credit for its significant series finale bump. This is something not to be taken for granted anymore. Also, even though the 35-day multi platform (MP35) rating was only released for the season premiere, the major growth in demo and viewership proves Modern Family had a significant audience outside of its traditional time slot.

Final Grade: B

How To Get Away With Murder (2014-2020)
How To Get Away With Murder was executive produced by Shonda Rhimes, creator of Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal. Together, those three shows combined to form ABC’s TGIT (Thank God It’s Thursday) block. For the first time in a long time, ABC had created a cohesive Thursday night lineup with three powerhouse dramas in the ratings. Being a serialized show, How To Get Away With Murder has since dropped off significantly, falling to ratings lower than most long-running shows. However, its impressive delayed viewing numbers, presumably tied with its Shonda Rhimes connection, allowed the show to end on its own terms after a six-season run.

How To Get Away With Murder’s declines this season actually weren’t as rough as some other seasons. This in part has to due with getting Grey’s Anatomy as a lead-in for the final batch of episodes. Still, being down 12% in viewers is certainly nothing to dismiss, as not every show gets a boost when put behind a high-rated show (see: Quantico). 

There are definitely some rough spots in its declines, though. The final season was down 29% in the Men 18-34 demographic, and the delayed viewing ratings took a bigger hit than the same day ratings in the Adults 18-49 demographic. 

Most, but not all, demographics were interested in re-joining for the series finale. All women demos spiked multiple tenths, yet the male demos didn’t rise at all, at least when you round the ratings to the nearest tenth. The episode, which was the 15th in the season, failed to match the Live + 7 Adults 18-49 rating from the 13th episode. 

Overall, there are ups and downs to How To Get Away With Murder’s ratings. It certainly could have gone worse, but it is still ABC’s lowest-rated veteran drama in A18-49 same day ratings. 

Final Grade: C

Fresh Off The Boat (2015-2020)

Fresh Off The Boat had more behind-the-scenes controversies than you would think, especially for a broadcast family comedy. First, there was the controversy over the title, with some having concerns that it came off as racist. Then, there was chef and author Eddie Huang, who licensed his memoir to make the show based on his childhood, openly speaking out against the show. He narrated the first season and left after it, saying it had been so far removed from his actual life past the pilot. And finally, there were the Constance Wu tweets. Let’s just say Wu, whose movie career was launched through her well-received performance on the show, wasn’t too happy to learn about the show’s renewal for a sixth season. 

ABC probably wasn’t either, given its abysmally low ratings in its new Friday at 8:30pm time slot led to them making an announcing that Season 6 would be its final season. 

The 22% drop in total viewers doesn’t look completely awful, given it was no longer airing directly after the older-viewing 7pm local programming. But those sub demos have inexcusable declines. Remember, this is a show in its sixth season that had already taken a significant drop in its move to Fridays in the prior season. 

Every sub demo average declined more than 40% from Season 5, with the Adults 18-34 demo approaching a 50% drop. The median age rose by three years, somehow making the show much older-skewing this season than it was when it aired at 8. DVR interest was, at the very least, less weak looking than same day viewing, so it deserves credit for that. Still, being down 24% is not something that should make anyone impressed, in a positive way at least.

It truly is sad to see the ratings down across the board for its series finale, which came three weeks after the penultimate episode aired. While there were some instances of the show rising week to week, there was nothing to suggest in this final season that it was still the strong show it used to be.

Final Grade: D

What do you think of these grades? Be sure to vote in the polls and leave a comment!

2018-19 Broadcast Ratings Database (UPDATED)

Welcome to the 2018-19 Broadcast Ratings Database! Click on the show titles below to find the following ratings, all in Live + Same Day:

Adults 18-49
Men 18-49
Women 18-49
Adults 18-34
Men 18-34
Women 18-34
Adults 25-54
Men 25-54
Women 25-54
Households
Total Viewers (in millions)
Average Age
Live + 3 and Live + 7 delayed viewing ratings for A18-49

Credit to Programming Insider for providing the ratings on daily pages, and to SpottedRatings for un-rounded A18-49 ratings when possible.

Overall
Here you can find the average ratings for all broadcast TV shows that aired in the 2018-19 broadcast TV season, excluding summer 2019. The tables are sortable using the legends above the charts.
All
ABC
CBS
The CW
FOX
NBC
Median Ratings

ABC
20/20
American Idol
American Housewife
America's Funniest Home Videos
A Million Little Things
Black-ish
Bless This Mess
Child Support
Dancing With The Stars
Dancing with the Stars: Juniors
For the People
Fresh Off The Boat
Grey's Anatomy
How To Get Away With Murder
Match Game
Modern Family
Schooled
Shark Tank
Single Parents
Speechless
Splitting Up Together
Station 19
The Alec Baldwin Show
The Bachelor
The Conners
The Fix
The Goldbergs
The Good Doctor
The Great American Baking Show
The Great Christmas Light Fight
The Kids Are Alright
The Rookie
Whiskey Cavalier

CBS
60 Minutes
Blue Bloods
Bull
Celebrity Big Brother
Criminal Minds
Fam
FBI
God Friended Me
Happy Together
Hawaii 5-0
Life in Pieces
MacGyver
Madam Secretary
Magnum P.I.
Man with a Plan
Million Dollar Mile
Mom
Murphy Brown
NCIS
NCIS: LA
NCIS: NO
Ransom
SEAL Team
Survivor
S.W.A.T.
The Amazing Race
The Big Bang Theory
The Code
The Enemy Within
The Neighborhood
The Red Line
The World's Best
Young Sheldon

The CW
All American
Arrow
Black Lightning
Charmed
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
DC's Legends of Tomorrow
Dynasty
In the Dark
Jane the Virgin
Legacies
Riverdale
Roswell, New Mexico
Supergirl
Supernatural
The 100
The Flash

FOX
9-1-1
Bob's Burgers
Empire
Family Guy
Gotham
Gordon Ramsay's 24 Hours to Hell and Back
Hell's Kitchen
Last Man Standing
Lethal Weapon
MasterChef Junior
Mental Samurai
Proven Innocent
Rel
Star
The Cool Kids
The Gifted
The Masked Singer
The Orville
The Passage
The Resident
The Simpsons
Thursday Night Football

NBC
A.P. Bio
America's Got Talent: The Champions
Abby's
Blindspot
Brooklyn Nine-Nine
Chicago Fire
Chicago Med
Chicago PD
Dateline NBC
Ellen's Game of Games
Good Girls
I Feel Bad
Law & Order: SVU
Manifest
Midnight, Texas
New Amsterdam
Sunday Night Football
Superstore
The Blacklist
The Enemy Within
The Good Place
The Titan Games
The Village
The Voice (Monday)
The Voice (Tuesday)
This Is Us
Will & Grace
World of Dance

Sporcle Quizzes of the Week- Editor Picked Quizzes Edition/ Sporcle Contest #4 (UPDATED)

Welcome to the fourth edition of the Sporcle Quizzes of the week! I've got three more great quizzes for you, so let's get started!

#1 Board Games Based on TV Shows

I discovered this quiz today while searching for some good quizzes to showcase, and I decided to change this week's theme just to include it. I am the board games curator on Sporcle, so I really liked this. It combined two things that I love. Unfortunately, the Television editor found this before me, so I didn't get the chance to give a Curator Pick to it.
# of Questions: 24
My Score: 19
Correction: The initial version of this article incorrectly listed the number of questions as 25. It is actually 24.
#2 Nielsen Ratings Slideshow

I thought this would be fitting for us to play. It's an interesting quiz that I've never seen this gone before, and it was really interesting. I found the older shows especially difficult, and I only got a handful of them.
# of Questions: 66
My score: 35

#3 Odd Buddy Cop TV Shows

This is a quiz that I've loved since the start. It was really a unique idea and it was done quite well. I especially loved the nice mix of well-known shows (Sherlock; Murder, She Wrote) and less well-known shows (iZombie; Forever). As shown in the results, it's a pretty difficult quiz. Only 0.8% have gotten them all, and the average is 45%. I tend to prefer harder quizzes over very easy ones, and this is no exception.
# of Questions: 30
My score: 21

Contest
Once again, it is time for the contest. Here's what you need to do to enter:
1) Play all three quizzes.
2) Comment your score on each quiz in the comments.
On Wednesday, I will post the results of the Contest.
I hope that you have enjoyed this post (And the quizzes). I'll be back in one week with yet another installment.

If you missed it, here's the unpublished quizzes edition.
And here's the Inaugural Edition.
And the qlh27 Edition.

RESULTS
1) JB- 94 Points
2) The Middle of Nashville- 83
3) Andrew- 78 Points
4)Full Boyle- 55 Points
TOURNAMENT
This is the fourth week of the 1st TVRG-Sporcle Tournament. For each week, the winner of the week gets a varying amount of points, depending of how many people participated. If 5 people participate, the winner gets 4 point, if 6 participate, the winner gets 5 points, etc. For each place lower, the point increment drops by one point. At the end of 10 weeks, the person with the most points will win.

Tournament Standings:
1) The Middle of Nashville- 15 Points
2) JB- 12 Points
2) Andrew- 10 Points
4) Full Boyle- 3 Points
5) HV- 2 Points
6) theratingsjunkie- 0 Points

The Highs and Lows of Your Favorite TV Shows--Volume Two

Last summer, I did an article listing the series high and series low of all the returning TV series, and I'm doing it again now. Sadly, most of the edits are making the series lows even lower. Enjoy, and
discuss below!

ABC

CBS

CW

FOX
Note: The ratings below for The Simpsons only represent data from 1999 since most data I can find before that are just HH ratings.

NBC