FOX Renew/Cancel Watch: Bob's Burgers And Family Guy Are Certain Renewals

Welcome to a very premature issue of FOX Renew/Cancel Watch. While the regular season will not begin for another two months, it is important to make these predictions now. Why? I'll explain in a bit.

The Table

Why Are Bob's Burgers And Family Guy Certain Renewals

One down side of animated shows are they take a long time to produce; sometimes at least nine months. As such, these shows will need to be renewed earlier than usual. Bob's Burgers is set to air its 8th production cycle this season, one that was ordered back in September 2015. Should it get a ninth cycle, it will probably be renewed sooner rather than later. The same goes for Family Guy. Both shows get very respectable ratings for FOX and are also supposedly great sellers in merchandise and have high streaming ratings. Should they be renewed, they will join The Simpsons in the animated shows renewed category, which is set to run through at least Season 30.

New Girl Renewed by FOX

FOX has opted to renew New Girl for a seventh and final season. The show is their longest-running non-animated sitcom, and with Bones ending, their longest running live-action scripted show overall. The series stars Zooey Deschanel as Jess. Others in the cast included Jake Johnson, Hannah Simone, Max Greenfield, and Lamorne Morris. This final season of New Girl will have 8 episodes. This was a correct prediction by the TVRatingsGuide. Here are its ratings:


What do you think of this news ? Let us know in the comments below!

A Look Ahead to FOX's Fall Season

As you may know, I'm slated to cover FOX Renew/Cancel Watch this season again. My only missed predictions last season were Bones and Sleepy Hollow, though I understand completely why they were renewed (click here for more information). But now it's time to look ahead to the fall season, and while I'm not going to make any concrete predictions right now, I can still preview what that first table may just look like. So without further ado, here's my first analysis. I've broken it up into several categories, though when the table comes it'll be back to "Certain to be Renewed", "Likely to be Renewed", etc.

The Obvious Renewals
The Simpsons
Family Guy
Gotham
Empire

The Simpsons is going into its 28th season, still pulls in relatively good ratings, and it's a very strong player in syndication and merchandise. They have way bigger things to worry about than The Simpsons. The same goes for Family Guy; it's not as big as it once was, even in relative ratings, but FOX loves Seth MacFarlane and Family Guy is still one of their highest-rated and reliable shows. On the syndication front, Gotham will only need one more season to get there after this season, though if it struggles this season Warner Brothers may need to reduce the licensing fee (or you know, The CW is always there!). But it's not like Gotham's ratings are terrible, so it should be fine either way. And finally, there's Empire, one of the biggest success story on all of television in recent seasons. Need I say more?

The Promising Newbies
Son of Zorn
Lethal Weapon
Pitch

FOX is really into doing business with Lord Miller Productions these days, with Son of Zorn and midseason entry Making History joining The Last Man On Earth on their schedule. Considering they're premiering it after The OT and it gets probably the best time slot they could offer it and it's very on brand for FOX Sunday, it has everything going for it right now. I can't say whether or not it'll be renewed since we haven't seen ratings, but I can tell you that it looks promising. Similarly, Pitch is getting great attention online and will most likely receive a ton of advertising during the MLB playoffs. Combine that with the fact that its presumed W18-34 skew is something that is highly coveted and we've found ourselves a promising show that may be hindered by its time slot. The time slot that would be most ideal for it would be Wednesdays before Empire, which is instead going to Lethal Weapon, which has time slot hit written all over it.

The Promising Veterans
The Last Man On Earth
New Girl
Scream Queens
Lucifer

Although The Last Man On Earth is far from a ratings powerhouse, it's from Lord Miller Productions and brings in a lot of awards love, more so than Empire or really any other show they air. I can't speak for Season 2 but Season 1 also had a lot of streaming presence due to its young skew and serialized nature. While it's not grandaddied into a renewal like The Simpsons, there are shows that are probably in a little bit more trouble (more on that later). Similarly, there's New Girl, which before last season began I thought for sure would be its last, but it proved to be stable and at least better than their other Tuesday entries. This could very well be its last season, but it wouldn't be because the ratings are terrible, it would because it's getting old. But I think they can get more out of it as they want. Then there's Scream Queens, which apparently sees great C3 and streaming bounces. There's more to it for this show than just the live ratings, and I think it'll be around as long as those jumps are too. And finally, promising midseason entry Lucifer did well last season behind The X-Files and respectable behind Gotham, enough to earn it a renewal and a fall spot. While it's bound to decline a lot this season due to its average being front loaded, its respectable ratings landed it in this category.

The Not Promising Newbie
The Exorcist

The Exorcist and Sleepy Hollow will time share on Fridays this season, and it's already very hard to say which will be the lesser of the worse. There's no hype for it at all, and while that doesn't necessarily mean it won't do well, the other three newbies have much more going for them already than this one does.

The Not Promising Veteran
Rosewood

In recent years, FOX hasn't been known to cancel a show after its second season; though a few of times they've gone three limited seasons. Rosewood may be an exception, and its situation reminds me a lot like Touch's situation a few years back. Touch had poor retention from its lead-in in its first season and the half-hours were ugly. It went from a 3.3 to a 1.3 in the same time slot over the course of 11 episodes. When they downgraded its time slot to Fridays the following season, it held up surprisingly well, down only 67% year-to-year. OK, so maybe that's not to great. And considering it finished with a string of 0.6s in the 2012-13 season, it pretty obviously go canceled. Like Touch, Rosewood is going from a show that did OK in its plum time slot that had half-hours to show it only did well because of the time slot, and now is seeing a downgrade to having to go against The Big Bang Theory, football, and Grey's Anatomy. It doesn't see any of those bounces that FOX brags about a lot of their shows getting in DVR or streaming, and doesn't hit those young demographics when it airs by itself, so I wouldn't be surprised to see Rosewood gone. Maybe it'll hold well, but that 0.8 finale says it won't.

The Respectable
Brooklyn Nine-Nine

Brooklyn Nine-Nine is a workplace comedy distributed by NBC Universal that snuck its way onto FOX. It's like if ABC randomly decided that instead of picking up American Housewife CBS was going to buy it from them. Brooklyn Nine-Nine had great exposure on Sunday, but lost all that momentum and then some when it had to anchor Tuesday nights unsuccessfully. It was surrounded by duds, but this fourth season was pretty much ensured one way or another for syndication purposes anyway. It doesn't do terrible, but FOX has a few new comedies this season, and if enough of them hit then Brooklyn Nine-Nine could be in trouble, especially since they don't own it. This season, it only gets harder, as it'll be facing The Voice, NCIS, and The Middle. Maybe Hulu would be interested in a fifth season if need be, but for now, while I can't group it with New Girl in the promising category, it's also no Rosewood.

Fates Decided
Bob's Burgers--Renewed
Bones--Ending

What are your thoughts? Make sure to leave them below, and once ratings start coming in look out for the first FOX Renew/Cancel Watch of the season!

FOX Renew/Cancel Watch: How Many Shows Can FOX Really Cancel?

Canceled	Certatin to be Canceled	Likely to be Canceled	Watching	Likely to be Renewed	Certain to be Renewed	Renewed
Minority Report	Sleepy Hollow	The Grinder	Cooper Barrett’s Guide to Surviving Life	Bordertown	Empire	The Simpsons
		Grandfathered	Scream Queens	The Last Man On Earth	Family Guy	Bob’s Burgers
		Bones		New Girl	Gotham
					Brooklyn 9-9
					Rosewood

The Simpsons and Bob's Burgers have both been renewed. Empire, Family Guy, Gotham, Brooklyn 9-9, and Rosewood are also all getting renewed, no questions asked. That's 7 shows that FOX either has or definitely will renew by May, and possibly some at Friday's upcoming TCA. In addition, The Last Man On Earth's decent ratings compared to the rest of the comedies prompted me to move it up to a likely renewal. I've also moved Bordertown from a likely cancellation to a likely renewal after this week's 1.5 A18-49 rating, which was a promising 83% retention out of Family Guy.

FOX

Meanwhile, look at the shows that I'm watching. Cooper Barrett premiered to a 1.2, and rose to a 2.1 for its second airing, but only because of football inflation. In addition, Scream Queens premiered to a mediocre 1.7, and fell to a very poor 0.8 A18-49 rating by the ninth airing. I do think that W18-34 may be its main demographic, but even then, it's pulling in poor ratings.

All four shows could easily be cancelled looking at these live ratings alone. However, if all four are cancelled and the rest of my predictions indeed turn out to be correct, then FOX would have renewed 8 shows and cancelled 9. Can they really do that?

Nope. Not with American Idol leaving the schedule too. And with the fact that I also trust that FOX is starting to look more into the C7 ratings as well as the C3, FOX may be the toughest of the Big 4 networks to predict. However, I do have a hunch that FOX will begin to tout itself as the "young-skewing network".

Is FOX The Young-Skewing Network?

Compared to shows on other networks, most of FOX's shows have unbelievably good (often close to 1:1) ratios amongst the hard-to-reach-live M/W18-34 and A18-49 demographics. In the case of Empire, the W18-34 numbers have actually been higher than the A18-49 numbers, and such can be said for most airings of shows like Family Guy and Bob's Burgers. In fact, here are all the FOX shows that perform well in the M/W18-34 demographics relative to their A18-49 numbers:

M18-34
Bob's Burgers
The Simpsons
Family Guy
Cooper Barrett's Guide to Surviving Life
Bordertown
The Last Man On Earth

W18-34
Scream Queens
New Girl
Grandfathered
Rosewood
Empire

Now, that's a LOT of shows that do relatively well in the M/W18-34 demographics! All of the above shows either tie, beat, or fall just a tenth under their A18-49 ratings in their M18-34 or W18-34 ratings, depending on the show.

Unfortunately, very few of those shows do better than low 1s in the ratings. However, they are definitely hitting a demographic that other networks are having trouble doing, and I am beginning to think that if FOX had to choose between two shows with identical A18-49 ratings, they would renew the show that does better in M/W18-34. This is one of the reasons why a show like Bones may lose out to a show like Grandfathered, if you told me that one had to be renewed and the other canceled. However, seeing how Grandfathered is unable to grow more with its newly-obtained New Girl lead-in, combined with the fact that 20th Century Fox does not distribute the show, really diminishes its prospects as well.

Notably missing from the list are: Gotham, Brooklyn 9-9, The Grinder, Bones, and Sleepy Hollow. Brooklyn 9-9 is still a certain renewal for syndication purposes, and Gotham because despite not having as high a young-skewing ratio week-in and week-out, it is still one of FOX's highest-rated shows.

At this point, it is mostly a matter of which of the young-skewing shows perform best all-around. This includes, but is not limited to, C3 ratings, C7 ratings, streaming data, and VOD ratings.

What do you think of my predictions? Leave your thoughts and predictions in the comments below!

Schedule Theory #1: Air Niche Comedies on Friday

Remember my theory: With stability and compatibility come reliability. However, I do indeed have some more specific ideas when it comes to scheduling, all of which are very much developing. The first one: to air niche comedies on Friday.

To clarify, I will define a niche comedy as a comedy which appeals to a very small but loyal fanbase, and is designed to be that way. For example, shows such as 30 Rock and Park & Recreation seemingly had the purpose of appealing to a very specific audience, whereas a show like Modern Family has an easier time at reaching a broader population.

Now this in particular is kind of bold, as in recent years, there really haven't been too many niche comedies air on Fridays. However, I still believe that it is idea worth exploring. Advertisers obviously want to receive full benefits for the amount of money they invest to place a 30-second ad during a show, and while some advertisements may be geared more specifically toward that niche comedy audience, I'm very willing to bet that they would want a broader show to air on a Sunday-Thursday night rather than on the lower-viewed Friday.

Let's make an example. You, the reader, also happen to be an executive at Ford, and want to advertise the newest Fusion car via a 30-second ad. Since you work for one of the biggest car companies in the country, you have plenty of money to invest in an ad. Since a Ford car is more likely to reach a broad audience, and broader shows have a higher chance of receiving higher ratings.

So, back to your ad: you place it during a broad new show that has potential to reach a large audience--except for the fact that it airs on Friday and is consistently fractional. Meanwhile, you have a niche comedy airing on a Sunday-Thursday night, which is disappointing in the ratings for those days, but has a larger chance of maintaining its loyal audience on a move to Friday. Moreover, that broad show could easily grow its ratings if time slots were swapped. It's a win-win situation for both the network and the advertiser.

Now I'm not trying to suggest that all of a sudden we move Bob's Burgers, The Last Man on Earth, and New Girl (when it premieres, at least) to Fridays--that would go against the Rule of Stability.

What I am trying to suggest is that networks may want to try to premiere newer shows on the night, or perhaps move an existing, but relatively new, show that is underperforming on a weeknight in the educated hopes that it will keep more of its audience percentage-wise than many other shows on a Friday move. That latter example at its best would be a prime example of the Rule of Reliability. Now we just need to find a show that's compatible with it and we're all set!

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The first test to my hypothesis? Undateable Live!