New Rules 14

Of NBC's eight hour-long shows, Timeless is last in viewers (5.55 mil) and 6th in demo (1.33). The only shows worse than it are Blindspot (1.21) and the Blacklist (1.16). Those two shows have tougher timeslots (Wed @ 8 PM, Thu @ 10 PM). Add the factor that Timeless has the Voice as its lead-in, and cancellation is all but guaranteed. Timeless struggles to integrate its season-long stories with its events-of-the-week. One particular example is that last week's episode, like many of the fillers, did not affect the timeline at all. Therefore, why should casual viewers even watch? Kripke doesn't care about anything beyond showing off (his limited) historical knowledge. He also errs by only making certain episodes include actual plot progression. How he convinced NBC that making viewers wait for answers and information was a good idea, I'll never know.

Actually, it's not about brand loyalty. The numbers are being over-analyzed as more people flee television due to poor choices by executives and gradually worsening acting skills. The networks can tout the demo as much as they want, but if no one watches their shows, the networks eventually go out of business. Viewers do matter, and anyone saying otherwise should stop and consider who is making this argument and why.

The "facts" contained within this article quoted by tvecho serve as network PR spin. Among primetime dramas, Flash's 1.5 (1.90 million A18-49) ranks 21st out of 42 shows*. [1.90 million translates to 1% (1.90 million out of 127 million A18-49) of the audience that watch the Flash.] Meanwhile, Gotham (2.5 [3.18 million A18-49]) ranks 5th. Therefore, though the numbers can be spun, DC isn't "winning" anything other than meaningless journalistic adoration**. *: Arrow (1.0 [1.27 million A18-49]) ranks 35th out of the 42 primetime dramas. **:This analysis, however, is very simplistic and does not account for the CW being a netlet or the exclusion of total viewership numbers. edited (again) because the number of primetime dramas was incorrect