Things didn’t look good for Chaos, almost from the very beginning. ’It was a nice-enough new “espionage light” action dramady that CBS touted as a strong mid-season replacement show, just about a year ago. But then there were union problems, and production problems, and problem-problems, and when it finally got a time slot it was well into the Spring of ’11 and…well, nobody really cared anymore. And nobody was terribly surprised when it was pulled from the schedule just a few weeks after it premiered, with a bunch of unseen episodes still in the can.
So what happened? Was Chaos a bad show? Or just badly treated?
It was a real shame. Chaos, with well-known and well-liked stars like Latino actor Freddy Rodriguez and Without a Trace’s Eric Close, was no game-changer, but it was certainly as good as most of CBS’ other hourly fare, like The Mentalist or Blue Bloods. But coming in late to the party and low to the ground made it a prime example of the Jekyll/Hyde numerology of modern-day ratings—a numbers game that can label a show with more than five million viewers as “in trouble,” because—apparently—it’s the wrong five million viewers.
Consider a certain week in early April. Chaos was the only original scripted programming on the five networks on Friday, April 8 at 8 pm. NBC had a new episode of its celebrity genealogy show, Who Do You Think You Are, and ABC had a new edition of its investor reality show Shark Tank, while FOX had a rerun of Gordon Ramsey’s troubled-restaurant docudrama Kitchen Nightmares. The only other scripted show in sight was a repeat of the Smallville pilot—the pilot, from seven years ago!—on the CW.
NBC came in first with more than 5.76 million viewers for Who Do… at 8 pm, generating a 1.3 rating in the demo that many insist is the make-or-break number for network shows: adults 18-49. In terms of raw numbers of viewers, Chaos came in a very close second, with 5.64 million viewers (just a measly 2% fewer eyeballs)…but it reported a far weaker .9 rating in that 18-49 demo—25% lower than NBC’s. In fact, in that magical demo, Chaos came in fourth in a field of five-lower than Shark Tank and Kitchen Nightmares, and just a tad higher that the repeat of the Smallville pilot, even though Chaos had almost 3.75 million more viewers than the CW—almost three times the viewers.
Aren’t that many raw viewers, almost regardless of age, of some importance?
That’s a good question. CBS might think so; it’s hard to imagin that they enshrine the 18-49 demo across the board, at least not quite as insistently as ABC or FOX, what with programs like Blue Bloods or The Mentalist, just two of the programs that seem specifically designed to appeal to an older audience. (NBC has a similar problem with Harry’s Law: it’s one of the most watched programs on the network in raw numbers, but its 18-49 demos suck.) Meanwhile, Blue Blood, touted as one of CBS’s few new hits of the season, isn’t immune to this weird ratings arithmentic: it had the largest raw audience of the night by far, with more than 10.5 million viewers…and still only tied ABC’s news magazine, 20/20 with a 1.9 rating in the key demographic, even though 20/20 had less than half as many actual iewers—even less than third-place newser Dateline on NBC.
How do high- and middle-income Latinos figure into the assessments? Nobody seems to know. Are they inclined to watch a show like Chaos, with no appreciable Latino content beyond a Latino leading man—in greater quantity than, say, Smallville or Blue Blood where there are no Latinos present at all? And if they do, do the networks care? Again: open questions. But racial and ethnic demographics aside, the shorthand that emerges is that “Freddy Rodriguez’ new show is in trouble, and probably won’t get renewed.”
It’s a weird demo-dominated world when a perfectly enjoyable, professionally made hour-long drama being watched by more than five million people is already being called a flop, or at least a disappointment, after only its second outing. Especially when it’s playing in the Dead Zone of Friday night with almost no promotion at all. But that seems to be the numbers games that network TV is playing these days.
And they wonder why the audience is fleeing to PPV and cable.
