‘American Horror Story’ season 5: Will FX series re-establish ratings momentum?
“American Horror Story” busts out traditionally some pretty strange habits when it comes to ratings. The basic way that we can describe the series is that it manages to continuously get huge premiere figures, but then somehow loses a ton of steam every year leading up to the finale. This year, it went from over a 3.0 rating in the 18-49 demographic for its season-opener, all the way down to a 1.5 for the finale.
Why does this happen? It could be for a number of factors. For one, the show premieres during scare season in October, when there is a little more of a craving for this sort of programming. Things eventually start to wither a little bit as you get closer to Christmas and then in the new year, and you could say that there are some other there who just don’t care about watching horror at that point.
Also, there’s the quality issue. The show is never at a loss for coming up with great ideas. “American Horror Story: Freak Show” is a tremendous example of that. Who wouldn’t want to check out a series with such a cool theme? The problem here is that there’s a difference between coming up with a revolutionary idea, and then sustaining it. Things started to go downhill here story-wise the moment that Twisty the Clown died, coupled with when Dandy Mott started to get less and less screen time. The show was too broad, and far too over the place when it comes to its series of events.
Hopefully, this is something that we are going to see corrected in the upcoming fifth season. We’ve already said this in our recent podcast on the subject, but we feel like there could be something beneficial that comes with shortening the episode order down to ten. This allows for a greater sense of focus, and ultimately what we believe will be a much better story in the end.
Why do you think this show loses so many viewers in-season? Share with a comment, and head over here to acquire some other TV news on all we cover via our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: FX.)
Matibob
January 24, 2015 @ 7:55 am
Ryan Murphy always starts out writing a majority of episodes at the onset of all his series. As the seasons progress, he has alternate writers take over this task. Watch any of Murphy’s series and you can begin to identify Murphy’s writing style based on the effectiveness of the episodes. His talent is endless. The alternate writers…..not so much.