Ratings: ‘The Following’ season 3 clobbered by National Championship

Is there any hope at all for “The Following” to be renewed for another season? It doesn’t look like it. As a matter of fact, we’re still in some ways surprised that it was renewed at all. It was a show that had a pretty disappointing second season, and with the serialized nature of it, this is not something that can really be picked up and changed in season 3.

Last night, the show hit a brand-new commercial low courtesy of a 0.9 rating in the 18-49 demographic. That’s pretty terrible no matter how you slice it. Why was the number so low on this particular occasion? The simple answer here is to blame the NCAA Tournament. The National Championship game between Duke and Wisconsin drew more than a 7.0 rating in the early numbers, and this put a dent both in “The Voice” (2.9) and “Dancing with the Stars” (2.0) to a certain degree.

Will “The Following” turn this around next week? It will probably least get a tenth or two of its demo rating back, given that “Gotham” is coming back after a lengthy hiatus next week. This should boost the numbers up a little bit.

Also, next week should feature the return of both “Scorpion” and “NCIS: Los Angeles” to the schedule. The only reason we did not have promos to share for these two shows last night was due to the simple fact that they were both preempted for basketball. Hopefully, this is something that is changed up to a certain extent by the time we get to the weekend.