Ratings: ‘Quantico’ rises; ‘The Good Wife,’ ‘Madam Secretary’ improve, for now (11/8/2015)

We start this particular ratings article for Sunday, November 8 with an asterisk: There were many NFL-related delays, and as a result of that, there may be some skews in the numbers that have been released for CBS.

The winners – With that, you have to wonder whether or not the improvements for “Madam Secretary” (1.5), “The Good Wife” (1.1), and “CSI: Cyber” (0.8) will really stick. We feel like there is a chance that they all adjust down, but we’re still calling them “winners” because we feel like even if they do a little bit, the odds are still fairly high that they will at least be level still with what they drew last week. Much of the reason for the improvement, other than a great NFL lead-in, may have to do with getting a chance to air without the World Series airing on CBS.

Speaking of shows benefiting from no World Series, “Quantico” (1.3) recovered from its series low rating last week. Here is the problem: It really did not recover a lot. We feel like there was an expectation for it to perform at least somewhat better; if it has lost this much of an audience now, can we really consider this show to be a lock for renewal? We feel like it has personally lost its way by focusing too much on romance / casual hookups, and less on the thrilling action and political intrigue. We’re mostly putting this as a “winner” out of respect for the increase.

The losers – All of the Fox comedies dropped by more than 30%, but what else did you expect? Last week they all had the NFL bump, and this week they did not. What we will say is this: These shows do a much better job of holding onto viewers than the ones at CBS do after football. Maybe it is because of them being silly shows, or it is because they don’t have “60 Minutes” sandwiched between.