Ratings Bubble Report: Does ‘Agent Carter’ season 2 stand a chance?
We’re now three episodes into the second season of “Agent Carter,” and this is when we were starting to hope that we would be able to come on here and start to praise all of the good news that has come out via the show’s ratings. Unfortunately, this has turned out to not be the case for the series. The ratings are low, and while the show starring Hayley Atwell is a heck of a lot of fun, that doesn’t mean that ABC is going to be willing to dish out a third season.
In our latest Ratings Bubble Report below, we’re going to do our part to make it clear what can be done to start to turn around the fate of the series in some way.
The good news – Is there good news? The biggest thing that we can offer aside from the high quality of the show is this: ABC at least needs to have something to put in the place of “Agents of SHIELD” during the winter, and it makes sense for it to be another Marvel property. While they have ordered a pilot for “Marvel’s Most Wanted” featuring Adrianne Palicki and Nick Blood, nobody knows how that is going to turn out. This is at least proven to be solid entertainment, and while the ratings are not great, they’re certainly better than some of their other midseason programming. (Look at “Galavant” or “My Diet is Better Than Yours.”)
The bad news – Low ratings are still low ratings no matter how you slice them. The lowest rating the show got during season 1 was a 1.3 in the 18-49 demographic; so far in season 2, it hasn’t drawn higher than a 0.9. If the show is going to lose that percentage of viewers year-to-year, then it is reasonable for ABC to worry that they could have something akin to a 0.6 or 0.7 next year, which would be truly miserable for the show. DVR ratings matter (and the same goes for streams online), but they’ll always pale to the live numbers. Also worth noting is that compared to other midseason offerings like the aforementioned diet show, this one costs far more money to make.
Renewal odds – Moderately low. We’re worried, and we caution that everyone who is currently watching online should really consider starting to watch the show live instead. Still, there are avenues we could see it returning even if the ratings don’t improve, largely because “The Bachelor” is the only winter show on ABC that is doing legitimately better than “Agent Carter” right now.