Ratings: ‘Arrow’ season 5 down, ‘Frequency’ weak in premiere; ‘Criminal Minds,’ ‘Lethal Weapon’ fall
We commented a week or so ago that the fall season was not treating Fox altogether kindly, but we now may have to add another network to the equation: This is starting to look more and more like a bad season for The CW. The two returning shows so far have posted steep year-to-year declines, while the two new series have been exceptionally disappointing on arrival.
Let’s start here with “Arrow,” which started off this season with a 0.7 rating in the 18-49 demographic that marks a pretty severe decline over the start of season 4. This is a show that will probably stay somewhere around here for the rest of the season; its biggest issue is that the past two seasons arguably turned off some fans, and with that the show has a challenge of trying to win some of them back. We did personally think that the premiere was a vast improvement over recent ones, so we’ll see what comes next.
As for “Frequency,” starting off with a 0.4 rating is simply not great. We enjoy Peyton List’s work, but at the same time we don’t quite know why this show was even ordered for the first place given the network. Fans of the original movie probably aren’t watching The CW, and don’t quite have a connection to this particular story.
As for other bad news – Well, pretty much everything was down across the board last night. “Survivor” (1.8) dropped, “Lethal Weapon” (1.7) and “Designated Survivor” (1.6) continue to fall, and “Criminal Minds” (1.4) in particular posted one of its most woeful ratings ever. Other than ABC (where most of their shows stayed relatively steady), so they’re at least good by comparison and “Blindspot” (which only declined by a couple of percentage points), every other show on the air fell by more than 10%. Unlike the night before, there is no Vice-Presidential Debate to blame anything on.
NC76
October 6, 2016 @ 5:31 pm
The rating drop for Criminal Minds is not that surprising. They lost two major strong characters, the writing has continued to decline for the past 3 years. Last night’s episode was highly contrived to create moral angst for JJ in such a ludicrous way. The writing gave both the characters of JJ and Alvez a great disservice by having them ignore their training. The first rule is save the victims first. The way it was wriitten was pethetic as to the actions of both bau members. The tank is ready, the shark is in place, the motorcycle is revving up for Criminal minds
As for Arrow, they have twisted what was a good show so much that I think iw will continue to turn off a lot of die hard fans.
Matt Carter
October 6, 2016 @ 5:44 pm
I hope Arrow wins people back, since I think they’re starting to get back to what makes them good. There’s still hope for CM, but they need to get some consistency going. All of this cast turnover is super-challenging.
NC76
October 6, 2016 @ 6:14 pm
I hope Arrow turns it aorund.I hate the Oliver Felicity angst and separation..and hope they don’t drag it on for the entire season. They have great chemistry together….As for Criminal minds I just don’t see anyone of the current characters strong enough to step up and take the place of Hotch and Morgan. I have no hope for the writing, because it has been pathetic for too long and the for the most part the unsubs have been bland and uninteresting.