Ratings Bubble Report: Is a ‘Conviction’ season 2 renewal by ABC even possible?
Tonight, ABC is airing the season finale for “Conviction” — but should you go ahead and call it a series finale?
We do like to be sensitive when we discuss these sort of things, largely because of the fact that there are people who work their butts off to give you a great show and tell a great story. Everyone hoped that this could be the next “Scandal” or “Castle” and last for several seasons. It had a fantastic leading lady in Hayley Atwell, and a popular “Walking Dead” alum in Emily Kinney. On the surface, everything appeared as though it would work here.
So what happened along the way to get the show in such ratings danger? Its biggest issue seemed to be that it was in danger from the start. Much of that has to fall on the shoulders of the marketing department of ABC for failing to attract a ton of viewers to the show from the start. When you think about the amount of viewers who do tend to leave a show over the course of a season, it only lost about 33% of its viewership from the start of the fall to its winter finale. That’s not that bad. At this point, the ratings almost became irrelevant given that the show was moved over to Sunday night. Heck, tonight’s it’s aired against part of the AFC Championship Game. The move to Sunday was a sign that the network lacked confident in its future, and the scheduling tonight is further validation of that.
We should note that this is not confirmation that “Conviction” is canceled. It’s not. We love Atwell and many other members of the cast, and we legitimately feel as though this is a show that improved in quality as it went along. We’re just being realistic that this is probably the series finale tonight. The best thing that you can hope for if you want to save the show is continue to try and convince other networks to give it a show. It may be a show that finds a life after the fact thanks it streaming somewhere; it just didn’t have a whole lot of luck on ABC.
What to get some other news on “Conviction”? Be sure to head over to the link here right now! Also, let us know in the poll below if you think the show should come back (Photo: ABC.)
Ken Kerns
January 23, 2017 @ 4:09 am
They could have a made a very good movie out of the premise and cast, but I think the formula (including the over-dramatic 5 day countdown) was too narrow to feel compelling after several episodes. (How shows like NCIS and Criminal Minds stay on the air, I wouldn’t know.) I also caught myself guessing the “twist” ahead of time in multiple cases. But mostly I think they played it too safe, bleaching out the most interesting part of Atwell’s character (her rebelliousness) and never really selling us on why she needed to be the daughter of an ex-President, both of which could be fascinating backstory. It’s almost like they had a great idea for a character and stuck it on a mediocre lawyer procedural and hoped no one noticed.