The Unicorn ratings steady; could Sunnyside be first show canceled?

Yesterday was the second Thursday of the fall season, and that means of course a better chance to evaluate some of the new series on the schedule. It’s one thing for these shows to be able to deliver big numbers once; it’s another to keep the audience for another week. This is what helps to determine if there is some significant, long-term staying power.

For this Thursday, we would go ahead and proclaim The Unicorn to be at least one of the bigger winners of the day. After all, the series ended up generating a 0.8 rating in the 18-49 demographic and over 6 million viewers — a minimal drop from the premiere. Anytime you can lose less than 5% from your premiere audience, we consider that to be a great thing. Carol’s Second Act also has a lot to feel good about right now, keeping its 0.7 rating that it had for its premiere. While neither one of these shows would’ve been considered a winner five years ago, the TV landscape has changed … and so have expectations for many shows.

As for the super-ambitious Evil, it held reasonably steady in week 2 with a 0.6 rating — it’s not good enough still to leave us optimistic about its long-term future, but we want to believe in this show since it represents CBS trying to do something a little bit different.

Bad news for Sunnyside – We know that NBC wants to tell ambitious, different stories with its comedies, but in doing that, sometimes things just don’t work out. While new comedy Perfect Harmony is struggling with a 0.5 on the network and just over 2 million live viewers, it’s even worse for Sunnyside. The Kal Penn series in its second week drew just a 0.3 rating, which is pretty dismal for a show on one of the Big Four networks. While there’s no guarantee it gets canceled today, it doesn’t feel like this is going to be a show that lasts for the entirety of this fall. It’s hard to think what failed here, other than that it’s a show with a lot of reasonably-unknown cast members beyond Penn and also a name that doesn’t offer up many hints as to what the show’s actually about.

What did you watch on TV Thursday night, and do you think that Sunnyside could be the first show canceled? Be sure to share in the comments, and remember to stick around to get some additional TV discussions. (Photo: CBS.)