I don’t want to be the one millionth person to harp about how no one watches network TV shows anymore. There is no prize for reaching that milestone; balloons will not fall from the rafters. What I will say is that it’s amazing how much power a fraction of a percentage point has these days.
Back on November 21st, NBC’s Constantine pulled in a 1.1 share of 18-49 viewers (aka, the key demographic for advertisers). That was the freshman DC comic book based supernatural series’ best showing since its premiere episode when it got a 1.40, but despite that, NBC promptly announced that they were cutting the show’s order down to 13 episodes.
Unsurprisingly, Constantine‘s ratings took a bit of a hit in the two episodes that followed that bit of bad news, dropping to a 0.9 share in the 18-49 demo and then a 0.8 share before showing a 25% increase for the fall finale, which returned the show to a 1.0 share. Now, NBC is rewarding Constantine with a timeslot shift from 10:00 p.m. on Friday nights to 8:00 p.m. when it returns on January 16th. A move so surprising that the time change isn’t even reflected in the trailer for the mid-season premiere (below).
On its face, moving Constantine up by two hours isn’t as big a show of support as cutting their order was a slap in the face, but it shows that NBC is willing to shake things up a little and give the show a chance to earn a few more fractions of a percentage point. And at the end of the day, that’s what this is all about. Grimm has averaged about a 1.25 in the key demo this season and I’m pretty sure that NBC thinks that it hung the moon, so really, Constantine isn’t too far away from the land of milk and honey. They just don’t have a lot of time to get there.
Via Coming Soon
