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NBC’s attempt to improve its fortunes on Wednesday by replacing underperforming (and already cancelled) newbie Animal Practice with sophomore Whitney is not working, at least not from the get go. In its second season premiere last night, Whitney (1.4/4 in adults 18-49) matched the debut in the Wednesday 8 PM slot of its predecessor Animal Practice. It was down 30% from Whitney‘s debut in the time period last spring and tied as its series low. Guys With Kids (1.3/4), the only Wednesday series to still be awaiting a decision on a back order, was flat with two weeks ago and also tied as a series low. Law & Order: SVU (1.6/4) was down 6% from two weeks ago, and it too tied its series low. After the big ratings jump last week when it followed an original Voice, newly picked up Chicago Fire (1.6/5) retreated 27% for a net gain of .1 vs. its original two weeks ago. But it held onto 100% of its lead-in, something no other 10 PM rookie drama has been able to do this season.
The other new Wednesday 10 PM drama that received a full-season order over the past week was ABC’s Nashville (1.8/5), which reversed its ratings downtrend last week with a .2 uptick. But the rise was short-lived as the soap dropped .2 last night to return to the series low level of two weeks ago. The entire ABC Wednesday lineup was in negative territory last night. The Middle (2.5/8) was down 7%; The Neighbors (1.9/5) down 10% to tie its series low; Modern Family (4.6/12) down 4% and Suburgatory (2.4/6), which continues its pendulum swings, down 17% from last week’s season high to tie its season low.
Fox won the night in 18-49 with The X Factor (2.9/8), which finally showed some tangible growth as it heads toward the final stage of the competition. Vs. last Wednesday, when X Factor faced NBC’s The Voice, The Top 12 performance show was up 12% in 18-49 and 16% in Total Viewers (8.1 million).
CBS’ Survivor: Philippines (2.6/7) was down 7% from last week, while Criminal Minds (3.0/8) was flat. CSI (2.4/7) was the only Big 4 show besides X Factor in positive territory last night, up 4% to top the 10 PM hour. CBS won the night in total viewers.
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Whitney…not one laugh. Depressing.
I like Whitney C. and Chris D. Just wish they hired a writing staff, not a bunch of talentless people who are probably more into posting on Twitter and adding friends on Facebook/Google+.
Give us a list of names so we know where to assign blame. Worst writing staff in the history of television.
Joe, you are a smart man. The writers for all of these sitcoms think that being “trendy, and hip” and tweeting about it, makes you funny. And yes, it does…to the people in the writers rooms…all 12 of them.
The networks will say that these ratings are a fault of DVR…yet Modern Family does a 4.6 on the same night that Whitney does a 1.4. But I guess the reasoning for that is that people aren’t home at 8pm, right? And yes, that’s sarcasm.
Just like I said yesterday…put out interesting characters, with storylines we can look forward to, and humor that is organic, instead of a show that is no different than 21 minutes of youtube sketches, and we’ll start to tune in. Sadly, I think you need to can all these shows and start fresh…once your viewers lose trust, it’s a hard climb back to the top.
But Joe, if you are looking for a list of people to blame, that’s not gonna do you any good. Whitney is the creator of the show, so I believe she has to take the blame. Not sure how the power lies, but I would guess she gets final say.
Nailed it! And I think what is more troubling for ABC, FOX, and NBC is that CBS, already with a sizable viewer advantage, is gaining in the demo department, and they are doing it with shows that are 5 to 10 years old or more in most cases. Americans trust CBS’ procedurals, more than they trust any other genre of tv show, to be Watch Worthy week to week. You can’t say that Americans feel the same way for the sitcoms and soaps that tend to fall onto ABC, FOX, and NBC. You can’t even say the same for all of CBS’ sitcoms. American tv viewers are having a hard time identifying with the main characters in alot of these shows. If you can’t connect with the lead charcters, how can you possibly enjoy the show? People can give you the hogwash about old skewing CBS, but they know how to develop winning programs around solid characters with sound leadership abilities that people can rally behind and support in one way or another.
Blame Whitney. She runs the room and rewrites every script. It’s her stink on everything.
I’ll get hate for being a Whitney fan, but I can’t say I’m surprised. I haven’t seen the new episode yet, but I was surprised when it was recording last night. Good thing for season passes otherwise I’d never know it was back on otherwise.
NBC aggressively promoted it with some very obnoxious promos.
There wasn’t much press since NBC didn’t release screeners to critics, presumably guessing that nothing good would come of it.
Arrow dropping a bit in both demos but rising in total viewers I suppose is somewhat good news for the CW. Could mean more viewers are sampling the show. Based on comments on this site-Arrow sounds awesome! Word of mouth may increase viewers even more. Also,CSI rising & topping the 10 pm hour is something I’m happy about. Adding Ted Danson & Elisabeth Shue last season was a smart move. Not surprised Whitney’s premiere was down from last year. Was somewhat surprised Nbc renewed Whitney in the first place.
WHITNEY underperformed? SHOCKER!
This is what happens when you give a second season to a show that no one wanted. At least COMMUNITY has a cult following. WHITNEY is generic all the way and no one was campaigning for its survival. AND they gave it an order for five more scripts? Before it even aired? Big mistake.
NBC pumped so much money into Whitney they felt obligated to their shareholders to try and shove the show down America’s throat again. Whitney Cummings is miscast in her own show.
My wife is a huge fan of the show* and didn’t even realize last night was the season premiere.
*By ‘show,’ I mean the main relationship between Whitney and Alex, not the unlikeable supporting cast.
Nbc should have kept Harrys Law. Atleast it drew eyeballs.
Nbc’s timing of Whitney’s season premiere was perfect. With Thanksgiving just around the corner-Nbc serves up the turkey known as Whitney. Horrible show!
Whitney, Guys With Kids, The New Normal, Animal Practice, we are truly living in the golden age of TV comedies! I just wish we could have some more shows from the perspective of quirky, moderately attractive white women in their 20′s and 30′s; maybe something about single girls trying to make it in the big city (new york), preferably with a supporting cast of wacky but in the end loveable friends? Just a thought, all of you writers out there can use that idea for free!
Yes, but we’re going to needs lots of irreverent jokes about sex from the quirky white kind of attractive woman because that’s guy humor and girls doing guy humor and talking about sex and penises and their vaginas and using the word vagina is so hot right now, the kids love it really, all the focus groups say so. If you can get that in we’re sold.
Terry, that’s a brilliant idea, i wish i had thought of it! Because after all, if people are looking for “naughty” subject matter, they are going to want to enjoy it on a medium in which a brief nanosecond flash of a nipple results in a multi-billion dollar fine (network tv); because network tv is still the only game in town as far as entertainment goes (this is why that Playboy show was such a hit on NBC a few years back!)
I’ve got some other ideas for the show, let me run them by you. One of the leads’ friends should be really “slutty” (a lot of the best lines will be for her) and another one should be kind of a prude (we can mock her values!). Also the lead should have a very flamboyant, over the top gay friend who says stuff like “Fabulous!!!”, or “you’re looking fierce girlfriend!” and talks a lot about Cher and things like that.
I’m also thinking about a “cute guy” male lead (Jared Leto type)who the female lead is really into but he just views her as a friend; he doesn’t get the hint that she wants to be “more than friends”! This will be a source of a lot of the tension of the show, (“will they ever get together”?) and keep the audience tuning in week after week!
Just watch one evening’s worth of old sitcoms on Me TV, and you will see just how far TV talent has eroded. Contrast Mary Tyler Moore or Bob Newhart or M*A*S*H to piles and piles of idiot sex jokes, cynicism masquerading as wit, and unfunny meta. Maybe the older writers had writing degrees from universities where they studied literature, instead of “this is where the commercial goes”?
One of the better posts I have seen on deadline in some time. The writers on these shows give my generation a bad name! Believe it or not, there are those of us from generation y who know how to write complete sentences, not use ‘LOL’ language, and come up with creative ideas. Unfortunately we are in the minority, as evidenced by the writing staff of Whitney.
You make a good point but haven’t considered that old TV had its share of bad sitcoms too– the difference was, where today we place in vulgar humor, they used saccharine family sweetness. I don’t know what that says about people over the years but there’s always been good mixed with bad.
Yes, there’s always been stuff like The Partridge Family or Me and the Chimp. But I am under the impression that a lot of old-time TV writers had been immersed in literature in school. Rod Serling, for instance, or Paddy Chayevsky. Even Stan Lee, he of Marvel comics fame, knew his Shakespeare, his Victor Hugo, and his Robert Louis Stevenson (you know he did, because he stole from all of them!), and Jack Kirby knew quite a bit about world religion and world mythologies. Parchett and Tarses, James L. Brooks, Larry Gelbart, they knew how to write humor. But I think that a lot of TV writers today studied “film-writing” or something like it, or rose up through the ranks of some improv troupe, rather than knowing great literature and how it works.
Whitney will continue to drop as the season goes on. I don’t know anybody who wanted a second season to begin with. I don’t understand the networks fascination with Whitney Cummings.
Whitney Cummings is good in small doses. But every week? ..not so much. No surprise Whitney bombed. NBC cancelled one flop only to be replaced with another.
It truly is amazing how stupid many of today’s so-called comedies are. Nowadays, you can find better written & funnier comedies on old episodes of classics shown on Antenna tv. So many network comedies seem to believe that substituting vulgarity for well written humor is the way to get viewers. Based on ratings for some comedies-it appears tv fans are wising up & collectively saying “We’re not watching this garbage anymore!!” Classics comedies were more subtle and didn’t need to be rude,crude & disgusting to get an audience. Their WRITING was what made them successful!
I don’t understand why NBC is pushing Whitney. The show sucks and the ratings prove it. Cancel the damn thing!
Hey everyone, don’t knock Whitney! Her show is hilarious, and she created 2 Broke Girls which is almost as good! She’s a great actor, comedian, writer, and super attractive. I can’t understand why people say she is like the useless imbecile Sarah Silverman. Maulik Pancholy is a total idiot for leaving this show. NBC really is a genius network. They cancelled Outsourced, and passed on Brave New World (from the horrible Peter Tolan, and starring the idiotic Ed Begley, Jr.) in favor of this. That being said, I’m not a fan of Chris D’Elia.
Oh wait, it’s not opposite day? Well, disregard everything I said in the first paragraph.
Chicago Fire held 100% of its lead in… Of a show that’s been on FIFTEEN years and just hit an all time series low? Wow way to go!
Okay I was wrong – Whitney – if that’s the best they have to offer – not good. The male lead also looks like, sadly, he’s lost his sparkle this season. The actor had a twinkle in his eye and was the only person in the cast that shined last season. Whitney – dear Whitney – even in interviews her nerves seem to be getting the best of her – I think same with the co-star it just feels like you can feel a lot riding on them both. Writing on that first episode not good. Painful to get through. Giving it ONE more chance. I hope they can turn it around as I like both like actors very much. PS is it me or have they brought in more color to the sets? It’s looking very Mad About You, no? If this doesn’t work both leads will be back with other sitcoms.
Not much more to add – I think everyone’s posts have pretty much covered it – ‘Whitney’ the show is done – we’ll have to see how many episodes NBC wants to burn off, and what they may have on the shelf to replace it and run out the clock until season end in May. I’m still convinced Whitney (the person) has talent and with the right vehicle could have a good comedy series. But if she is the one in charge of the direction of her current show, who else to blame? Where’s the mirror? She can do something better – 2 Broke Girls isn’t perfect, but it is funny, a bit nasty [but in a good way] and has a storyline.
I think she’s trying too hard on this series to play a likable/ loveable woman – but TV these days is overloaded with women characters like that. Why not be more of a ‘Murphy Brown’ type character, and less a ‘Caroline in the City’? More ‘Elaine Benes’. Try something a bit different – show a nasty side, a mean streak to the comedy. Whitney could pull this off. Instead, she goes for the sugar and spice and everything nice route. Frankly, there’s so much of that on TV, that it’s becoming dull and boring.