Cancellation Watch: Tracking the weekly ratings and the cancellation prospects of the science fiction and fantasy shows currently airing on broadcast and cable networks.
By John J. Joex
ABC’s fantasy series Once Upon A Time has stopped its ratings slide upon its return from a brief winter hiatus. This last Sunday’s episode scored a healthy 3.7 rating in the 18-49 demographic and over ten million total viewers. That’s a nice bump up from the 2.9 rating the show had in its last outing in December and a good indication that the low viewership tendency of the holiday season is what drove the late-Fall downward slide. I had previously wondered if Once Upon A Time was headed the same direction as other recent ABC genre shows like FlashForward and V, both of which started very strong in the ratings but saw steep declines by season end. But, the latest numbers for Once Upon A Time suggest that won’t be the case for this show. We will need to track it closely over the next few weeks to see if this was just a spike, but the show has a good bit of breathing room at this point. It averaged a 3.6 rating in the 18-49 demo for its Fall run (even factoring in its late decline), and as long as it stays above a 3.0 rating for the rest of the season it should be fine. As I said in my Mid-Season Predictions, count this one as safe for now.
I will have the full ratings results for all of this week’s shows in the regular Monday column next week.
Ratings Source: TV by the Numbers
