ABC is showing early enthusiasm for two of its new series and the second season of another series that has held up decently on a new night. The network has announced full-season orders for Stumptown, Mixed-ish & The Rookie.
Live ratings for most series, returning and new, have dwindled across the board for most networks so the bar for earning a back-nine is changing in today’s television climate. In the case of Stumptown & Mixed-ish, live ratings aren’t stellar, but they have been big winners in delayed viewing for ABC. Mixed-ish, a spinoff/prequel to Black-ish, is currently broadcast’s No.1 new comedy among adults 18-49 and has a live-plus-seven day average 1.8 rating in the key demo across all platforms.
Stumptown, based on the popular graphic novel, has been adding 4 million viewers between premiere night and live-plus-seven returns from Nielsen for a total audience of 9.7 million viewers and a 2.2 rating in the key demo. Stumptown has also fared well with critics, receiving some of the best reviews for a network series this fall.
The Rookie, which stars Nathan Fillion as a middle-aged man who decides to join the LAPD, moved to Sundays for its second season and is averaging a 1.3 rating in the 18-49 demo and 7.8 million viewers an episode, more than doubling its audience in both measures from Live+Same Day. Reportedly the extra episodes for The Rookie aren’t the typical back-nine that Stumptown and Mixed-ish received but the episode count was not revealed as of this writing.
This marks the first set of full-season orders at ABC with Emergence being the lone freshman series to not receive an order. Emergence has been steady in delayed viewing but not as strong as Stumptown or Mixed-ish.
