It’s interesting. Over the weekend I was wondering whether “The Simpsons” would go fractional first or dip below two million viewers first, or at the same time. It appears the former is more likely, based on how it DID go fractional in preliminary ratings on Sunday but managed to creep above a 1.0 in final ratings, and the show has only been within 300,000 viewers or so of the 2m barrier, of which only “The Simpsons” and “Family Guy” crossed on FOX’s Sunday night.
Sunday’s trophy-laden episode attracted 2.402 million viewers (the third-lowest viewership ever) and also scored exactly a 1.00 rating in the 18-49 demo – the lowest ever rating in the demo. The audience share was also 3%. The show tied “Bob’s Burgers” with a 53% 18-49 skew, the second-best skew of the night.
Once again, “Family Guy” beat “The Simpsons”, but this time it was only in 18-49 ratings, having scored a 1.10, and was below “The Simpsons” in viewership with 2.34 million watching – both shows were the only ones on FOX on Sunday over two million viewers, as aforementioned.
The equivalent episode last season, “The Burns Cage”, was just above Sunday’s at 1.04/4 and below in viewership, at 2.315 million – the 1.04 the all-time low in 18-49 viewership until “Fatzcarraldo” with 1.02 earlier this season, and it’s 2.315 million still remains the all-time low in overall viewership.
The season average so far is now 1.95/5.9 and 4.571 million viewers, above that of this point last season with 1.79/5.8 and 4.401 million viewers.
There was a viewership of around 21-23 million opposite “The Simpsons”, on par with the last episode.
As of right now, it’s unclear whether the 1.00 rating “The Simpsons” achieved is rounded up or rounded down. The episode was at a 0.985 in preliminary ratings – and no unrounded data for final ratings has been released to determine whether the show DID go fractional, in ratings to three decimal places. As of now, though, “The Simpsons” has narrowly avoided taking a trip to fractional-land. And with this fact, who knows, considering how we’ve got two more months of post-DST and spring decline left, whether it’ll manage to complete the trip later on in the season. The show’s just above the 1.0 barrier now; who knows where it’ll be this time in May? For a show to be above a 3.0 rating and also be below a 1.0 rating in the same season sure is something – especially in a season that’s also recorded two all-time lows.
See you April 4th.
Apologies for the lateness in this post; this time it WAS my fault, I was waiting to see if unrounded data would be made available – it wasn’t, really. Apologies also if there are errors in the article; while composing this post my concentration was drawn to the breaking news in the UK.
Sources: TVBytheNumbers, SpottedRatings, ShowBuzzDaily, TVSeriesFinale