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Stumptown ratings for Oct. 16: Is Cobie Smulders drama tanking?

By Brittany Frederick

STUMPTOWN - "Forget it Dex, It's Stumptown." - Dex Parios - a strong, assertive and sharp-witted army veteran with a complicated love life, gambling debt and a brother to take care of - works as a PI in Portland, Oregon. With only herself to rely on, she solves other people's messes with a blind eye toward her own, finding herself at odds with the police and in the firing line of criminals, on the series premiere of "Stumptown," WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 25 (10:00-11:00 p.m. EDT), on ABC. (ABC/Mitch Haaseth)COBIE SMULDERS
STUMPTOWN - "Forget it Dex, It's Stumptown." - Dex Parios - a strong, assertive and sharp-witted army veteran with a complicated love life, gambling debt and a brother to take care of - works as a PI in Portland, Oregon. With only herself to rely on, she solves other people's messes with a blind eye toward her own, finding herself at odds with the police and in the firing line of criminals, on the series premiere of "Stumptown," WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 25 (10:00-11:00 p.m. EDT), on ABC. (ABC/Mitch Haaseth)COBIE SMULDERS /
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Stumptown ratings crashed and burned for Season 1, Episode 4 on a difficult Wednesday. Is this the beginning of the end for ABC’s massively hyped series?

Stumptown was one of the most promoted and talked about shows this fall—but just a few weeks later, the ABC series was one of the lowest-rated series on Wednesday night.

This week’s episode “Family Ties” saw Dex Parios (Cobie Smulders) trying to bring down a real estate developer with ulterior motives. However, it suffered a massive week-to-week drop in live viewers.

The installment had just 2.81 million people watching live, compared to the previous episode’s 3.4 million (-0.59, or 590,000 people who tuned out).

Of the 15 shows that aired on broadcast TV this Wednesday, Stumptown came in a disappointing 11th place.

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The only shows with less total viewers were its lead-in Single Parents (2.807), FOX‘s freshman comedy-drama Almost Family (2.48), and The CW‘s Riverdale and Nancy Drew (0.83 and 0.81 respectively).

And since The CW series are typically on the lower end of the ratings spectrum anyway, that means the latest Stumptown was one of the three least-watched shows on Wednesday.

When the other two are another new series and your own lead-in, that’s even more depressing.

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What caused the Cobie Smulders-led series to drop more than a half million viewers this week? It’s hard to say specifically, but NBC came hard with a three-show crossover for its One Chicago franchise, which included Stumptown‘s direct competition Chicago PD at 10 p.m.

Another possible factor is that the MLB postseason is on right now, so viewers in earlier time zones may have been still been watching the game.

But even if “Family Ties” had held steady at the previous 3.4 mark, it wouldn’t have gained any spots in total viewers; the 10th place show Schooled would have edged it out anyway (at 3.425). This was just doomed to be a bad week for Stumptown, and it’s even worse when you look at its key demo numbers.

Amongst adult viewers aged 18-49, the show has a 0.6 share. That’s ranked 12th out of the 15 TV shows that aired on broacast networks on Oct. 16. For comparison, the five highest-rated shows on the night had demo scores of 1.2 or higher.

Unfortunately, that’s not a new development either. That 0.6 is the same score that the last new episode of the show recorded, too; so not only is the series sliding down in viewers, it’s also not bringing in the type of viewers that the network looks closest at.

And Stumptown is preempted next Wednesday for an ABC special about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, so it’ll be two weeks before the show returns.

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Fans will want to keep a close eye on the next episode’s numbers to see if the series is able to climb back to its previous number, but honestly it needs to do even better than that if Stumptown Season 2 is going to be in the cards.

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