Prodigal Son ratings for Oct. 21: Season 1 numbers take a tumble
Prodigal Son ratings dropped this week, making FOX’s new crime drama one of the least watched shows on Monday. See the latest Prodigal Son numbers.
Prodigal Son is moving in the wrong direction—and the FOX crime drama doesn’t have much more room for error.
After a decent showing last week, Monday’s episode “The Trip” lost viewers. The installment had 3.43 million people watching live, down from the previous 3.61 (-0.18, or 180,000).
That isn’t a large number on its own (many series lose viewers week to week over the course of a long TV season), but it’s a big problem when put in context of the other broadcast TV series airing on Monday night.
There were 12 shows on broadcast TV this Monday, and Prodigal Son was tenth in total viewers. It’s the second consecutive week that the show has ranked that low.
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Only The CW‘s Black Lightning and All American had smaller audiences. And you almost can’t take those into consideration, because The CW usually has less viewers than the Big 4 broadcasters (ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX).
So when you look at it that way, “The Trip” was the least viewed show on broadcast TV for Oct. 21.
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This is kind of shocking for a series that looked like it had room to improve just a week ago.
Prodigal Son is still holding on to its viewers within the adults 18-49 group; it continues to have a 0.8 share there, which was good enough to make it sixth out of 12 shows in that respect.
But it’s lost viewers for two consecutive weeks now, and more worringly, it’s fallen behind its competition.
Last week, the FOX show was within striking distance of NBC’s highly promoted Bluff City Law. But the fellow freshman drama has now opened up a gap on Malcolm and company; it had 0.29 (or 290,000) more people watching last week.
And last week, we didn’t know that Bluff City Law wasn’t getting a back-nine order from NBC and is largely considered to be on the verge of cancellation (though it hasn’t been axed yet).
So if that series is on the chopping block, and it has almost 300,000 more people watching than Prodigal Son, what does that mean for FOX’s serial killer drama? It certainly can’t be considered good news.
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But with more episodes to come—FOX has already ordered a full season—hopefully the show can improve on its audience, and do so quickly. It won’t be yanked off the air now, but it needs to show some life if it wants to get to Season 2.