new fall shows

These shows are the difference-makers, the ones that have lifted their networks or improved key timeslots. Some you won’t expect. Several are new programs.

This Is Us is well ahead of the pack, one of two NBC programs in the top 10. CBS has three of the top seven. Fox has two of the bottom five.

Nine have received full-season pickups, and one has even been renewed for next year. Four have had orders reduced. Still no cancellations yet, but they’re coming.

Which ones have received full-season pickups, which are on the verge, and which will leave early. So far, none have been officially canceled but that will change with sweeps.

NBC’s Blindspot is way ahead of the rest. Two of the top three are heavily dependent on lead-ins. Only a handful have held ratings week to week. Infographics break it down.

With only one new show to promote, it’s putting its promotional muscle behind its sophomore series.

And which will die. A smartphone app claims to predict fall’s winners and losers based on how many people stuck with the premiere. So far, it’s right on.

PBS this coming TV season will boast an unvarnished look at entertainment entrepreneur Walt Disney, a revival of Ken Burns epic documentary The Civil War and something that has been a rarity on the network in recent years: a drama financed by PBS set in America.

Through the first five weeks of the season, not one new show has been canceled. By this time last year, three programs had already been axed. But this fall the broadcast networks are showing a lot more patience with their new programs. The reasons: time-shifted viewing and weak midseason replacements.

This year’s crop has averaged a 2.0 adults 18-49 rating, off 20% from last fall. There are more bombs and networks are also being slower to yank programs.

ABC’s How to Get Away with Murder tops them all with a 3.9. ABC and CBS both have two programs in the top five. Fox has the bottom one with Red Band Society.

The major networks are hoping to get religion, or at least a big dose of spirituality, on the air next year. Medical procedural shows are in demand, too, along with female-lead dramas and workplace comedies. Family dramas, period pieces, conspiracy thrillers and heavy-duty sci-fi concepts — not so much.

Here are five fall shows that seem destined to fail, based on readers’ input and conversations with media buyers and planners.

The Fall Season persists — a festival of premieres by not three, but the five self-designated broadcast “majors” (which somehow includes the little-watched CW), with, some years, no discernible dividing line between the fall crop and the winter harvest. And no acknowledgment that outside this magic garden, bumper crops of other network shows are always blooming, stealing viewers (and a large share of Emmy love). With all those caveats in mind, then, make way for the Fall Season. Among the new series hopefuls is CBS’s The Crazy Ones, starring Robin Williams and Sarah Michelle Geller.

In spite of the millions watching the Games on any given night, history suggests that exposure during the Olympics does not necessarily drive viewers to new shows.

In a season with relatively few new series, comedy is the proportionately dominant mode, a priority for several of the broadcast networks in rebuilding mode, particularly NBC.

The fall season kicks off tonight, and when the fourth quarter comes to an end come December, there will be a new No. 1 network. Fox, which finished second behind CBS last fall, will rise to first this fall on the strength of its new shows, according to a poll of media buyers and planners.

This season networks are hoping that Kat Dennings and a handful of other not-all-that-well-known young actresses will be able to carry television shows of their own. In a crop of new series that run the gamut from bawdy comedies to Mad Men-style period dramas, the notoriously dues-paying medium of television has turned to these relatively untested young women to be the faces and voices of its broadcast networks.