Apologies for this one being later than usual but I think you’ll find it was worth the wait as we size up week two of Toonami 2013 vs. Toonami 2012 and take a look at how Toonami’s first week with a much higher rated lead-in has affected Toonami’s ratings. As always feel free to comment and we hope you enjoy.
18-49 RATINGS FOR JUNE 1ST 2013
12:00 AM – BLEACH 0.53
12:30 AM – NARUTO 0.43
01:00 AM – ONE PIECE 0.36
01:30 AM – SOUL EATER 0.35
02:00 AM – IGPX 0.31
02:30 AM – EUREKA 7 0.27
03:00 AM – THUNDERCATS 0.31
03:30 AM – SYM-BIONIC TITAN 0.27
04:00 AM – FMA BROTHERHOOD 0.26
04:30 AM – COWBOY BEBOP 0.25
05:00 AM – INUYASHA 0.26
05:30 AM – INUYASHA 0.23
PRE-TOONAMI
10:00 PM – FAMILY GUY 0.64
10:30 PM – FAMILY GUY 0.76
11:00 PM – CLEVELAND SHOW 0.89
11:30 PM – THE BOONDOCKS 0.72
1.0 Adults 18-49 = 1,265,000 in the 2012-2013 season
Ambient Virus’ Assessment:
Well, glad to see the exams and bullharky are finally over. This week was great overall with no show getting under 600k. Bleach and Naruto finally broke one million again and even IGPX finally got out of the rut it was in. Though I expect many people are still wondering what’s happening with One Piece and it not getting higher but given what Jason DeMarco said on the One Piece Podcast, the 757k was what they were expecting when they got it, which was rather amazing IMO, anything beyond that is great.
Per slot: Back to a slow burn baring Bleach to Naruto and Naruto to One Piece. Most shows did less than a 100k drop with Eureka 7 to TCats dropping 87k at the most and other shows barely dropping 40k. Hopefully with the summer this should be our norm for a while baring holiday weekends. The big point for this area is the 200k drops, especially for One Piece. Given the show’s popularity, I was hoping it would be higher and help the first two hours more. I wonder if it’s the current filler arc that may be pushing people away or the time slot. The drop is usually there but it’s uncommon to see two hard drops so close together.
Per Week: Mass increases for Bleach though IGPX except Soul Eater which only lost 5k. The increases suddenly drop of at 3:30 until 5am though nothing substantial but since nothing got under 600k it easily counters that small issue.
Per Year: This was a rather strange occurrence given last week. Naruto failed to beat Deadman Wonderland by 10k. One Piece lost to Casshern Sins again by 64k and others lost as well. It varies across the board from 134k to 10k loss but it held to a large chunk of the block with only 12am and the 5am hour gaining anything from the previous year. Though given that the next is when the celebration ended the per year data should be higher by next week.
Overall: Nice to see the comeback after the previous two weeks. What gets me more is the failure on One Piece’s part to perform. Given the demand and the love for the show, it seems odd that Casshern Sins would be beating it by as much as it is. I would have expecting more towards what Naruto did against DW and only losing by a small-negligible number if not just outright beating it soundly. Though I only expect this to be a onetime occurrence.
Sketch’s Assessment:
I’m going to focus primarily on the 18-49 ratings this time because in total viewers everything but the 1AM hour did very well but before you start celebrating Bleach’s impressive haul of nearly 1.3 million viewers allow me to berate it for still losing 450,000 from The Boondocks and 0.19 in 18-49 for the harshest drop a show on Toonami had from it’s lead-in. Sometimes Bleach can beat The Boondocks but perhaps it was Black Dynamite that was making it possible for Bleach to beat Boon from time to time. I very much believe Toonami’s rating success is the combination of dedicated viewers and casual viewers and in Bleach’s case it’s the combination of the comedy viewers that tuned in for the 11:30PM show along with the action viewers joining at Midnight. If enough dedicated viewers show up on top of the casual audience then Bleach can beat The Boondocks but with Cleveland driving the casual audience up astronomically from what Black Dynamite was getting at 11PM, Boon is getting a big enough boost to beat premiere episodes on Sundays but many of them are leaving before Toonami unfortunately.
I still have to give Bleach some props of course, it beat The Venture Bros. premiere on Sunday despite having a weaker lead than the Family Guy episode which aired before Venture Bros. on Sunday. I don’t take pride in Venture losing to Bleach, I wish more people would watch Venture. Both shows managed to score #1 with their key demographics in their respective time slots though, so that’s good news for both.
We can see Cleveland is putting the kabosh on expanding Toonami on Saturday for now but that doesn’t mean expansion isn’t possible. It’s not uncommon for 12:30-1:30AM on Sunday to lose to Toonami and we’ve even seen that in total viewers that Toonami can best the 1:30AM and 2:00AM airings of Cleveland and Family Guy respectively. It is actually possible that Toonami’s 3AM-6AM block is doing better than the same hours on Sunday but without question the earlier hours favor Toonami and for that reason it seems more plausible to me for Toonami to take 12AM-2AM or even 12AM-6AM on Sunday instead of 11PM-12AM on Saturday. We just want to make sure that Toonami doesn’t have to use the 2AM-6AM time frame to premiere shows right and they could even split up the 4 part fighting shounen onslaught over the two nights for variety sake. I’m getting a bit off track at this point so I’ll steer this back to the Saturday ratings.
I already talked about Bleach so now let’s talk about Naruto and One Piece. Whether you are looking at the total viewers or the 18-49 you can see there were some hefty gaps between them and their leads. In total viewers One Piece was behind Naruto by a bit more but in 18-49 Naruto lost more from Bleach than One Piece lost from Naruto. Either way it’s disappointing to see them not hold on to that excellent lead better but I have more qualms with Naruto since it’s been around for 6 months where as One Piece is only on its’ third episode and trying to find it’s footing. Neither get off without a warning this time. Bleach could have kept more from Boondocks in theory but it still delivered nearly 1.3 million and over 600,000 of that was in the 18-49 age range but because of the sizable gaps between Bleach and Naruto and then between Naruto and One Piece, the block dropped to below 0.40 in 18-49 and below 900,000 total by 1AM. Thankfully Soul Eater stopped the bleeding only losing 0.01 in 18-49 and about 30,000 in total viewers. I’m personally glad Soul Eater did not beat One Piece a third time but needless to say I’m relieved to hear from Jason DeMarco that One Piece is doing what they expected from it for now but I’m sure it is capable of better than the past two weeks.
Enough bad news though because IGPX has finally stabilized and is getting respectable ratings for its time 2AM time slot. ThunderCats and Sym-Bionic Titan remain strong players in the 3AM hour, especially with viewers over 18. It’s kind of funny really because IGPX and ThunderCats both got 0.31 and SBT and E7 both got 0.27 with 18-49. Though it does show some weakness on Eureka 7’s part, it’s nothing too bad and it’s not hurting ThunderCats any. As I expected, ThunderCats has proven it’s ability to raise the ratings in the later hours. Last week when SBT beat TC in total viewers, ThunderCats actually beat SBT in 18-49 ratings, but just barely.
After Sym-Bionic Titan, Fullmetal, Bebop and InuYasha fine in both total viewership and 18-49 ratings. The night didn’t drop below 0.25 with 18-49 until the last InuYasha which got 0.23. That’s weak compared to what King of the Hill can pull in at 5AM on weekdays but a lot more people are waking up for work on weekdays at 5AM than Sunday morning, for the most part InuYasha is still relying on the viewers who had been watching Toonami most of the night.
Overall: A great week despite Bleach, Naruto and One Piece losing a lot of viewers from their lead-ins. While Toonami did not even mostly beat Toonami last year in total viewers, the Turner PR states that the premieres on Toonami at least gained ratings in the key demos vs. Toonami last year. They only gained by a small percentage but  a win is a win. The best news is IGPX finally caught its stride. In 18-49 everything is fine except One Piece and Soul Eater not getting closer to 0.40 and Naruto and Bleach losing 0.10 and 0.19 from their lead-ins. Toonami’s gotta make better use of that killer lead on Saturday though those huge losses up front are not pleasing to the eye and I was personally hoping a stronger lead would help Toonami more than that. Maybe things will gradually rise as the viewers get used to the new schedule.