Ratings Round Table for May 18th 2013

Lots to talk about this week with One Piece’s arrival, a surprisingly great night for Soul Eater and the bumpy road for IGPX. So batten down the hatches and enjoy. Let us know what you think in the comment section and e-mail me at andrewhingson@toonamifaithful.com if you have any questions or suggestions.

RATINGS FOR MAY 18TH 2013

1.0 Adults 18-49 = 1,265,000 in the 2012-2013 season

Ambient Virus’ Assessment:

Well…this week was sure interesting. Not sure where to begin but I’ll start off by saying I’m REALLY surprised that nothing broke over a million. Given what the trends were you’d figure nothing could force Bleach under that threshold but I guess I’ve been proven wrong. Perhaps I was putting a little too much faith in One Piece to bring in the fans or perhaps that hype may have ended up sucking people away from Bleach and Naruto. OR, it may just have been SNL’s fault and we can just call it that…anyways!

Per Slot: Overall average if you discount the elephant in the room, IGPX. If One Piece did anything it did keep the fans staying until after Soul Eater which did amazingly well at 1:30 am with 981k and just a little under OP. The later part of the night fell under what could be considered “normal”, though perfectly fine given it’s time placement, at less than 600k starting with Sym-Bionic Titan. Most slots here actually gain with the exception of Bebop losing 70k from FMA:B.

Per Week: Not bad, though we still have further loss from the week before with only One Piece, Soul Eater and the full hour of InuYasha gaining anything. Given that the causes of the drop should be gone by this week it should spike up quick. Soul Eater picked up the 1:30 hour by 46k and InuYasha’s two slots gained 40k and 56k respectfully. IGPX lost massively from last week at 218k which doesn’t bode well for the only Toonami created show.

Sadly the Per Year data wasn’t available so I don’t have any data to talk about this week. But as of next week, the data will be in sync with the original tab on my spreadsheet so you can either use the Per Year column or just look between them.

Overall: A bad week overall. Luckly One Piece was able to pull the block up somewhat and Soul Eater boosted the 1:30 by a good sum. But the major issue was with IGPX which…I’ll be blunt here…BOMBED horribly. At a -384k loss from Soul Eater I would officially place that as the worst drop in Toonami history, which was once held by Tenchi GXP on Nov 24 at a 408k loss from Bleach. Now many of you will say “But GXP had more people leave!” but if you consider the difference in time slots, which can end up being around 150k average from 12:30 to 2:30, this would mean that if IGPX had aired at 12:30 am it could have seen a loss upwards of 450-500k. One could argue that the 2:00 slot doesn’t mean as much as the 12:30 slot but assuming that IGPX is Toonami’s “baby” it would still be very hard not to say it didn’t surpass GXP somewhat.

Now there was a good argument made by @ItachiIshtar on twitter to me about GXP and the reason for IGPX bombing. It may be possible that having a premiere that late may have been helping the block by teasing the fans into staying up late and watching the later end of the first half. I won’t give my personal opinion just yet as I tend to let things settle about 3-4 weeks before hand but I could see it being possible. However, given the hate that GXP received, mostly opinion based but that’s humanity for ya, I find that to be rather odd of a situation. Either way it’ll be interesting to see what happens over the next few weeks ratings wise to see if GXP’s move did make that much of a difference.

Sketch’s Assessment:

It was an odd night alright. Star Trek and SNL’s finale seemed to drag 18-49 viewers away from 11PM-1AM but I’m told the SNL ratings were pretty average so the particular episodes of Bleach and Naruto might have had something to do with how well they did. Bleach was a downright bizarre side-story about the Shinigami making movies which was good for little more than a few awkward laughs and Naruto’s episode was the conclusion of a written test for the Chunin Exam and while I think it’s an interesting episode, people looking for action were likely disappointed.

I’ve seen a lot of people upset that none of Toonami cracked 1 million this week even though One Piece was a mere 5,000 away from that achievement. Let me tell you why that’s not a big deal and why One Piece hit it out of the park. First of all, One Piece got the highest rated premiere episode of any show on Adult Swim’s Toonami block including Naruto and Soul Eater. One Piece also beat Bleach and Naruto that week in total viewers but that’s the tip of the proverbial iceburg when you consider in the 18-49 ratings, it beat Bleach and Naruto as well as the 9:30PM Family Guy, Black Dynamite and The Boondocks. More surprising, Soul Eater actually did even better than that in 18-49 but not by a whole lot. Think about that for a moment, the 1AM hour beat the 2 hours before it in the demographics that matter most to Adult Swim. Bet they’re glad they promoted One Piece so often. A 0.50 with 18-49 is better than some Bleach episodes have gotten lately.

According to Turner’s recent press release Soul Eater, One Piece, Naruto and Bleach all scored #1 in their key young adults and male demographics so while I thought the mid 0.40s were a bit low for Bleach and Naruto, they still did well where it counts. If that does not demonstrate that the total viewership is not an indication of exactly how well Toonami is doing then I don’t know what is. Even those shows around or under 600,000 did reasonably well with the 18-49 demographic. 0.29 at 2:30AM and 3:00AM is about what those slots have been getting lately and that’s over 350,000 in the demographics that matter. To put it in perspective the 18-34 ratings for that week one year ago for the 3 highest rated anime that night were Bleach with 321K, FMA:B with 288K and Bleach’s 4AM encore with 192K. Note I said that was the 18-34 not the 18-49 but a 0.50 at 1AM is around 650,000, pretty much guaranteeing the 18-34 was over 400,000 at 1AM. Considering nothing from 1AM-4AM got even 192,000 18-34 that night last year, you can be assured Toonami destroyed ASA that week last year. The Turner press release also mentioned shows airing within Toonami gained between 15% to 348%! A 348% increase from last year is phenomenal.

I must admit concern over the massive drop IGPX had from Soul Eater, particularly in the 18-49 viewership where Soul Eater’s 0.50 was cut down to IGPX’s 0.26. That’s almost half the viewers lost which is not easy to swallow. Thankfully, Eureka 7 and ThunderCats brought things back to 0.29 but when the 2AM hour was delivered 0.50 it’s distressing to see so many viewers go up in smoke. What this may be telling us about IGPX is that its audience wont shift much regardless of the lead-in and that’s both a good thing and a bad thing because if a weaker show airs before it that may not hurt IGPX’s ratings but if Soul Eater keeps up these impressive numbers IGPX is going to look really bad.

As Ambient Virus mentioned, @ItachiIshtar’s theory about Tenchi GXP actually lifting the later hours by keeping people watching until 3:30AM seems accurate. GXP has been getting around 0.30 with 18-49 lately so it’s not like that changed dramatically with GXP’s exist but theoretically the later hours would be doing better with something new in the middle of the block and the right show can bring in new viewers later in the night when people have come home from their various social activities.

Overall: One Piece had an excellent first outing, Soul Eater did amazing for it’s slot, the first 2 hours were solid and the 18-49 ratings were not dramatically worse than usual even when the total viewership dropped by over 300,000 at 2:00AM. Soul Eater and One Piece’s victory over Black Dynamite and The Boondocks put #ExpandToonami back on the table. I’m honestly surprised how well One Piece did and for that I shame myself as a One Piece fanatic and I hope everyone who tuned in this week wont tune out due to the show starting over 200 episodes in. Unfortunately, Memorial Day weekend is likely to make the ratings suffer all around so another 0.50 with 18-49 is a bit of a stretch, I kill me, but if the viewers were not scared off then it should continue to keep up with Bleach, Naruto and Soul Eater and that’s all I could possibly ask. Hopefully IGPX catches its stride or it may be advisable to push it later into the night amongst the reruns instead of keeping it with the premieres. The Turner press release should be more than enough proof that this was a great week for Toonami and it bodes well for Toonami’s progress in the months to come. Starting next week we can compare Toonami of 2013 to Toonami of 2012 and there’s no doubt in my mind that we’ll see some impressive gains over last Summer with this excellent line-up.