Ugly Betty Still Hanging In There On The Renew/Cancel Index

by Tom on January 22nd, 2009

As many of you know, we’ve been watching how Ugly Betty has been faring on the Renew/Cancel index at TV By The Numbers. In short, the TVBTN folks have come up with a formula that crunches the internals of the weekly ratings numbers for all TV shows, and uses those numbers to rank the shows on their likelihood of being canceled. The formula relies heavily on the 18-49 “demos”, because apparently there’s an almost direct relation between the demo numbers and a show’s survival. The history of “the index” is that it’s quite accurate.

(That’s always been true, this is just a good way for a numbers geek like me to evaluate ratings).

Anyway, Ugly Betty throughout season 3 has teetered on the line between “Not Likely To Be Renewed“ and “Renewal Likely for 2009-10“. As of this week, the show is listed on the line again, but still in the “Renewal Likely” category. Of course, we haven’t had an influx of new episodes to measure lately, so we’ll just have to see where Betty moves the next few weeks.

Betty has actually fared pretty well against venerable powerhouse Survivor in the demos (actually winning the Young Women category most of the time). With Survivor in mid-season hiatus, now is make or break time for Ugly Betty. One possible pitfall, though, is the fact that it is now going head-to-head with Fox’s Bones, a show that has done much better than Betty thus far.

I know at least one commenter at Ugly Betty news has stated that Bones will be the show they watch, and Ugly Betty will be on the DVR. This should get interesting.

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