Reply To: EW 12/1 – JMo Defends Excess of Curses

Don’t get your hopes up. Once is still doing well enough for ABC, and remains as one of their top rated shows.

I was just expressing the opinion that I think it would be more natural for the show to conclude at the end of s4 rather than to drag it out another season. The show may be performing better than other shows in ABC at present, but the network is known to have a problem on its hands in that it has had a series of flops in comparison to other network channels.

In recent years, ABC has thrown more shows on the air than other networks and thus endured even more failure. It’s ratings continue to decline and for the 2013-14 TV season ABC was third in total viewers and fourth in the key age 18-49 demo. That erases the storyline that NBC is the cellar dweller and CBS is only for the elderly: ABC can now be mocked on both counts. Link

So while ABC might consider Once to be a success in comparison to its other shows that get canceled, the show went form around 10 million viewers in 4×1 to around 6 million in 4×9. The show might hold steady, but that is a very heavy loss. Frozen brought in enough curious viewers for one episode, but the show’s plot couldn’t maintain them. So, the network may offer the show another season to get syndication, but I think that would be a detriment to the quality of the show, which has been in decline for a while now. It seems at least one TV critic would agree with me.

ABC Entertainment Group president Paul Lee, who has a tendency to charm while talking in bland generalities about how all the new shows are fantastic and “delicious,” met the press this morning and once again failed to be humble and made excuses left and right (according to Lee, “Once Upon a Time” doesn’t get the attention it deserves because it’s a family show, not because it’s a blah show). Link