The Orville renewed for season 3 on Fox despite drop in ratings
Fox has announced The Orville is coming back for a third season, despite the show struggling to maintain its ratings from season one.
It took a while, but Fox has renewed Seth MacFarlane’s The Orville for a third season, according to a report from Deadline.
It sounds like the show’s future was never in doubt, despite having a pretty significant ratings dip in season two. With 3.16 million viewers per episode and a rating of .75 with the 18-49 demographic, The Orville took a 27% and 40% slide in those categories, respectively, according to TV Series Finale.
TV Series Finale also ranked those numbers in comparison to Fox’s 15 other scripted show. MacFarlane’s show was 9th in viewers and 12th in demographic rating.
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In the 18-49 demographic, The Orville is Fox’s lowest rated show to be renewed with the next lowest being The Resident at a rating of .94 and a ranking of 8th. Unless you were The Orville, if you ranked 9th or lower in that demographic for Fox, you were cancelled.
The Orville delivered a solid second season, despite what the ratings says. Like many other science fiction shows involving traveling through space, it has taken some time for the writers to find their footing. This season marked a significant step toward finding the right balance between comedy, space adventure, social commentary and season-long plot arcs.
A third season could really give the show a chance to show off what they’ve learned from a second season that was already much more adventurous than the first.
Hopefully this means its ratings will bounce back (and hopefully the dedicated fans already watching the show tell their friends to tell five more friends about the show). As Deadline points out, where The Orville struggles in traditional metrics, they excel in delayed and on-demand viewing.
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Sure, The Orville is a bit of a niche show, but the fact that they had to spend all winter in the same time slot at NBC powerhouses Brooklyn Nine-Nine and The Good Place, it’s not surprising that people chose to wait until later to catch up on the Orville crew.
It’s too soon to tell if that competition will prompt a move on Fox’s part. But hey, no matter what, there’s at least one more season of The Orville coming our way.
Are you excited for more adventures? Let us know your thoughts on The Orville in the comments!
(Source: Deadline)