It looks like CW’s aiming to stay the course with their new dramas. The network announced today that they’ve given full season orders for all three freshmen drama series The Originals, The Tomorrow People and Reign. These are three of five new series CW is introducing this season, with two more lined up to join the network during Midseason.
Of the three series, Vampire Diaries spinoff The Originals is ahead in terms of weekly viewers, managing to surpass the two million viewer mark with almost every episode, though last week’s “Fruit of the Poisoned Tree” just barely managed to accomplish that, with 2.03 million viewers. With that said, that’s actually not that far off from what The Vampire Diaries brings in these days (2.6 million viewers for the last new episode).
Having a pre-established viewership probably didn’t hurt The Originals, and all things considered, the series has managed to retain much of its premiere audience, which is more than can be said for The Tomorrow People. The sci-fi remake about a group of kids with superhuman abilities debuted to an audience of 2.32 million viewers, but its most recent episode (last week’s “All Tomorrow’s Parties”) took in just 1.56 million viewers.
And finally, while Reign debuted to a smaller audience than The Tomorrow People — with 1.98 million viewers tuning in for the young-adult/period drama loosely based on Mary, Queen of Scots — its latest episode (“Hearts and Minds”) is actually up a bit over The Tomorrow People’s last episode, with 1.64 million viewers tuning in.
These numbers might not seem spectacular by comparison to the other major networks, but they’re about on par with what The CW dramas tend to bring in. Of course, that tends to vary a bit. Arrow’s last new episode (“League of Assassins”) earned 2.8 million viewers, which is far above the underperforming Carrie Diaries, which brought in .77 million viewers for last week’s “Strings Attached.” Also teetering below the million-viewer mark is Hart of Dixie, which earned a million viewers even for the fifth and most recent episode of its current third season.
Coming up for Midseason on The CW, the network has The 100 and Star-Crossed lined up. The former appears to be the networks grab at the Hunger Games audience, centering on a a group of juvenile delinquents who are deposited on an overgrown and potentially unstable Earth to see if the planet is fit for habitation after having been abandoned long ago. Meanwhile, Star-Crossed seems like more of a Romeo and Juliet story, set in a post-alien-invasion world and centering on a teen human girl who sets her sights on a teen alien. It’ll be interesting to see how both of those shows stack up in the ratings among CW’s audience. In the meantime, those who are enjoying The Originals, Reign and The Tomorrow People can rest assured that all three series will be around for the rest of the season.
Keep up to date with what’s been cancelled and renewed in our 2013-2014 TV scorecard here.
