With the 2013-2014 season in the books, executives are turning towards what they hope will be a promising fall slate. Although investors, analysts and advertisers are still interested in the past as they want to know what worked, what didn’t and why? Looking at the final ratings breakdowns you’ll notice a few surprises that are worth remembering as you make your own personal decisions about where to invest both your time and money in the fall.

For some reason networks can’t make comedies like they used to. The days of Seinfeld, Friends, Home Improvement and Everybody Loves Raymond are seemingly gone. However, if there’s one silver lining it’s that this year’s group of freshman laughers had a lot more success than its predecessors.

Rookies
This year’s three top-rated new rookies comedies (in the all-important 18-49 advertiser friendly demographic) all shared one thing in common…they aired on CBS (NYSE: CBS). America’s most-watched network expanded to a two-hour comedy block on Thursday nights this year, which meant a number of new comedies would be added to the mix and two of the top three came from that lineup. Will Arnett’s The Millers led the field with Robin Williams’ The Crazy Ones taking second and Chuck Lorre’s latest CBS comedy Mom rounding out the top three.

Millers also led in viewers, which made it a shoe-in to return for a sophomore run.  Neither Crazy or Mom caught on to the same level, and while the two were only separated by .3 in the demo, Mom fit better into the mix as CBS viewers tend to favor multi-camera comedies. As a result of that, and the pedigree of Lorre, CBS cut Crazy despite the allure of Williams. It’s not that Mom was necessarily a better performing series, it just checked more buckets for the network than Crazy.

Returning
CBS also controlled the market on established returning comedies as once again The Big Bang Theory was a big hit. The Thursday night powerhouse retained pole position and outranked ABC’s (NYSE: DIS) Modern Family again, while adding to its overall viewer count.

In third place was How I Met Your Mother, which had a polarizing final season. Audiences were already torn on if they liked the whole season playing out over one weekend, but after a poorly received finale they completely turned their backs on the series. In fact, you can even go so far as to say that was one of the reasons why its spin-off, How I Met Your Dad, failed to secure a pick-up order at CBS. While executives said it was because producers declined their request to do re-shoots on the potential series, it all ties together. CBS knew the show had to be near-perfect to counter the ill will of the finale and when executives weren’t convinced of that, it was the beginning of the end.

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Year to Year
Looking back at 2012-2013, Big Bang and Modern Family each held their slots, but of the two Family saw sizable demo leap from a 4.4 to a 4.9 and Bang held steady a 6.2. The big change was in third as Mother’s then-loyal audience came back in droves for the swan song season. Previously CBS’ Two and a Half Men held the third slot, but this year it fell out of the top five as the other two comedy leaders were Fox’s (NASDAQ: FOXA) Family Guy and NBC’s (NASDAQ: CMCSA) 2 Broke Girls.

What’s interesting though, if you look at the top three highest-ranked cancelled series across all genres, two of the three are again comedies. This further speaks to the broadcast networks inability to find and nurture this type of program. The aforementioned Crazy Ones led this category and found itself in the same boat as the previous title holder Rules of Engagement. While both shows had numbers that would have made it a hit on any other network, because of the depth at CBS, it was a utility player at best.

ABC’s painfully unfunny Super Fun Night also finished in the top three, despite the appeal of its talented star Rebel Wilson, which overall is again very similar to last year’s How To Live With Your Parents (For The Rest Of Your Life), which aside from having a ridiculously long title suffered from a similar problem. The show had a great cast, but terrible writing; a formula for cancelation every time.

 

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While the broadcast networks may be seeing stability, the cable industry at large is right on the edge. The smart money is betting on a collapse. Do you know how to profit? There’s $2.2 trillion out there to be had. Currently, cable grabs a big piece of it. That won’t last. And when cable falters, three companies are poised to benefit. Click here for their names.

 

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