Do TV Ratings Even Matter Anymore?

So I think we should be less than surprised that Constantine’s ratings have not been great.  Not horrible, but not the ratings hit like Fox’s Gotham or CW’s Arrow/Flash have become.  Why should we not be surprised?  It launched on a Friday, and not just any Friday a Friday that had a World Series game.  Then the next week it was Halloween.  I am not sure that NBC wanted Constantine to be a hit with a one two punch like that.  Now in week three the ratings did go up a bit.  Not a lot, but enough to at least get it to respectable levels.

Friday’s are always bad for a show, and are the death knell for shows that skew younger because kids got stuff to do on Friday nights.  However something interesting has started to happen.  NBC is adding in all the “Other devices and media” views, and the ratings grow by over 2.9 million people, and that doesn’t even track all the places that Constantine is viewable on.  Now that is not a run away hit, but a large group of people are watching, and it looks like they are tuning in every week, just not on “live” TV.

Now if we were just to use the Nielsen Ratings alone Constantine would probably have enough viewers to justify one full season, and then shut it down, but if you throw in all the extra watchers through “other media” it would be hard to cancel.  I know Nielsen is doing its best to try and come up with a way to track online TV viewers, but it looks like it is doing a poor job.  People are watching TV in a totally different way now, so it might be time to gage the public’s interest in a TV show differently too.