Rick and Morty vs Archer/Chozen is the NEW Monday Night Wars.

 

The Vulture recently did a ratings report that not only is Rick and Morty beating Archer in the ratings (and more over, CRUSHING Chozen), but that the show is even outperforming NBC shows with the 18-35 male demographic which means that yea a Season 2 is about a sure thing as a Lebron dunk at this juncture…but how did this happen? How is Adult Swim’s freshmen series beating FX? We have a few theories:

1) Rick and Morty had a head start: Yep, this show started in December and probably won’t be over until March thanks to the Shit-lympic games which means they were getting people hooked on the series (ergo building a relationship with the fan base) well before Archer came back.

2) LOTS of competition: Monday Nights used to be a war between fake-wrestling leagues like WWE and WCW and to this day WWE still does really well in the ratings. However, you take into account that a good sized portion of the 18-34 audience is watching RAW already makes Monday Nights @ 10 and 10:30 pm a tough sell. So the fact that Rick and Morty are drawing in the numbers it is is rather impressive and moreover every morning the network uploads the latest episode on to Youtube and then THOSE get like over a couple hundred thousand hits. FX doesn’t do that, and instead it looks like Chozen may go the route of Unsupervised unfortunately. That said, Teletoon at Night DOES air Archer Season 5, so its not like the series doesn’t have its own two-pronged approach.

3) Time Changes bring mixed results: For Adult Swim it worked. The network made a living off of late-night Sunday Nights and with Rick and Morty the network shows it wants to dominate another time slot, that being 10pm Monday Nights. Archer has spent his ENTIRE career on Thursday Nights, so the idea to move the series to Monday Nights now seems questionable. Furthermore, Chozen was supposed to be an FXX series. So, maybe what should have happened is FX should have kept Archer on Thursdays WITH Chozen and maybe switch the shows to the FXX dial, the network I think would have had better results.

4) Do people like the changes to Archer? So, ever since San Diego Comic Con 2013, Archer writer Adam Reed had been rather quiet about anything pertaining to the series just that there were a lot of changes on the way. At NYCC, we learned what those changes were and we are now about a third of the way through the season and dealing with the consequences. That said, did the changes to Archer maybe turn some fans off? Marketing really didn’t do a whole lot to let US the press know what changes were on the way and rightfully so, but it very well could have cooled a lot of the excitement that usually follows Archer and therefore maybe a plot detail or two could have been leaked.

5) All shows are really, really good. Maybe its just a matter of all three shows are super funny and well-written so you have a tough time picking which one to watch first. It’s true, Archer is potentially changing the game in terms of what you are allowed to do on animated television. Chozen is chock full of a stellar cast with a really well-done hero’s trial premise, and Rick and Morty was named our best series of 2013. 

6) Marketing. Rick and Morty did some of the BEST marketing I have ever seen. From bill boards to a space-ship crash in Downtown Manhattan to go along with a 10-page read in Bubbleblabber the Mag #1 all about show creator Justin Roiland. As you guys know Archer and Chozen were ALSO featured in our Mag, and ALSO did some cool marketing promos like hair cuts and shaving deals, but I think that Adult Swim’s marketing plan got people talking a bit more.

So what are you guys watching? Chozen? Rick and Morty?? Archer??? NONE??????