Thread by @gauravsabnis

Every year, I do a thread on the post-superbowl show lead-in phenomenon, another quirky thing. With some counter intuitive trivia. The most watched FRIENDS episode when the show aired was not the finale or any wedding or birth episode. Plotwise, unimportant and blah episode.

In fact with the Marcel the monkey storyline and very contrived guest appearances, it might be THE worst Friends episode ever. But it got more ratings than even the finale. Because it was right after a #SuperBowl on the same network. Which is a BIG decision every year.

SB broadcasts rotate between the networks. So every February, once the game ends, the network (this year CBS) have THE biggest potential captive audience of the year (a.k.a. lead-in), already primed to pay attention to ads. TV watching has traditionally been "sticky" behavior.

So you have a massive audience just sitting to be engaged. What should the networks put on the air right after? Their big hit? Pointless cos it's a big hit anyway. Nothing very niche or esoteric either. Rarely something completely new. Usually it's a safe upside calculation.

It's usually a show that the networks think has enough basic elements to become a bigger hit than it actually is, if it only got more exposure. It's an investment. Recent such shows - The Masked Singer, This is Us, Elementary, Brooklyn99. Very rare to have a pilot there.

Pilots can bomb badly and shows die early. Usually this bump is given to shows that have already aired at least some episodes and have a decent base audience. That they hope can suddenly double or triple overnight with exposure to the massive audience. Pilots a BIG gamble.

So when a pilot is chosen in a rare year like this, it has to have a really big bankable name Queen Latifah. CBS bosses seem to have faith in this brand new crime drama series #TheEqualizer to premiere it in front of THE biggest TV audience of the year in the US.

Here's a list of Super Bowl lead-out shows over the years. You'll find many familiar successful names and the bump from the game seemed to grow the fan base for most of them.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_S…