With a complete first season already confirmed, “Revolution” now faces the challenge of sustaining enough of its audience to garner a second season from NBC.
The Road to May upfronts is a long one, and it is one that has not been kind to recent serialized drama attempts, but “Revolution” is walking towards that goal with a sense of purpose.
The NBC drama impressively made a ratings gain this week, jumping to a 3.4 adults 18-49 rating with 8.8 million viewers. Lead-in support from “The Voice” (4.8, 12.8 million) was roughly in-line with last week, confirming that the show did not receive an artificial boost.
Since premiering to a sizable audience in September, ratings for “Revolution” had declined for each of its three subsequent airings.
But the past two weeks of decline were very slight for the sort of show that typically struggles to maintain its front-loaded, hypercurious audience, which made for a very promising sign. “Revolution” appeared to be stabilizing, and if it were to stabilize with an adults 18-49 average in the high-2s or low-3s, it was certain for a second season renewal.
The television season is a long one, and by no means is it clear that “Revolution” will ultimately stabilize in that “safe” territory. But in actually growing its audience this week, “Revolution” made the probability of that happening look a lot brighter.
