Nickandmore!

We’ve reported about how Book 2 of fan-favorite series The Legend of Korra (a continuation of the Avatar: The Last Airbender series for the very few who don’t know) has took a hard hit since its return last month. Well, things have gotten a lot worse. Really bad in fact.

Korra’s second book (which is technically still part of season one) premiered on Friday, September 13 at 7:00pm to an average of 2.6 million total viewers for the hour-long opener. The second week dipped to 2.2 million viewers and the third and final week of the series at 7pm actually ticked up to 2.4 million viewers.

Then Nick screwed it up. What else is new?

Last Friday, Nickelodeon decided (about three days earlier) to move the series to 8:30pm on Friday. Now many fans instantly tried to tell me via Twitter that it was a good move as this was a “better timeslot” they said. Well, they obviously don’t pay attention to how things work. For the three weeks Korra aired at 7pm, it had a SpongeBob lead-in. That’s important, as SpongeBob (which is down somewhat itself) is still Nick’s top draw.

Friday’s lead-in to Korra? Sanjay and Craig. Okay, initially you’d think that should be okay. It’s a Nicktoon? Yes. It’s a newer series? Yes, just premiered in May. However, it doesn’t have a good repeat track record. Ratings are nowhere near SpongeBob-repeat level. In fact, the whole new Friday line-up from 7-9pm was weird to look at. At 7:00 replacing Korra was Sam & Cat. That’s understandable, I guess. It’s a new show with a decent viewing for both new and repeat views (though, still not SpongeBob-level). Okay. Here’s where it gets weird. 7:30pm was… Drake & Josh. Not knocking the show at all, but that series ended over six years ago. So, then you had the aforementioned Sanjay and then was Korra. So, between the 6:30 SpongeBob episode (which by the way scored 2.3 million viewers on Friday – again, not great for that series’ normal repeat levels, but decent) you had three different series that are nowhere near Korra-compatible.

So, how did Korra do at 8:30pm? Well, it had an average of 1.1 million total viewers (1,103,000 to be exact).

This ‘book’ of Korra has already hit series lows with the season premiere, then the second episode, but this is… well, a big time series low. From 2.2 million viewers on Sept. 20 to a mere 1.1 million on Oct. 4.

How sad?

Still, Nickelodeon is supposedly going through with further books (three and four should have 13 episodes each). Here’s hoping that despite Nick’s terrible scheduling treatment for Korra, the show will continue to be produced and continue to air on the main Nickelodeon channel (and not get booted off to the graveyard at Nicktoons, like so many others – including T.U.F.F. Puppy, which joins the network-of-losers later this month).