Heir to the Throne - SpoilerTV Favorite Series Competition 2018 Post
(Image: SpoilerTV)
Earlier this year on SpoilerTV, Timeless took Episode Competition victory through "Hollywoodland", and later Lucifer showed their strength with Lucifer Morningstar in Character Cup, along with a rain of wins in the site's Awards. One more victor shall await in the site's ultimate competition: the 2018 SpoilerTV Favorite Series Competition, the eighth edition of the competition that brought 32 current and finished shows to the competition. Multiple ambitions were shown by different shows: Supernatural seeking its former days of glory, Person of Interest looking for the fourth title, Lucifer with a new STV domination after victorious recent fandom outings, and a couple others looking for their first titles which included Timeless, Shadowhunters, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer as well, as well as others seeking another for the likes of Castle and Outlander.
With the Fall TV season has already approached, both the Series Competition and the SpoilerTV competitions saga have concluded, but the post recaps how everything went through and, as usual, all the stats, and finally, the debut of my own SpoilerTV Competitions Suite. We celebrate the exciting conclusion of what can be considered as yet another "Fandom Season" as we anticipate towards the next one, as well as this year's People's Choice Awards which will come in November and has already have its final voting currently running at the time of this post.
THE ANALYSIS
After witnessing @akoria's work during the Character Cup months earlier, I realized that it's time to look at the past results and reflect it to the bigger picture, but first things first, I'm going to focus on the Series competition since it's obviously the main star of the post. While I look at the past results from 2014 to match Character Cup's all-time window (although the exception will lie on the all-time stats which covers all editions including the first one in 2011) and make sure I've compiled a good heap of stats needed, the detailed stats won't be possible without the help of Bradley Adams himself, the one behind the Competition (and Episode Competition as well).
By including all shows competed since the first edition in 2011, there have been 178 shows taking part in this competition. This includes the 166 shows listed until the 2017 and 12 debuting shows this year, which included the likes of Code Black, Shameless, The Bold Type, The Defenders, and The Expanse. Those who tuned in since Episode Competition should also spot the likes of DC's Legends of Tomorrow, Deception, Riverdale, The Good Doctor, The Handmaid's Tale, and This Is Us in the roster, especially NBC comedy The Good Place whose participation in Character Cup was denied after the host ( Dahne) noticed that both Veronica Mars and Eleanor Shellstrop were portrayed by Kristen Bell, thus breaking the competition's "one actor per character" rule. These names also added up the list of one-time Series Competition shows to 70, though it might be lower or higher next year depending of whether these shows would make it to the next edition.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, LOST, Supernatural, Doctor Who, and The X-Files also made up the 10 names competing since 2011, with Smallville's absence this year resulted in the show being unlisted in this category. Out of these names, Supernatural dwells the Top 10 consistently though no longer in their past shape as the three victories demonstrated since 2017, followed by Fringe, Buffy, which made a good progress in the last two years, and LOST, which still shows a good potential by consistently jumping through rankings since their 2015 failure in which the show took a first round exit. The Hall of Fame prior to this year's competition stood with Person of Interest and Supernatural scoring 3 titles while Outlander and Castle only scoring 1.
Votes for this year's competition stood at 92,814, and it's understandable that it's a far cry from 2014's massive number of 125k votes. However, rejoice, this year's total votes not only bettered the past three competitions but also almost reached the combined total of the previous three years with around 95k votes, and all of the rounds actually saw more than 10k votes cast, something that was rendered impossible in the previous two years of competition, and rarely possible in 2015 where only the first and the final round managed to do so. As for nominations, over 700 submitted with 164 current shows and 249 finished shows nominated. The submission made it the second-best number against approximately 1300 nominations in 2014 (with exactly 1178 were eligible out of those numbers) although the current show numbers only beaten 2015's the same way finished show nominations only beaten 2016's numbers, but this would translate into more focused show nominations in pursuit to seed status. Remember that, per competition's rules, shows with episodes airing after 31st July 2018 are considered current, otherwise it's a finished show. Another thing to note is that nominations from both categories may be slightly inflated due to incorrect submissions.
Once again, the two-year cutoff method is used to determine which can be considered as an "active" show and which ones are "finished". This time around, the due date shifts to August 17, 2016, exactly two years before this year's first round kicked off, and is way different to how the competitors are separated in category as said above. However, some heads up: if you've read my Character Cup post for this year, especially, the stats, I've laid down different set of categorization for active shows, with one of them pertaining to whether the official renewal for the competing shows were done before the first set of polls kicking up the competition. Because determining the date of renewal for all competing shows is a cumbersome task and the renewal/cancellation table doesn't provide the information I need, I will have to switch on with the rules which will also influence past statistics for competitions: until a particular show has either been cancelled by the network after its season finale or finished its series finale before any of the competition's first round start, the show is considered as an "active" show (or a current show if you will). This has been stuck in my head after looking at The X-Files's hiatus with no cancellation being announced, and after trying to find out the renewal dates of individual shows of individual seasons during the competition's run. More on this should be covered along with one special announcement I know you've been waiting for since Character Cup!
The ratio of 51-13 in favor of the active shows that this edition focuses more towards series still active within the due date, scoring the highest within five years while in turn giving the finished shows the record lowest. The 51 active shows for this year consists of two currently-airing shows at the time of the competition, being Elementary and Wynonna Earp in their mid-season runs, and 29 renewed shows for the next season, including three returning names from last year's absence Sherlock, NCIS: Los Angeles, Criminal Minds, and The X-Files whose cancellation announcement is still nada. Psych, meanwhile, has become one of the shows within the active division thanks to its 2017 TV movie, but in a bigger picture the show joins 18 others that have ended their runs including recently-ended The Originals, The Americans which marked its third appearance after an absence, and seeded shows Gilmore Girls and Shadowhunters. Just below the cutoff date, three-time winner POI is now a finished show, joining the ranks of Charmed, Deadwood, and The Office, all of which also broke their absence, along with favorites Buffy and LOST.
Change of the cutoff date in this competition also influenced shows like The 100, Poldark, and The Handmaid's Tale, shifting their status to renewed shows in contrast to their Character Cup status as active shows as the shows have finished their season finales. Elementary and Wynonna Earp, as said above, remain unaffected in terms of status with both shows haven't reached their season finales yet prior to the competition. The record for most currently-airing airing shows prior to the start of the competition was in 2015 with 7 shows still airing on August 18, 2015. The shows were Dominion, Teen Wolf, Hannibal, Beauty & The Beast, Suits, Sense8, and Major Crimes, the only eventual competitor from this list. To clarify Sense8's position as an active show, a specialized formula is conceived exclusively for streaming shows whose full season is released in a "binge-watch" format (in this case, all of Sense8's first season episodes were released in June 5, 2015), in which the number of episodes for the season is multiplied by seven (to simulate weekly release format) to determine the "current" date. With this in mind, the show's virtual "still-airing" status would be on the virtue of reaching the 10th episode (August 14) of 12 released.
Shows returning from last year matched 2015's record of 44 featuring all the former winners as well as favorites Lucifer and Timeless, with 42 of the Series Competition's roster also competed in Character Cup last July. Narrowing down to just active shows within the cutoff date, there are 34 returning shows and 39 returning from Character Cup, and 29 of which competed in Episode Competition, all being new five-year highest. With this, a total of 99 shows have participated in all three competitions, but 29 of them competed in all three competitions, another record high, with shows like Arrow, Game of Thrones, Lucifer, S.H.I.E.L.D., Once Upon A Time, and Outlander consistently competed through all three from 2015, among other shows. Just one shows less from 2017, 2016, and 2014 numbers, but still a positive one nonetheless.
The genre ratio of all competing shows for this year has a distribution of 5 comedy shows, 11 teen shows, 25 Sci-Fi/Fantasy titles, and 23 dramas, with 3 comedies, 8 teen dramas, 23 Sci-Fi/Fantasy series, and 17 dramas considered as active shows. While no records within the last five years are made for the overall count, the count for teen dramas matched that of last year's, with comedies scoring second-best, Sci-Fi/Fantasy in the median, and dramas at second-lowest. However, the record for current teen dramas is actually broken from last year's 7, with comedies matching its 2014 highest, Sci-Fi/Fantasy scoring second-best, and dramas still second-lowest within the record. That doesn't change the fact comedies are still under-represented in the competition for the last five years, with the competition focusing more on Sci-Fi/Fantasy and Drama entries. The number of teen dramas competing however is consistently going up. Do note however that this time I consider Veronica Mars as a totally finished show, a total contrast if you read my 2016 post on this competition which centered around my old World Fandom Championship project and that the franchise was under the "active shows" banner by the virtue of its 2014 movie. That said, the only means where a movie can reinstate a franchise's status is by a television movie, which is what Psych has done courtesy of its 2017 television movie (and to some extent The Pretender in the 2014 competition), although it would be listed along with ended shows within my cutoff date.
This year also saw 40 broadcast network shows (which also includes shows aired in public broadcast networks, like BBC and PBS), 19 cable shows, and 5 streaming shows competing, and of course with more diverse syndications in that record it could be impossible for broadcast and cable show numbers to beat their 2014 and 2015 records respectively as streaming shows reach their new record in the fourth year of existence, both overall and active. On the positive side however, active broadcast shows matched 2016's number of 30 while active cable shows reached last year's number of 16, second-best to 2015's record of 18 shows in the past 5 years. These shows are later broken down to 21 networks spanning 8 broadcast networks (5 plus The WB, and public broadcast networks BBC and PBS), 11 cable networks, and 2 streaming services (Netflix and Hulu), and obviously with The WB's demise there are actually 7 active broadcast networks in contention. The number of broadcast networks represented has always been consistent for five years with cable networks still yet to break its record of 12. Like above, the count for networks were also contrast to my past stats where BBC and PBS were counted as a cable, but whether I would broke them down as their own category for the future might be a possibility.
Finally, who were these 21 networks? And how many shows they have their represents this year? They are mostly the usual suspects in the competition: the Big 4 networks with The CW with The WB, the public broadcast networks, Netflix and Hulu, and a couple of cable networks like HBO, USA Network, and TNT, among others. The CW and ABC have consistently been the top networks with most competitors represented for the past five years as you can see on the right side of the stats. The CW entered 11 shows with 10 of them being active (Gossip Girl is the network's sole finished show contender), with ABC entering five shows along with two ended shows Deception and Castle, and FOX with four shows plus Bones and Fringe. For Cable, HBO has four shows with three active shows and Deadwood, with the series ended more than twelve years ago, topping the list, while SyFy and Freeform have all of their shows under the active banner. Of course, all of Netflix's and Hulu's shows are active, as well as public networks BBC and PBS.
And in case you wonder why shows like Lucifer, The Expanse, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine don't have updated networks for their next season, it's because the original networks for these shows refer to the show's final episode date before the renewal to the new networks (just like in Character Cup stats I've compiled). By the time any of these shows compete in next year's competitions on SpoilerTV, they will enter with their new networks listed, which should make an influence in network-related stats.
RECAP
(Image: GIFER)
Spanning 2 weeks and 2 days of voting, the first round kicked off with Supernatural and Fringe defeating Shameless and The Walking Dead respectively within the 70% mark. Other title favorites Outlander and Castle also managed to pass through the next round (with the former recording highest ever winning percentage of 92% out of 1,703 votes in the tie against Dexter), with reigning champion Person of Interest managed to turn the tide against S.H.I.E.L.D. after hours of leading. Favorites Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The 100, The Good Place, Timeless, Shadowhunters, and Lucifer also won their respective ties, with Criminal Minds following suit after a close finish against Gilmore Girls. Things however weren't in line for another favorite Supergirl who unfortunately had to crash in the first round against Buffy. The rest of the first round winners include the likes of last year's runner-up Psych, now classified as an active series thanks to its TV Movie, Once Upon A Time, Orphan Black, The Vampire Diaries, Game of Thrones, LOST, The Americans, Westworld, Sherlock, The Flash, Major Crimes, and Legends of Tomorrow, along with Pretty Little Liars in its first ever second round appearance.
The event proceeded to the second round as the votes take place within 8 days. Favorites Supernatural, Timeless, Major Crimes, and Lucifer went past their oppositions easily with big wins as POI made Firefly concede the competition, setting itself for a showdown with Buffy after The WB series bested Arrow. Two one-time winners Outlander and Castle went head-to-head altogether with TVD and Nine-Nine facing each other for a spot of Round 3, with Starz Sci-Fi/Fantasy series forcing the concluded ABC detective drama to pack their bags, but yet again set to face another detective series, this time a Comedy who has now moved its home to NBC after defeating TVD by approximately 40 votes. Emmy winner The Americans and nominee Westworld also crashed out from the contention with Shadowhunters and The X-Files showing their respective doors towards the exit following Stranger Things, but the award winners club still have hopes within Sherlock whose victory against The Flash skyrocketed the PBS series to the next round, Game of Thrones after easily defeating PLL by a winning margin of 72%, and Orphan Black with a close victory against 12 Monkeys. LOST, Psych, and The 100, besting The Good Place by 14 votes, finally complete the next round competitors.
(Image: Giphy)
With 16 shows remain in the third round, it left the final eight berths be decided in a span of four days. At this stage, 9 seeds remain out of the starting 16. The first day saw three-time winner Supernatural facing this year's Episode Competition victor Timeless with Character Cup winner Lucifer up against Emmy nominee Orphan Black. This opener saw the NBC series, set to have its 2-hour movie, voided Supernatural's fourth title attempt with about 59% of total votes, and facing them in the next round would be Lucifer who gave the no-mercy treatment to Orphan Black. POI's fourth title attempt also found its end the next day after conceding against Buffy with around 67% of votes, ending the show's 26-win streak in the competition, whereas Nine-Nine asserted its strength by defeating Outlander in one of the most-voted polls. Joining them will be GoT and Shadowhunters after winning the third day against LOST and The X-Files respectively, and finally Major Crimes, scoring a landslide win against Sherlock, set to face The 100 with The CW's post-apocalyptic teen drama made last year's runner-up Psych pack home earlier by approximately 300 votes, effectively marking its best attempt.
The next round, the quarter finals, took place on Sunday with all favorites fighting for the final spots, leaving only 2 finished shows in the competition. Buffy and Major Crimes were off to a good start, but it wasn't long until Lucifer and Shadowhunters strengthen their voting surges upon the course of the competition. Lucifer was consistent right to the final minutes averaging about 400 votes in terms of gains from the tenth hour while Buffy's voting gains in every three hours mostly don't go past 200. With Lucifer advancing to the next round, Shadowhunters was set to have a Character Cup repeat with both in the finals and the show leading by less than 600 votes up until the 19th hour, but the plot twist kicked in with Major Crimes gaining about thousands of votes to finally overtake the Freeform teen sci-fi series in the final four hours, and managed to keep this surge of voting intact to ensure Major Crimes' spot in the final round. The roster of four final competitors is exactly the same as Character Cup, though this time in a different composition.
A leaked live reaction upon Major Crimes knowing they had a big gap to cover against Lucifer (Image: Gfycat)
The plot twist made Major Crimes Lucifer's final opponent in a pursuit to the final title, with both shows guaranteed to be the new winner in the competition's hall of fame. The final round, this time ran for 48 hours and started on Wednesday, saw Lucifer kicking off with the lead, with the TNT drama putting up the fight in the first quarter of the final as about 4500 votes were cast. Things didn't look well in Major Crimes' front with Lucifer continuously gaining up and extending a comfortable lead in the next set of hours, gaining more than 10% of the percentage for the remainder of the final round to ensure its title as the Favorite Series this year. The third place match between Buffy and Shadowhunters meanwhile started out on a level ground in terms of voting surge despite the latter having the edge of higher votes for the entire first half. It was during the second half where Shadowhunters would extend its lead, but things took an interesting turn as Buffy gained a lot of votes in the final eight hours, resulting in a lead change as the round entered the final hour. However, the fandom of the recently-cancelled Freeform show quickly turned the tide in that final hour, and as the deadline has reached, they managed to snatch their show the third place in what could be the closest finale ever witnessed throughout the competition.
Lucifer, in its third year competing, becomes the newest show in the competition's Hall of Fame, being the fifth successful show to take the title, as well as being the third broadcast network winner (despite the show migrating to Netflix next season), and extends the streak for the Sci-Fi/Fantasy genre to six. Major Crimes meanwhile scored its fourth consecutive Top 10 finishes since its first participation in 2015, and two teen Sci-Fi series are represented as the second runners-up; both Buffy and Shadowhunters scored their second 3rd place playoff appearances all-time, but it is the first time for Shadowhunters to take a taste of the actual third place after last year's defeat in the same round in its second attempt.
Before concluding this post, Dahne's statistics on the Character Cup inspired me to make this final part of the stats puzzle for this year, detailing polls with most votes, losing competitors with most votes, and closest polls. The last three rounds provided the most surge of votes coming in some of the ties, but the title decider takes the cake with over 10,000 votes being cast, followed by the finalists' respective previous ties; Major Crimes' valiant semifinal victory against Shadowhunters with almost 8,000 votes and Lucifer's victor against Timeless with over 7,000 votes. Doctor Who, The Good Place, Outlander, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine are among those who lose their respective rounds with most votes, while three polls in earlier rounds are the three closest polls for this year's competition you can see above, among others which had a gap of more than or equal to 10 votes. These exact numbers won't be possible without Bradley Adams so credits to him for the percentage!
THE COMPETITION SUITE
The salesman knows!
And as promised, the special announcement is made: the SpoilerTV Competition Suite for this year is finally here! My Excel work tinkering around past editions of the competitions have grown into a full-scale madness that fits all three competitions; the entry lists, the brackets, the results, and the stats, detailing all the journey for the past five years.
As explained earlier, the active shows parameter has been simplified into those not cancelled officially by the network or ended in the final season before each competition's starting date, deleting any instance of "hiatus". This way, The X-Files is actually an active show still with no cancellation announced, and of course this influences the statistics for such part in Character Cup and Series Competition. The specialized formula that made Sense8 an active show, which is applied to streaming shows with all episodes of one season released in one day, also impacts UnREAL as well, making a further change to the Character Cup statistics. Despite the show's final season, released on July 16 on Hulu, it is classified as an active show with hypothetical last episode before the competition's first round being the fourth episode, while the series finale would have a virtual air date of September 10, entering the finished show phase. However, it should be noted that once a streaming show's final episode is aired, it would inherit the real release date instead.
Aside from those, you may notice that there are slightly different numbers compared to previous stats: the vote numbers of Character Cup are now exactly as shown in the voting widget via View Frame Source (or similar) along with other stats, plus corrections on Favorite Series stats (the picture way above had 2014's nominations including non-eligible nominations as well, this is updated in the spreadsheet). Also, for the first time ever, you can see the stats for the Episode Competition!
Despite all the bombshell, it has become a fun way for me to appreciate polling competitions as a pure competition, especially the STV competitions. Both Dahne and Bradley Adams have inspired me more to create the whole statistics, plus the higher level of depth in brackets won't be possible without the help of Monika as well! Without further ado, the spreadsheet is below, but as usual you can view in its full screen glory here or download the Excel file for home viewing here!
But wait, THERE'S MORE! I've also taken time to detail past competitions dating back to 2014 where the five-year comparison you've seen is originated. Enter the SpoilerTV EX Suite, a record-keeping spreadsheet which actually takes a more simplistic approach than the original Competition Suite. Same purpose, but with a different shell; rankings are absent, while the entry list also holds a short statistics which should be similar to what's presented in the Competition Suite, and not to mention the stats revolving polls in each competition. By looking at the past competitions also I learn the history of the STV competitions, which comes as a bonus point as well which should be useful for my next post revolving around this competition!
It is available here for download in Excel format, but it's available for web viewing too by following this link! Note that I might revisit Character Cup's stats with all the correction, as well as exploring an uncharted territory worth visiting: The SpoilerTV Episode Competition, in the next couple of posts.
FINAL WORDS
(Image: FOX, via MyMBuzz)
As the reigning champions Supernatural and Person of Interest succumbed into their early exits, the throne has awaited its new successor. It was through a rough yet exciting battle that decided between eight popular shows from past and present; a Battle Royale of the fandoms to fight for their favorite shows. That new successor, after a series of polls, has taken a form of Lucifer, formerly a FOX series that will transition as a Netflix show next year. Their recent successes, including Character Cup, have officially marked them as the new big force of fandoms. Only time knows whether the fandom can win another set of competitions next year, but with the show finally joining the ranks of big-fandom shows such as The 100 and Supergirl, the fandom season next year will be an ambitious and exciting one yet.
It is of course a long time since Lucifer Morningstar's fall from his throne, but fast forward to present where Lucifans have rallied their efforts in winning numerous polls and ultimately took victories on SpoilerTV; a victory in Character Cup, a dominance in SpoilerTV Awards, and finally completing the journey with a Favorite Series win. Even if Lucifer is finally able to dwell the throne once more, Lucifans' journey is far from over with a new batch of poll-based competitions awaiting them, and one could point out the show's possibility to be at least in the Top 10 of the Tumblr Fandometrics' yearly rankings later on.
Finally, it has been an exciting conclusion to yet another SpoilerTV competitions saga with all its fair share of moments and upsets after fandoms try to give their favorite episode, character, and show a victory they deserve. However, the fandom season chapter hasn't concluded yet for this year: one can eye on People's Choice Awards as the final competition, a probable true form of vote-based award where fandoms battle for a coveted trophy!
~[R]