Trauma: Painful Ratings; Cancel It or Keep It?

Monday night, NBC premiered its second new medical drama of the season. So how did Trauma do? Will it survive the ratings war or, like so many other shows, is it dead on arrival?

Trauma follows the complicated lives of a group of brave paramedics from San Francisco. The action drama stars Derek Luke, Cliff Curtis, Anastasia Griffith, Kevin Rankin, Aimee Garcia, Billy Lush, Jamey Sheridan, and Taylor Kinney.

The show debuted on Monday night in Heroes’ 9pm timeslot. At one point, Heroes could hold its own at 9pm on Mondays but those days are long gone. The peacock network is hoping that Trauma can take over. The numbers don’t seem to be panning out that way unfortunately.

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Trauma had a poor start and ended up in a poor fourth place for the timeslot, in both total viewers and the coveted demographic. An average of 6.92 million people watched with only a 2.3/5 rating/share. There wasn’t a huge drop-off between the first and second half hour but, considering the typical second episode decline, next week isn’t likely to be pretty.

NBC tried to put a positive spin on the numbers, saying that the Trauma premiere generated the network’s biggest audience in the timeslot since April 13th. While they’re trying to make the debut numbers sound positive, it actually shows how troubled the network is.

Considering all of the tough competition on television these days, Trauma’s story isn’t likely to continue for very long. Based on economics, NBC will probably air all 13 episodes. But, unless Trauma gets an infusion of new blood (read: viewers) very soon, that’ll be the end of it.

What do you think? Is Trauma worth watching or should NBC pull the plug and cancel it now?

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