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Welcome to our Ratings Survival Guide, a handy new feature which takes each new fall series on the broadcast networks and tells you the numbers it will need to survive for a second season. In general, a show's success isn't so much where it lands on the weekly ratings chart but rather how it performs in two key categories:

1. How much of its lead-in audience it retains. If a show averages 10 million viewers that's a good thing. But if the show that airs before it is averaging 30 million viewers, that's not a good thing. Why? Because 20 of those 30 million viewers decided to turn off that particular channel when the next show came on.

2. How it performs year-to-year in its time period. A new show is usually in its time period because the network thinks it can do better than it did in that slot last year. In other words, do worse than the show that was canceled after three weeks last fall then you too probably are not long for this world.

As you'll see, together these measurements paint a clear picture on how a particular show is doing. So without further ado, let's begin.

HELLCATS (The CW)
(Wednesdays at 9:00/8:00c)

For the past two seasons, The CW has struck out in finding "America's Next Top Model" a companion on Wednesday nights. In that time no series has averaged better than a 47.62% retention rate among adults 18-49, meaning if "Hellcats" can hold onto half of "Top Model's" audience it has a fighting chance.

A caveat here though: while ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC's target demographic is adults 18-49, The CW's is actually women 18-34. Since that data isn't readily available, we're left with adults 18-49 as the closet approximation. With that in mind, here's how The CW has fared on Thursday nights the past two seasons (viewers are in millions, adults 18-49 is the percentage of said viewers in the demographic; all are based on fast national data, using only first-run episodes):

wednesdays in 2008-2010	time	viewers (retention)	adults 18-49 (retention)
America's Next Top Model 11	8:00 PM	3.96 (N/A)	1.97 (N/A)
America's Next Top Model 12	8:00 PM	3.72 (N/A)	1.68 (N/A)
America's Next Top Model 13	8:00 PM	3.17 (N/A)	1.49 (N/A)
America's Next Top Model 14	8:00 PM	3.30 (N/A)	1.46 (N/A)
Stylista**	9:00 PM	1.96 (47.57%)	1.00 (47.62%)
13: Fear Is Real	8:00 PM	1.72 (N/A)	0.80 (N/A)
The Beautiful Life	9:00 PM	1.27 (43.49%)	0.60 (42.86%)
Fly Girls	9:00 PM	1.11 (35.24%)	0.47 (34.31%)
High Society	9:30 PM	1.01 (56.74%)	0.44 (57.89%)

** only airings that followed "Top Model"

COMING TOMORROW: The CW's "Nikita."