Is Charlie Sheen Hurting FX’s Reputation?

Charlie Sheen’s new sitcom, Anger Management, has dropped 40% within the past 3 weeks. This is of obvious concern to the producers of the show and the FX Network. I can imagine it is not an easy task to build the reputation of a brand new series, starring an actor who has a rather poor reputation as of recently. When measuring the success of the series, the network is more concerned with total viewers and the reputation those viewers have of the show and the entire network, regardless of what their reputations are of Charlie Sheen as a human being.

As an organization, FX, must take a lot of factors into consideration while making decisions surrounding Anger Management. First of all they need to analyze if this recent decline is something to that requires attention and what the outcome should be. It may be expected that there will be some decline in viewership after the pilot episode because of all the publicity around the premier. However, they still need to ask themselves, is this recent decline acceptable or does it put the network at stake? Producing an unsatisfactory program obviously has potential to diminish trust from stakeholders and hurt the organization’s reputation as a whole. To have an effective measuring strategy, FX will need to use more than just total viewers. They need to use surveys and social media monitoring to discover what their stakeholders really think about the new series.