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Showing posts with label House. Show all posts
Showing posts with label House. Show all posts

THE SKED: FOX "Touches" Its Spring Schedule

10:49 PM | Labels: , , , , , ,





FOX made a couple of fairly last-minute changes to its midseason plans today.  The new TOUCH, created by Tim Kring and starring Kiefer Sutherland, won't move to Sutherland's old 24 Monday 9PM timeslot after all; instead, starting March 22, Touch will air Thursdays at 9PM, keeping the AMERICAN IDOL lead-in it had for the successful "preview" airing of its pilot last month.  


Because of this change, when BONES returns from Emily Deschanel's pregnancy leave, it moves to 8PM Mondays starting April 2 (with the final episodes of HOUSE airing at 9PM), losing its own cushy Thursday berth.

Why the change?  The obvious conclusion is that FOX felt, having seen several episodes, that Touch wasn't going to be the self-starter it originally hoped the show would be, and with House a diminishingly effective lead-in, and THE VOICE a surprisingly strong competitor, FOX feared Touch would go the way of ALCATRAZ on Mondays.  This way, they're giving their high-profile new show its best shot.  (And if the show's quality doesn't improve from its pilot, it may need all the help it can get.)

All this is bad news for Bones, of course, which has to open up a tough night instead of getting the benefit of the network's strongest possible lead-in.  But Bones has worked in several different time-slots throughout its run and has a loyal audience that seeks it out, and no doubt the network is OK with the ratings being lower in its new situation (as long as the numbers don't completely collapse).


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THE SKED'S MONDAY NETWORK SCORECARD

11:22 AM | Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,




So much for SMASH being a hit.

NBC:  Leaving the numbers aside for a moment, on a dramatic level SMASH after 3 episodes is starting to lose its practically-cable sheen, and look a lot more like a high-class ABC soap.  The post-pilot episodes haven't even been as good as a typical Parenthood or The Good Wife, much less Mad Men.   And those numbers continue to crumble:  last night's 2.3 was down 40% from the premiere, and as Mitch Metcalf's analysis shows, the drop in the show's 2d half-hour suggests the ratings aren't done falling.  It's only fair to say that if Smash could just stabilize where it is, that would still be a very good number for NBC, on a level with The Office, still the network's highest-rated scripted show.  And as The Sked has noted, the series appeals to the upscale viewers that advertisers covet.  But... coming in 2d place to Hawaii 5-0 (and not that far ahead of Castle in 3d place) is hardly where NBC wanted Smash to be.  On the very important plus side for the the network, though, THE VOICE is holding beautifully, down less than 15% over 3 weeks, and enabling NBC to keep airing those promos asserting domination over once-untouchable American Idol.  


FOX:  The Monday lineup is nearing bottom but may not have gotten there yet.  HOUSE and ALCATRAZ were both slightly down from last week, and Alcatraz had its 2d consecutive week below the lowest number Terra Nova ever had.  

CBS:  HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER, 2 BROKE GIRLS and 2 1/2 MEN all recovered some of last week's losses, but each continues to run below its level from the first time facing The Voice .  MIKE & MOLLY and HAWAII 5-0 were steady, albeit at or just above season lows.

ABC:  THE BACHELOR and CASTLE were steady, 0.1 above their respective season lows.

CW:  GOSSIP GIRL and  HART OF DIXIE both held with last week at 0.5 and 0.6 respectively.

Fans of COUGAR TOWN could be in for a rough night if its rating drops further from last week's blah debut.  THE RIVER also needs to hit some smoother water.  FOX airs the "midseason finale" of GLEE (next Tuesday there's a 2-hour Idol, then the network launches its 4-sitcom experiment).  Everything continues to be new as February sweeps continue, except that CW is burdening RINGER with the terrible lead-in of a HART OF DIXIE rerun.

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THE SKED'S MONDAY NETWORK SCORECARD

9:42 AM | Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,




NBC can't put away that Alka-Seltzer just yet.

NBC:  THE VOICE, down only around 10% from last week's huge rating, is in great shape at 8PM, and those 2 strong hours pretty much guarantee NBC Monday wins the rest of the season.  So far so good.  But nightly wins aside, an enormous amount of NBC's stature and even its identity has been wagered this season on SMASH, and that part of the night is still unsettled.  Last night, Smash's 2.8 was down about 25% from last week, and as Mitch Metcalf details, that number went down sharply at the half-hour mark.  Right now the show can still fairly be called a hit, winning its hour against CBS and ABC.  But its margin of victory was a shrinking 0.2 (and really it only won the 10-10:30PM half-hour), so the show needs to stabilize quickly.  As I noted in my Pilot + 1 review, creatively the 2d episode started to show some dramatic strain, and NBC will hope those are rectified before more viewers depart. 


FOX:  The Voice is killing ALCATRAZ, which fell by almost half an additional ratings point to another season low.  (Terra Nova fans, stop grinning.)  The show has dropped 40% from its premiere rating.  HOUSE also fell to a new season low, but by a slimmer 0.1, and besides, the series is now officially a lame duck, so its troubles are more short-term.

ABC:  THE BACHELOR and CASTLE continue to hold their own against the NBC competition, with Bachelor down only 0.1 from last week and Castle (with a much-hyped 2-part Bourne-type spy plot) dead even.

CBS:  What the hell happened to HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER, 2 BROKE GIRLS and 2 1/2 MEN last night?  All of them had steep falls to new season lows, down 0.6, 0.6 and 0.5 from last week even though competition from The Voice was lower this week.  (And so much for any Grammys halo effect.)  Any and all theories are welcome.  MIKE & MOLLY and HAWAII 5-0 were down a more modest 0.1 each, although that still marked a new season low for each of them.

CW:  GOSSIP GIRL, on the downswing of its illustrious career, was down 0.1 to a 0.5, beaten by stablemate HART OF DIXIE, which was even at 0.6.

Tonight ABC finally brings back COUGAR TOWN, with LAST MAN STANDING as the least compatible possible lead-in for that show this side of Man Up!  After that, the network will hope that THE RIVER doesn't collapse further from its unimpressive debut.

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THE SKED: "House" For Sale

3:31 PM | Labels: , , ,




Today FOX and the producers of HOUSE jointly announced that this 8th season will be its last.  There's nothing particularly shocking about this--ratings were down significantly from last year, and the show is expensive to produce and would likely have gotten more so (both Hugh Laurie and creator David Shore were at the end of their deals and would have had to be renegotiated).  The show will have the opportunity to go out with a real "ending," since there's some time before the season's final episodes will have to be filmed.  


The question now is what this vacancy on next year's schedule means for FOX's other bubble dramas, the new TERRA NOVA, ALCATRAZ and THE FINDER.  None of them has been a breakout hit (Alcatraz was looking fairly strong until it got smacked by The Voice on Monday), and all have pluses and minuses on a business level.  Terra Nova is hugely expensive, and since special effects and action are its main selling points, it can't be made much cheaper--on the other hand, FOX owns the show, and it has promise internationally and in ancillary sales.  Alcatraz, as noted, has until this week been somewhat more impressive in the ratings--but it's owned by Warner Bros, which has a deal with J.J. Abrams, and thus the upside is limited for FOX as an overall corporation.  And The Finder provides a franchise companion for Bones that could come in handy as the older show starts to get expensive itself--but it's showing little strength, even with American Idol as a lead-in. 

The guess here is that if Alcatraz can recover a few tenths from its walloping this week, it comes back, Finder doesn't return, and FOX talks itself into another 13 episodes of Terra Nova.  But what do you think?  Prescribe FOX's cure below...


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THE SKED'S MONDAY NETWORK SCORECARD

9:55 AM | Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,




For one night, at least, all NBC's dreams came true.

NBC:  THE VOICE blew away its competition, especially in the 9-10PM hour.  Its 6.6 rating over 2 hours was naturally way down from Sunday night, where it had the most-watched telecast of all time as its lead-in, but for NBC it was manna from heaven.  Of course, last season Voice faltered somewhat as its run went on, so we'll see how its numbers hold up over time--still, an exceptional start.  SMASH and its 3.8 were also an easy winner at 10PM.  As Mitch Metcalf has noted, though (see his half-hour by half-hour breakdown of the numbers here), the drop over the course of the hour may be something to be concerned about--by 10:30PM, the show had lost 55% of The Voice's 9:30PM rating.  Next week, we'll find out how frontloaded all of these numbers were by months of expensive hype.  For now, though, the marketing people at NBC can exult in a job superbly well done.  


CBS:  The Eye was tearing in the face of NBC's sudden juggernaut.  Every show on its Monday line-up was either at (2 1/2 MEN, MIKE & MOLLY, HAWAII 5-0) or 0.1 above (HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER, 2 BROKE GIRLS) its season low.  That still left the network firmly in 2d place in every half-hour... but 2d place isn't 1st place.

FOX:  HOUSE and ALCATRAZ both plummeted to season lows (Alcatraz was down a particularly ugly 0.6 from last week, leaving it at a very mediocre 2.2), landing in 4th place for the night.

ABC:  Somewhat surprisingly--considering the nature of NBC's new shows--the female-skewing networks held up best against the onslaught.  THE BACHELOR was even with last week, and CASTLE was down only 0.1 from its last original (although that tied its season low).  

CW:  Its young audience was largely unaffected by the sea change at NBC:  GOSSIP GIRL was down only 0.1 from its hyped 100th episode last week, and HART OF DIXIE was even.

Tonight, ABC will attempt to generate some of its own hoopla with the 2-hour premiere of "found footage" supernatural thriller THE RIVER, another series Executive Produced by Steven Spielberg.  No major events on the other networks, but this being sweeps, there are fresh episodes everywhere.


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THE SKED'S MONDAY NETWORK SCORECARD

10:44 AM | Labels: , , , , , , ,




It was the last Monday before things get interesting.

FOX:  The network won the night, although the 2.8 for HOUSE and especially the 2.7 for ALCATRAZ were far from impressive, considering that CBS was in repeats and NBC will be ramping up the competition level enormously next week. February will tell the tale on both shows.  (Creatively, Alcatraz is spreading around plenty of breadcrumbs about its mythology, but mostly it's still just an intriguing procedural with very little interest in character development.)


CW:  GOSSIP GIRL's 100th episode, which as promised did indeed (seem to) conclude with a major--albeit illogical--revelation, could only muster a 0.1 increase from last week, and carried HART OF DIXIE up by the same amount.

ABC:  THE BACHELOR was down slightly from last week, but still up from the other episodes of this cycle; a repeat CASTLE lost to a repeat HAWAII 5-0 at 10PM.

NBC:  Next Monday (and the Monday after that) will be the most important nights of NBC's entire season.  Last night, not so much.  With a last-minute FEAR FACTOR rerun rushed onto the schedule (the reason involved donkey semen, and I only wish I were kidding), the network was in last place (excluding CW) for the entire evening.

CBS:  All repeats, and still a strong 2d place for the night, including wins at 9PM and 10PM.

CBS is all rerun again tonight, and aside from their respective reality shows, so are ABC and NBC.  FOX, though, has an all-new lineup, including the hyped Michael Jackson episode of GLEE, and on CW, RINGER returns with new episodes for the first time in 2 months.


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THE SKED'S MONDAY NETWORK SCORECARD

11:01 AM | Labels: , , , , , , , ,


A night mostly on pause for college football.

ABC:  Although the network took the night, it wasn't able to make as much hay with its female-skewing programming as one might have expected, on an evening where the main event was the BCS Championship college football game on ESPN.  THE BACHELOR, facing repeats on 3 networks, lost 0.2 from its season premiere, and then CASTLE, airing a new episode for the first time in over a month, was a lot closer to its season low than its high.


NBC:  WHO'S STILL STANDING? did what it's been doing, up 0.1 from its Monday night average.  FEAR FACTOR, predictably, hit a season low 2.2 with its male-skewing crowd, and it dragged ROCK CENTER to a 0.8 series low.  NBC is just counting the Mondays (3 more) until it launches its new Voice/Smash line-up... what was that day again?  Oh yes, the night after the Super Bowl.  If only they'd air some promos to remind people...

CBS:   The Rerun King came within 0.1 of winning the night with no original programming at all.

FOX:  ALCATRAZ premieres next week; meanwhile, 2 rerun episodes of HOUSE managed a 1.1.

CW:  The long draught of repeat Mondays is nearly over, but last night was another pair of 0.3s.

Tonight, the 2d episode of WORK IT airs, and we'll find out what word-of-mouth has wrought.  ABC, CBS and NBC air new regular episodes, while FOX and CW remain in repeats.

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THE SKED'S MONDAY NETWORK SCORECARD

10:39 AM | Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,


The networks (well, most of them) returned from their winter holidays only to find less viewer interest than they may have hoped.

CBS:  An easy win for the night with an all-new line-up.  But 2 1/2 MEN, MIKE & MOLLY and HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER were all down from their last original airings, and 2 BROKE GIRLS and HAWAII 5-0 were only up 0.1.  


ABC:  THE BACHELOR, like many of this season's reality franchises, returned to a significantly lower rating (down 0.5) than last year's premiere.  The good news for the network was that CELEBRITY WIFE SWAP held Bachelor's audience well, scoring about what Castle does in the slot--although it was an out of time slot "preview" before the show makes its official debut tonight.

NBC:  Its "real" Monday schedule won't debut until the night after the Super Bowl, as one of their roughly 9 zillion promos for The Voice and Smash may have told you.  Until then, they're muddling through with 3rd place finishes for WHO'S STILL STANDING and ROCK CENTER, and FEAR FACTOR's tie for 2d at 9PM with The Bachelor's 2.4.  

FOX:  2 hours of HOUSE reruns kept the lights on with a 1.2.

CW:  SECRET CIRCLE reruns barely registered at a 0.3.

Tonight, like last night, NBC, CBS and ABC will air new programming while FOX and CW remain in repeats.  ABC presents the actual premiere of Celebrity Wife Swap, and precedes it, for our sins, with the debut of WORK IT, winner (for the pilot, anyway) of this season's What Is This Show Doing On the Air? award.

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THE SKED'S MONDAY NETWORK SCORECARD

11:32 AM | Labels: , , , , , , , ,


The only shows last night with ratings north of a 3 were reruns.

FOX:  Even with weaker competition on both CBS and ABC, TERRA NOVA couldn't climb more than 0.1 from last week's season low, and with only 2 episodes left this season (the finale is a 2-hour special), time is running out.  HOUSE didn't fare much better, also up a mere 0.1 from its season low.


ABC:  Although they didn't equal Dancing With the Stars' usual rating, a combo of the classic HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS and a SHREK holiday special performed well 8-9PM.  Viewers have apparently decided that YOU DESERVE IT doesn't, and the night was rounded out by a CASTLE rerun.

CBS:  Thinking of reruns, The Eye won the night with one arm tied behind its back.  With an all-repeat lineup, CBS was victorious in every half-hour of the evening.

NBC:  The season finale of THE SING-OFF couldn't come soon enough for NBC, although it did manage to climb slightly for its last performance.  Facing repeats on the other networks, ROCK CENTER also crept up a bit.

CW:  HART OF DIXIE's 0.8 was nothing to shout about, but the fact that it marked an increase of 0.2 from the waning GOSSIP GIRL was at least a bit promising.

Specials continue tonight, with CBS airing an odd combination of RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER and a VICTORIA'S SECRET show (an NCIS rerun provides a break between them), and ABC substituting a rerun of THE MIDDLE for the Dancing With the Stars results show. 

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THE SKED'S MONDAY NETWORK SCORECARD

10:00 AM | Labels: , , , , , , , , , ,



Don't get too attached to those CG dinosaurs.

FOX:  TERRA NOVA barely bothers with those creatures these days anyway, being more concerned with dull conspiracies among humans (points to anyone who can figure out what the "time fracture" means), and it may not be showing anything for much longer.  With just a few episodes to go and a massive budget/license fee, this isn't a good time to be matching the season's lowest rating with a paltry 2.1.  HOUSE was almost as unimpressive, also tying a season low with 2.5.


ABC:  Beginning its 2-part season finale with a 1-hour episode, DANCING WITH THE STARS should hit its best rating since the season premiere even after football adjustments.  That provided a fine set-up to the new charitable game show YOU DESERVE IT, but that debut went absolutely nowhere with a lousy 2.1.  CASTLE managed to rebound from that with what should be a fairly standard number even after football is taken into account.

NBC:  Preparing for its own season finale, THE SING-OFF pretty much shuffled in place, but ROCK CENTER, soon to move to Wednesdays, could only manage a horrible 0.9.

CBS:  What are slips of a few percentage points to mighty CBS?  Every one of its shows fell from last week, and every one of its shows won its time-slot.  (Notably, HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER didn't attempt to promote the major plot twist that concluded the episode--had the show pushed that development, it may well have scored higher.)

CW:  It looks like GOSSIP GIRL's glory days are over, but it did manage to climb 0.1 from last week, taking it out of the network's cellar and tying it with HART OF DIXIE.  

Tonight's numbers will be skewed by FOX's special X FACTOR taking the place of GLEE and NEW GIRL, and ABC will air the 2-hour Dancing With the Stars cycle finale 9-11PM.

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THE SKED'S MONDAY NETWORK SCORECARD

10:31 AM | Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,


Monday has become a real problem for one network and a guaranteed victory for another.

FOX:  Due to the nature of Season 1 production on TERRA NOVA, it was always clear that there wouldn't be any back-order this year.  That leaves FOX with plenty of time to think about whether to renew the show for a second season.  It's become an increasingly problematic decision, because at the show's level of license fee, a 2.3 rating is below mediocre.  (However, on a corporate level FOX owns the series--which may have strong overseas value due to its genre--and that will also figure into the decision.)  It doesn't help that creatively, the show has become sluggish and uninvolving, with minimal dinosaur action and dull plots.  As to HOUSE, reports are that the network's decision on whether to make the deals necessary to bring it back will be made sooner rather than later, so the show can build to a series finale if needed, and that's looking more likely than not right now.


CBS:  Remember the concern that with Charlie Sheen gone, 2 1/2 MEN would collapse?  The show is thriving, with last night's rating more than 30% over last season's average.  That goes for HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER and MIKE & MOLLY as well, and 2 BROKE GIRLS, which has eased up on the hostility jokes and become somewhat bearable, is right up there with them.  Spring will bring more challenges with THE VOICE as competition (and SMASH up against HAWAII 5-0), but for now Monday is just about ideal for CBS.

ABC:  A clear winner in the battle of the newsmagazine "gets," the special 20/20 with Gabrielle Giffords more than doubled NBC's number at 10PM.  DANCING WITH THE STARS, while still substantially below last season, is building toward its cycle conclusion.

NBC:  Even with a nationally reported scoop, the interview with allegedly monstrous former Penn State Assistant Coach Jerry Sandusky that was in the media all day leading up to the show, ROCK CENTER barely moved the dial.  THE SING-OFF is counting the weeks till it can fade away.

CW:  GOSSIP GIRL and HART OF DIXIE were steady, but at the low end of CW's 0.6-0.8 range, particularly bad news for Gossip.

Tonight FOX will hope that the GLEE/NEW GIRL post-baseball bleeding can heal.

. 

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THE SKED: Monday Ratings - Network Scorecard

10:11 AM | Labels: , , , , , , , , , ,

Baseball threw FOX--sorry--a curveball, but there was plenty of bad news for everyone last night.

FOX:  Since the playoff game lasted until 8:52PM eastern time, it isn't clear why FOX didn't just fill in the 8 minutes left in the hour and go straight to House at 9PM.  But for whatever reason, they ran their full schedule, and the result was the lowest-rated TERRA NOVA to date, and a terrible HOUSE number that came in 3rd place for the hour and ran (in preliminary ratings) 40% off last week's season premiere.  Also, a lot of angry DVR users.


ABC:  As Mitch Metcalf has noted, the current ABC number is illusory, because it includes the hugely inflated rating for Detroit, which was actually watching ESPN's football coverage.  But ABC fans should cherish these numbers while they last, because even with the inflation, DANCING WITH THE STARS was only even with last week, and CASTLE was down almost 10%.  So there isn't any good news coming.

NBC:  Can you say "catastrophe"?  THE SING-OFF actually found a way to go down more than 20% from last week, and only close friends of Maria Bello watched the repeat of PRIME SUSPECT.  It's worth noting that post-football, NBC expects Monday to be its marquee night of the week, with The Voice leading into Smash.  They're certainly not doing anything to prepare the way.

CBS:  Even The Network of Stability took a hit last night.  The only drop that amounted to more than a blip, though, was the near-20% decline for HAWAII 5-0--but that show had a good excuse, as it was facing unscheduled competition from House.  

CW:  The network sells its advertising on the basis of Woman 18-34 rather than the Adults 18-49s that the other broadcast networks use, but still:  the fact is that CW is still being outrated by many cable networks (which have the benefit of subscription fees to supplement their ad revenues).  Last night, GOSSIP GIRL was down more than 30% from last season's average, and it's not clear how the economics of the network can continue to work this way.

Tonight's big ratings event:  ABC's premiere of LAST MAN STANDING, carefully scheduled for a week when FOX isn't airing GLEE.

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The Sked: MONDAY RATINGS October 10 -- Odd Night

8:49 AM | Labels: , , , , , , , ,

As expected, it was an odd night on the broadcast networks.  FOX's Monday line-up was delayed 55 minutes by a very long (11 innings, 4 hours 25 minutes) ALCS Game 2 that started around 4 pm ET.  The primetime portion of the game (8:00-8:55) did a solid 3.4 preliminary 18-49 rating, but it didn't help FOX's dramas.  Terra Nova, which started at 8:55, logged a 2.6 rating (down from a 3.1 the first two weeks).  House (which premiered last week with a healthy 3.9 rating) crashed to a 2.3 rating at 9:55.  Add in all the upset FOX affiliates whose late local news had to face the ABC, CBS and NBC local newscasts, and the night was pretty much a disaster.


ABC averaged a 2.9 for the night, the same as last week.  Dancing with the Stars has a fast national rating of 3.1 (same as last week) and Castle has a 2.4 (down 0.1 from last week).  But when the official nationals come in around lunchtime, ABC should go down a few tenths since ABC's station in Detroit carried the Bears-Lions football game locally in primetime -- all of those Detroit rating points will be replaced by the tiny ratings Dancing received at 2 am in the Motor City. 

CBS won the night with a 3.9, but that's down from a 4.3 last week.  By program: How I Met Your Mother (down 0.6), 2 Broke Girls (down 0.3), Two and a Half Men (down 0.4), Mike & Molly (down 0.3), and Hawaii Five-O (down 0.6).  Other broadcasters weren't up so  CBS most likely lost some viewers to football on ESPN and baseball on FOX/TBS. 

NBC took a big hit (falling from a dreadful 1.6 last night to a horrendous 1.2 on the night this week).  The Sing-Off deflated from a 1.8 last week to a 1.4 last night, and the 10 pm time period absolutely cratered.  Last week, the final episode of The Playboy Club turned in a 1.2, while this week's Prime Suspect repeat went all the way down to a 0.7 rating.  The time period will be stone cold for Brian Williams and Rock Center.

On The CW, Gossip Girl and Hart of Dixie each dropped to 0.6.

A night to forget.

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THE SKED: Monday Ratings - Network Scorecard

10:53 AM | Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,


The news was mostly good for the networks last night--except for the one show whose news was fatal.

FOX:  If anything, FOX seems to have been the victim of its own hype this fall.  Like The X-Factor, TERRA NOVA is looking like a solid hit--just not the blockbuster the network foretold.  Its 100% retention of the premiere's 3.1 rating (slightly adjusted from Mitch Metcalf's ratings report) is exceptional, and it looks likely to be one of the highest-rated new hours of the season.  HOUSE's return was extremely solid, equal to last year's season average.  


CBS:  From 8-10PM, every show on the network's schedule--including newbie 2 BROKE GIRLS--rated a 4.3 or higher, which these days is amazing. (And even at 10PM, HAWAII 5-0 may have dipped a bit from that lofty level, but still easily won its hour.)  2 1/2 MEN's decline this week to a 6.1 continues to show the aftereffects of its gigantic premiere, but even if it fell some more, it would still be a smash. 

NBC:  This is how you find out you're about to be cancelled:  at the end of THE PLAYBOY CLUB last night, the network didn't run a promo for the following week's episode, substituting one for Wednesday's SVU instead.  With THE SING-OFF's 1.8 anchoring the night (and by "anchor," I mean pulling it down to the bottom of the ocean), NBC is pretty much throwing in the towel on Mondays for the fall:  the reruns of PRIME SUSPECT that will run in Playboy's slot for the next 3 weeks will barely show a pulse, and while the new Brian Williams newsmagazine should do better, there's a ceiling on the kind of rating a show in that genre is likely to get.  They'll wait for the return of THE VOICE and debut of SMASH after the Super Bowl to do battle for the night.

ABC:  DANCING WITH THE STARS is down a colossal 35% from last year (the casting people at the network have to be scrambling for big names they can put into the spring cycle), so CASTLE's 10% decline from last season's average is nothing to complain about.

CW:  The people who watched HART OF DIXIE's premiere clearly liked it, as the rating stayed rock-solid just like Terra Nova's.  Of course, staying rock-solid at a 0.8 isn't the same as doing it at 3.1, but the network could hardly ask more of the show than its improvement on GOSSIP GIRL's lead-in.

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