After the dramatic entrance of V last week, there were no similar big splash stories to lead things off this week. Then, as I was perusing the year-ago numbers, something occurred to me. It’s quite possible that FOX could improve both Monday and Thursday at 9:00 if they swapped Fringe and Lie To Me. If you look back to the initial Fringe run, it had a lot of success following House. In fact, while the House numbers are virtually unchanged from Tuesday to Monday, Fringe was holding much more of the House audience on Tuesday than Lie To Me currently is on Monday.

Example:
11/18/08: House (13.03m/5.5), Fringe (9.36m/4.2)
11/09/09: House (13.31m/5.3), Lie To Me (7.41m/3)

And that was against very similar competition. Both faced DWTS on ABC, which was pretty much a wash. NBC was greatly improved against Fringe with Biggest Loser (7.84m/3.3), as opposed to Trauma (5.35m/1.8). And CBS was mixed, with The Mentalist (15.83m/3.5) trailing the Men/Big Bang hour (13.62m/4.6) in the demo.

Now we look at where we are this season. Fringe did manage something of a rebound this week, finishing with (5.91m/2.2) on Thursday. That’s still a distant fourth place, and should find the show on the hot seat at the end of the season. It would, obviously, do better on Monday following House. The question is, would it do better than the (7.41m/3) that Lie To Me is currently offering? I think it would.

On the other side of that coin, while I’m not quite as confident about the move of Lie To Me to Thursday, I do still see the potential for it to outperform the current Fringe numbers. That bar has been set, after all, rather low. It would likely take a  hit in the move, but the end result would be that Thursday at 9:00 is stronger as well. Just something to think about. The usual numbers junk is after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

The World Series was the big ratings winner last week, but with New York involved, everyone kind of expected that, right? What nobody expected — most notably ABC — was the success of the V premiere. The numbers weren’t just good. It was the highest rated scripted program on the network, topping the Housewives and Grey’s. Even better, the V demo rating was the highest for a scripted show on any of the networks.  Someone at ABC has to be kicking themselves for only ordering four episodes of V, while they continue to crank out more Hanks than they know what to do with. Read the rest of this entry »

A combination of baseball and pre-sweeps repeats made for a bit of an odd week. Repeats don’t mean there aren’t numbers of note however. We had Jay Leno’s first shot against CSI: Miami and NY repeats, and a look at what running repeats on Friday does for FOX. That is, nothing good for Dollhouse season 3. Also interesting this week — The Mentalist finally topped CSI in viewers and the demo, and even a repeat Gibbs appearance is worth 16 million viewers. Read the rest of this entry »

We do often get caught up in the big numbers from the big networks. It is, after all, hard to overlook the fact that NCIS is still growing its audience in the 7th season. There are still some very interesting stories happening on the little network, CW. When it was announced that Vampire Diaries would be paired with Supernatural, while Smallville was shuffled off to Friday, many people expected that was the end.

The show wouldn’t be able to come back from a year grinding away on Friday nights. After a few weeks looking at the numbers though, that’s not the case at all. Clark and the gang can celebrate good times, despite taking a hit from the move. In fact, this week Smallville topped new episodes of One Tree Hill, Gossip Girl, 90210, and Melrose Place. It’s far from done. Elsewhere, we had our first sizable crop of repeats this week, which brought some interesting results. Read the rest of this entry »

FlashForward is one of the more interesting shows of the new season where ratings are concerned. On the one hand, so far it has been a huge upgrade for the 8-9 spot on ABC. And while it has been surpassed by Survivor, it does continue to hold off Bones in the demo. On the other hand, the ratings don’t seem to be settled yet, which makes each week a new adventure. This week, the yo-yo headed back up. What will next week bring? One can only guess. I continue to think that it will eventually be passed up by the fiercely loyal Bones audience at some point, finding its place as the number 3 show in the hour. Elsewhere this week, there was good news for Dancing With The Stars, NCIS, Law & Order, So You Think You Can Dance, and Smallville. The news wasn’t so good for Hank, Parks & Recreation, Three Rivers, or Melrose Place.

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FlashForward has had an interesting run in its first three episodes. After being one of the most hyped shows leading into the season, the show kicked things off with 12.47 million viewers and a 4 demo.  Those numbers are of particular note, as both of them topped perennial Thursday at 8 champ, Survivor. Week two brought the expected drop, and found the show with 10.73 million viewers and a 3.7. Still solid, but it fell behind Survivor in viewers. Week three is where things get really interesting.

With the show falling to 9 million viewers and a 3 demo, Survivor reclaimed the top spot, and Bones moved to number two in viewers. The iffy bit here is that week three also had playoff baseball to contend with, which could have contributed to those lower than expected numbers. That leaves week four up in the air. Which way will the numbers go? As CJ suggested, it sounds like a good idea for another ratings game. I believe the 9 million viewers was an anomaly, and the number will bounce back this week. So, I’m setting the over/under at 10.25 million. You make the call in the poll, and leave your best guess for the viewer number in the comments. Winner can pick the show for the next ratings game.

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It was a strange week for ratings. Brett Favre playing against Green Bay made for a huge Monday Night Football (21.84m/9) audience on ESPN. And then the baseball playoffs ran through the rest of the week, calling a lot of the seemingly odd drops in viewers into question. Despite that increased competition, there was some good news to be had. The Biggest Loser, Bones, The Office, Lie To Me, Castle, and The Simpsons all managed to make gains week-to-week. Dollhouse also got in the game, stopping a four episode streak of series lows. On the other side, it’s starting to look like ER took all of it’s viewers with it when it left. The premiere numbers for Three Rivers were not good, and NBC’s dueling medical dramas continue to struggle. Read the rest of this entry »