American Idol has become such a ratings juggernaut that it’s always a little surprising when something actually tops it. The Grammy Awards were able to do just that last week, thanks to the best ratings for the show since 2004. The other big event for the week was the return of Lost on ABC. It didn’t approach the Idol or Grammy numbers, but it did finish the week as the number one scripted show in the adult demo. Granted, it was the season premiere, but knocking off Grey’s, House, 2 ½ Men, and Big Bang Theory is always worth noting. On cable, the big surprise was probably the performance from USA’s White Collar and Psych. Both were well down from last week. Read the rest of this entry »

The complete implosion of Heroes just never gets old. I’m fascinated by it, and the show found an all new low last week. Over the years we’ve seen plenty of shows fall from their once lofty heights. But to see one crash so fast, and in such a dramatic fashion, is a rare thing. On a brighter note, the week that was also brought a host of premieres, including 24, Human Target, White Collar, Burn Notice, and American Pickers. And if you want to see some really crazy numbers, click through and take a look at what iCarly did. Read the rest of this entry »

FOX has been waiting all season to drop the big hammer, and the time has finally come. Idol returned last week, and the ripple effect of adding over 20 million viewers to Tuesday and Wednesday was felt by a number of shows, but not all of them. Despite Idol adding some 24 million viewers to the numbers that So You Think You Can Dance was delivering, Gibbs and his NCIS team still managed to garner 20.85 million viewers of their own. Read the rest of this entry »

Richard Webber has painted himself into a damn scary corner. What purpose does he serve? What role can he play? A teacher, maybe.… An administrator, certainly. But he’s a doctor no more. I mean, I know I don’t want someone who was once a great surgeon — and now nicks bile ducts without even noticing — walking into an O.R. where I’m on a table. The bigger question, however, is where does this story go?

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ABC has now announced that FlashForward will be taking a little break, with new episodes returning March 4th. And that really couldn’t have come at a worse time. Television is not usually a place where absence makes the heart grow fonder. More likely, viewers forget what you were up to and can’t be bothered to return. If that wasn’t bad enough, the show took it’s fall bow with it’s worst performance yet. Elsewhere this week, Sons Of Anarchy had a big finale, with some big numbers, and Dollhouse returned to be run over by a reindeer. Read the rest of this entry »

The biggest premiere last week came from cable, as AMC finally released their modern take on The Prisoner. I had been planning for months to make a comparison between that and media-darling Mad Men. I always find the amount of coverage that Mad Men is able to generate, despite the fact that its latest season hovered around 1.7 million viewers for most of its run, fascinating. We can still make that comparison, of course, but it didn’t work out the way that I expected. The initial sampling was good, with (2.22m/.8) checking out the two hour Prisoner premiere. Unfortunately, those people were clearly not impressed. The following nights were both a forgettable (.95m/.3). That’s really not good.

Back on the networks, it was a tough week for genre. Heroes found a new low, V dropped again, there is cause for concern at FlashForward, and the must-see Fringe managed to lose two-tenths in the demo. The news was better for Dancing With The Stars, The Mentalist, and Melrose Place. Although, “better” where Melrose is concerned is a very relative term. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »