Spotted Ratings, Friday 1/27/12: Upchuck

WHAT MATTERS:

• NBC aired the two-hour series finale of Chuck (1.3), which at least capped off an otherwise very low-rated final season with solid growth in each of its last two episodes.

• In the last Friday before CBS returns for sweeps, ABC was once again the dominant network. Shark Tank (1.6) lost a tick from last week's premiere but still did better than any of its Friday results from last season.

• With the usual 9/8c drama suspects mostly sitting out, Fringe (1.2) got a small uptick despite lead-in Kitchen Nightmares (1.4) tying its season low.

Above based on preliminary adults 18-49 ratings unless otherwise noted. Full table forthcoming!

Spotted Ratings, Thursday 1/26/12: Finder an Audience (FINALS)

WHAT MATTERS:

• What an interesting story this is becoming. The Finder made huge week-to-week strides once again. This time, there's another "excuse" (ABC and CBS went into repeats, plus no The Office and an Up All Night repeat on NBC) but the extent of the increase is still pretty shocking.

• So much for the 100th episode bump. The Big Bang Theory ticked up week-to-week in episode 101 to a new Thursday high and widened its gap with American Idol (preliminary 4.8 at 8:00, final 5.5 overall). Rob was flat in week three, but its 36% drop from TBBT would be worse than any of Rules' data points after Big Bang in the last two seasons.

• Parks and Recreation had a rough night with no The Office original. It was sandwiched by a couple 30 Rock originals (1.6 at 8:00, 1.9 at 9:00).

SpotVault - Primetime: What Would You Do? (ABC) - 2010-11

Primetime: What Would You Do?

Fridays, 9/8c, ABC

SpotVault - Primetime: What Would You Do? (ABC) - pre-2010-11

Primetime: What Would You Do?

Tuesdays, 10/9c and Fridays, 9/8c, ABC

SpotVault - Shark Tank (ABC) - 2010-11

Shark Tank

Fridays, 8/7c, ABC

SpotVault - Shark Tank (ABC) - 2009-10

Shark Tank

Sundays, 8/7c, Tuesdays, 8/7c and Fridays, 9/8c, ABC

Spotted Ratings, Wednesday 1/25/12 (FINALS)

WHAT MATTERS:

• Though the problems continue for American Idol, once again down about 30% year-to-year, Fox got a solid preview out of Touch, which dropped only about 40% of the Idol lead-in. It's the season's second-biggest drama premiere in raw 18-49, though it may end up Truly behind some of the 3.0+ self-starters. (If the prelim holds, it'd be behind both Terra Nova and Alcatraz.)

• CSI said goodbye to Marg Helgenberger with its biggest numbers since about halfway through last season. The 21% increase is actually a bigger week-to-week bump than a few notable recent procedural departures brought. The last episode of William Petersen on CSI (6.6 on 1/15/09) was up 14% and Jesse L. Martin's Law & Order departure (3.7 on 4/23/08) was up 12%, though both of those came after long hiatuses.

• NBC's Happy Hour keeps getting unhappier, with further double-digit drops for Whitney and Are You There, Chelsea?.

Spotted Ratings, Tuesday 1/24/12 (FINALS)

WHAT MATTERS:

• Things were rather messed up by the State of the Union address, but the CW got a little bounce. The Biggest Loser hit a season low but fairly normal 8-9:00 numbers. (Most telecasts are two hours.) IMPORTANT NOTE: the SOTU numbers below are approximations based on the prelims to fill out my table, but they will not be counted elsewhere and shouldn't be taken as official.

The True Top 25, Week Ending 1/22/12 (2011-12 Week 18)

Welcome back, Death Star. Fox's NFC Championship Game towered over everything, but American Idol then occupied the next three spots both in 18-49 and in TRUE, despite the show being down over 20% year-to-year on both nights. But as I've said, this could be the year it joins the "mere mortals" of television; the Thursday edition lost head-to-head with The Big Bang Theory but did well enough in the 8:30 half-hour to beat it out overall. It doesn't seem ludicrous to think Big Bang could out-TRUE the Thursday Idol show by season's end (though I do think it got a bit of a bump this week from the 100th episode stuff).

The originals facing the NFC Championship will be an interesting case study for the off-season. The number typically cares more about overall viewing than competition, and the game brought a huge overall viewing inflation. Once Upon a Time feels like it "deserves" more than a 2.61 for going against a game of that size, but it's not that dissimilar to its December and early January TRUE numbers. So we'll see what it does in subsequent results.

Spotted Ratings, Monday 1/23/12

WHAT MATTERS:

• Fox capitalized against repeats on CBS as House hit its best numbers since October and Alcatraz lost an encouraging 9% of last week's premiere audience.

• NBC was above average with Who's Still Standing? and "Rock Center," which was actually a two-hour Republican debate. If you count that as an actual Rock Center episode (I'm not), it'd be a series high.

• As is the case almost every year, The Bachelor is that rare reality TV franchise that grows over the course of the season. This result was 0.3 higher than any of its first three.