War of 18-49 Update, American Idol (2012-13)

Let's take a look at the 2012-13 season (the twelfth overall) of American Idol on Fox.

Spotted Ratings, Weekend Roundup (6/14-6/15/13)

WHAT MATTERS:

• The weekend's top program was Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Finals over on NBCSN (3.96m, 1.5). It continued the Cup's torrid year-to-year growth pace, as the two NBCSN games more than doubled last year's NBCSN games (0.6 and 0.8 for Games 3 and 4).

• Zese clocks were back with the microscopically-viewed two-hour return of Zero Hour on Saturday, and ABC will add 666 Park Ave to the burn-off mix starting next Saturday.

Spotted Ratings, Monday 6/17/13

WHAT MATTERS:

• The Voice got a fairly typical 10%ish week-to-week bump for its performance finale. This result was a few ticks below the fall performance finale (4.2 on 12/17/12) but about in line with last spring's final ep (3.8 on 5/7/12). Week two of The Winner Is preview became the latest week two grower among the summer entries, up by a tick.

• Last week's second ep grower Mistresses, however, gave back the growth in week three and returned to its premiere level.

• The Stanley Cup Finals moved to cabler NBCSN for Games 2 and 3. Monday's Game 3 had 4.00m viewers and a 1.6 demo rating. Haven't seen a Game 2 demo yet but the viewership was almost identical (3.96m).

• TNT had a second straight night of distressing post-premiere drops as Major Crimes (0.7) and King & Maxwell (0.4) each shed a couple ticks, and MTV's Teen Wolf (0.7) also took a dive.

Spotted Ratings, Sunday 6/16/13

WHAT MATTERS:

• Game 5 of the NBA Finals dropped a bit from Game 4. The last of the year-to-year comparisons saw this game go -17%, though it wasn't a decisive game this year.

• There were some weak results elsewhere, including the Miss USA competition, down 28% from last year's (which was not against the Finals). HBO brought back True Blood (2.4), which finally took a noticeable ratings dip (down nearly 20% from last year), while TNT's Falling Skies (1.0) took a dive-bomb in its second week back. Let's see where these two end up when the NBA is out of the way next week.

War of 18-49 Update, NCIS (2012-13)

Let's take a look at the 2012-13 season (the tenth overall) of NCIS on CBS.

A18-49+: The New Shows Post

The A18-49+ theme posts combine all of the individual season info in one specific category, allowing us to line up the last ten seasons of collective Live+SD ratings declines on a relatively apples-to-apples basis. In future seasons I will update these pages with the new season numbers and updated info on the longevity of the new shows.

For people who followed the first iterations of these posts back in Spring 2012, there will be a lot of text copied over. The only completely "new" stuff is some tweaks to the sections discussing the new shows' longevity, plus a table involving the recently introduced Career A18-49+ at the end.

War of 18-49 Update, The Big Bang Theory (2012-13)

Let's take a look at the 2012-13 season (the sixth overall) of The Big Bang Theory on CBS.

The Question, Sunday 6/16/13: Can True Blood Hold Off the Bleeding Again?

Nothing on TV these days has settled into a ratings groove quite like HBO's vampire drama True Blood. It's amazingly continued to hold onto virtually the same ratings over the last three seasons, even though the buzz and critical acclaim seem to have waned. Last season was as consistent as it gets on TV, with every single rating falling somewhere from 2.6 to 2.9. It's back for another bite tonight. Can True Blood hold off the bleeding again? That's The Question for Sunday, June 16, 2013.

Spotted Ratings, Thursday 6/13/13

WHAT MATTERS:

• Game 4 of the NBA Finals was the best of all worlds for ABC; the rating itself took a significant upswing, making it the first game of the series within single digits year-to-year. The result ensured the series is going at least six games (with Game 6 up against The Voice's finale on Tuesday). And it seemed to take a chunk out of almost every competing program, at least on broadcast.

• More resilient was USA's combo of Burn Notice (1.19) and Graceland (0.80), both of which were virtually even with last week. And TBS had a pretty decent return from sophomore sitcom Sullivan & Son (0.91), which actually outrated most of the spring episodes of Men at Work in the timeslot.

Top 10 of the Last 10, New Scripted Shows

The collective decline in Live+SD ratings makes it hard to fairly compare numbers across seasons. But with the A18-49+ stat, we have the technology! Enter the "Top 10 of the Last 10" lists, which will line up the last ten seasons (2003-04 thru 2012-13) and give us an idea of which shows were strongest after we set the collective decline off to the side. (I'll throw in the raw numbers too, to give a sense of how far ratings have fallen.)

Today, the top 10 scripted newbies of the last decade. It's quite an eclectic list; some went on to sustained success and are still big nearly a decade later, some flamed out quickly, and some... didn't even get renewed for season two?!