WHAT MATTERS:
- ABC wrapped up another strong season of The Bachelor with the usual huge spike for the finale (3.2 from 8-10pm, 3.8 for the After the Final Rose special). The finale was still down 6% from last season, but that's close to in line with the drop for the season as the whole, and After the Final Rose was even. This will leave the season as a whole at roughly -7% year-to-year. Considering the previous season was itself a big success and this one had a lot of added competition from The Voice and the Olympics, this was another major win for ABC.
- This added competition plus Daylight Saving took a major chunk out of the other networks. NBC was down double digits from 8:00 to 10:00 with The Voice (3.7) but still got a pretty respectable sampling out of Believe (2.7) in the last hour. I thought coming in that this result needed to be low 2's (or lower) or low 3's (or higher) to really serve as much of an indicator in either direction for its Sunday prospects. Considering The Voice was hit a few ticks more than expected, it might be spun as a minor win, but I would say don't make much of a judgment on this point.
- On a semi-original night for CBS (with 2 Broke Girls and Mom sitting out), How I Met Your Mother (2.7) and Mike and Molly (1.8) took it in the chin from DST, as did Fox's return to a Monday pairing of Bones (1.7) and The Following (1.5). (For Bones, this was above most of its Friday episodes but well below its fall Monday numbers.)
- The cable lowlight was A&E's Bates Motel (0.9), down big in week two.
WEEK ONE
Modern Family had never led into a truly disappointing series premiere before, but
Modern Family had never met anything quite like
Mixology. The show managed a terrible
1.7 demo in its premiere, 45% below an also underachieving
Modern (3.1). There was a lot of competition from
American Idol,
Survivor and a well above average
Law and Order: SVU, but there was really no spinning this one. It was only a couple ticks ahead of the last
Super Fun Night to air after an original
Modern.
WEEK ONE
Unlike with
the slot's last occupant, ABC made at least some token effort to help the premiere of
Mind Games, scheduling a special two-hour
The Bachelor to lead in. Unfortunately, it was not of enough assistance to give
Mind Games any real shot out of the gate.
The Bachelor averaged a 2.5 demo (including a 2.6 at 9:30), but
Mind Games averaged just a 1.1, losing well over half of that demo audience.
Tonight, NBC will preview Sunday-bound drama
Believe after
The Voice. Its Sunday 9/8c slot is looking tougher and tougher after
Resurrection's huge debut, so hanging a number tonight is crucial. I'm not a buyer on this show's promos, but they may be able to get a premiere with little drama competition to roughly the same numbers as last week's
The Blacklist. I might go a bit higher, but
The Bachelor's finale night seems likely to siphon a few demo viewers off of
Voice's usually strong blind auditions audience.
Over/Under: 2.65.
WHAT MATTERS:
- Here come all of the "back to life" headlines! ABC's Resurrection opened to a massive 13.3 million viewers and 3.6 adults 18-49 rating. I said last week that there was a very wide range of possibilities here, but this went beyond even what I imagined. It's a big win not just for ABC (which really needed it) but for broadcast TV in general, especially considering how these nets have been increasingly rejected on Sunday nights lately. The show was able to co-exist with male 18-34 powerhouse The Walking Dead because it leaned much more toward the female 25-54 end of the demo (scoring a 5.4 there).
- Surrounding this big event were nice showings from the returns of Once Upon a Time (2.3) and Revenge (1.9), though Revenge didn't get a ton of help from its biggest lead-in in well over a year.
- Though it won't grab the headlines on this night, Fox had a solid premiere in a very crowded hour from its science documentary Cosmos: A Spacetime Journey (2.1). Though these numbers are worth touting, Fox will probably prefer you look at the cumulative numbers from a simulcast across all its cable networks. Those will be out later.
- As ABC and Fox soared, CBS was left behind. The Amazing Race (1.8) saw its usual week three rally from a terrible first two weeks against the Olympics and the Oscars, but this point was still down nearly 30% from week three of last spring. The Good Wife (1.3) was also on the low end, though the The Mentalist (1.6) continued to look pretty good at 10/9c. NBC sat out one last Sunday with a 1.1 for four hours of Dateline and The Voice repeats; its big premiere night comes next week.
Above based on preliminary adults 18-49 ratings unless otherwise noted. Full table forthcoming!
|
| This Sunday sees a head-to-head premiere duel between two of midseason's biggest promotional darlings. The drama Resurrection got a ton of Academy Awards play and is incredibly high-stakes for ABC, potentially Paul Lee's last stand after a development season of disappointments and many a mega-bomb. And Fox's Seth MacFarlane documentary effort Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey came out of nowhere to get major promo during the Super Bowl. Both have OK but not great lead-in situations; Resurrection leads out of the respectable but fading Once Upon a Time franchise, while Cosmos will have the decent-rated but likely incompatible animated comedies. However, these concepts are unique enough that they may bring their own audiences. (Expensive science documentaries like Planet Earth and Life have certainly done so in the fairly recent past.)
For me, the issue coming into tonight is not who wins between ABC and Fox. It's whether there's any winner. If both shows bomb, I don't care who bombs less. So here's how this game works. "Over" wins if EITHER Resurrection OR Cosmos goes over the line, while "under" wins if NEITHER one goes over.
Highest Rating Among Resurrection AND Cosmos (Fox airing only) Over/Under: 2.25. |
WHAT MATTERS:
- There was only one mover of note on another Friday of all originals on ABC/CBS/NBC; unfortunately, it was week two of NBC's Hannibal (0.8), and it went in the wrong direction: down by three tenths from last week's semi-respectable premiere. It can't blame its lead-in, as Grimm (1.5) actually ticked up from last week. It's too early to completely write it off, because its financial situation is difficult to pinpoint, but this is an undeniably negative development.
Above based on preliminary adults 18-49 ratings unless otherwise noted. Full table forthcoming!
Hannibal
Fridays, 10/9c, NBC
Survivor
Wednesdays, 8/7c, CBS
Bates Motel
Mondays, 10/9c, A&E
© SpottedRatings.com 2009-2014. All Rights Reserved.
