The War of 18-49, How I Met Your Mother

HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER (CBS)

Scheduling history: How I Met Your Mother has aired its entire 160-episode run to date in the first hour of Monday night, and the vast majority of that has come in the lead-off role. It moved to 8:30 very briefly at the beginning of season two in favor of newbie The Class, then it returned to 8:30 for a season and a half after newbie The Big Bang Theory came on strong.

See (who saw) how it all began: How I Met Your Mother premiered on 9/19/05 with 10.94 million viewers and a 3.9/10 in the demo.  An OK number, but certainly not on par with the gems of CBS' Monday comedy lineup like Two and a Half Men and Everybody Loves Raymond, which had ended the previous season. It dropped 10% to a 3.5 in week two, then bounced back up to a 3.9 the next week and would stay in the mid to upper 3's for the next couple months.

The best of times: Always love doing the rare posts when the "best of times" doesn't come at the very beginning. And with HIMYM, it was nowhere near the very beginning, as the show essentially plugged along for two and a half years as a bubble show that usually rated in the low to mid 3's. But then, a Britney Spears guest spot happened, and How I Met Your Mother became one of primetime's very few shows to build some genuine momentum in the immediate aftermath of the WGA writer's strike of 2007-08, peaking at a 4.5 with the Britney episode. That momentum continued into the next season. But the show's best days had still not come, as season seven premiered at series high levels (a 4.7 and 5.2 demo for two eps on 9/19/11) and ended up edging out the 2008-09 season as the show's biggest overall.

The worst of times: This is a relatively consistent show across most of its run, and the vast majority of its episodes have rated between a 3.0 and a 4.0 demo. So the worst of times usually come when the show falls on the low end of that.  The only consistent sub-3.0 run for the show came very late in its first season, bottoming out at a 2.5 demo on 4/24/06 and 5/1/06. In spring 2011, as the whole CBS Monday lineup fell apart in the wake of the premature end to Two and a Half Men's season, HIMYM again dropped as low as a 2.5 on 4/18/11.

Then vs. now: The 2011-12 season saw the sitcom reclaim a large presence near the very top of the primetime charts, and one of that wave's most improbable success stories was the seventh season of How I Met Your Mother, amazingly up 20% to its highest ratings ever. Suddenly, a show that had felt like it might be winding down became a big hit for the first time and ranked as one of the top five scripted shows on TV. Unsurprisingly, CBS is now looking into continuing the show beyond its upcoming eighth season. Though I would imagine the ratings are going to settle down somewhat in 2012-13, they should remain high enough to make that a compelling pursuit.

Adults 18-49 info by season:

Season	Year	Timeslot	Lo	Avg	Hi	Results	Grade
1	2005-06	Monday 8:00	2.5	3.52	4.4	detail
2	2006-07		2.8	3.33	3.9	detail
3	2007-08	Mon 8:00, Mon 8:30	3.1	3.50	4.5	detail
4	2008-09	Monday 8:30	2.9	4.01	4.8	detail
5	2009-10	Monday 8:00	2.8	3.53	4.0	detail
6	2010-11		2.5	3.39	3.9	detail	B
7	2011-12		3.1	4.06	5.2	detail	A

Year	A18-49+	Label	Year-to-Year			In-Season
			Premiere	Average	Finale	P -> F
2005-06						-20%
2006-07	89	marginal	-1%	-5%	-3%	-21%
2007-08	107	solid	-13%	+5%	+10%	+0%
2008-09	134	hit	+21%	+15%	+12%	-8%
2009-10	126	hit	-10%	-12%	-5%	-3%
2010-11	134	hit	+0%	-4%	-11%	-14%
2011-12	172	big hit	+31%	+20%	+19%	-21%

For more on The War of 18-49, my look at the history of primetime TV's veteran shows, see the Index.