First Two Weeks, New Girl

NEW GIRL (Fox)

WEEK ONE
Fox's Zooey Deschanel-led comedy New Girl was a hit right out of the gate. Its 4.8 demo built by 20% from its already strong Glee lead-in, was bigger than any new scripted series launch in 2010-11 and was more than 50% stronger than Raising Hope's series premiere in the timeslot last season (and that show had a much bigger Glee lead-in). It ranked as the top program of premiere Tuesday. Can't get much better.

WEEK TWO
Week two, same as week one: no real complaints. New Girl dropped just 6% to a 4.5 demo, a pretty stellar week two showing in an age when almost nothing holds up completely in week two. That 4.5 continued to build big on Glee (which dropped to a 3.7) and it continued to edge NCIS as the top program of Tuesday.

PROGNOSIS
Sadly, I couldn't get this out before Fox rushed to announce a full-season order for New Girl, but since I called a forthcoming back nine in the daily post, I will take credit for having gotten that part right...! (It was actually a back eleven, though!) I'm also pretty freakin' confident this show will be around into next season. Raising Hope in the same timeslot was last year's first show to get a full season order (though a week later than New Girl) and also the first show to score a second season. New Girl is performing vastly better than Raising Hope and on a network that has struggled historically with live-action comedy. How could you possibly pick against it?

"First Two Weeks" is my look at... the first two weeks of a new scripted broadcast show's ratings. I also line all of these numbers up to do an objective analysis in what I call "the system."