Spotted Ratings, Friday 9/23/11: A Gifted Meh

WHAT MATTERS:

• Fox's Fringe returned in fairly uninspiring fashion, about in line with the average of its winter/spring 2011 run on Friday. It was significantly down from the 1.9 it brought to its Friday debut but up from the last six Friday eps. Fox got a similarly OK showing out of Kitchen Nightmares, which was also right in line with its early 2011 average.

• CBS debuted newbie A Gifted Man in line with the year-ago debut of Medium, another relatively uninspiring but not terrible debut considering its brutal timeslot. The show skewed absolutely ancient with 9.3 million total viewers, meaning an estimated 19% of its audience was in the demo. That's the lowest percentage of any show thus far this season.

• Elsewhere on CBS, CSI: NY and Blue Bloods were both solid if down a couple ticks year-to-year. Blue Bloods cracked a 2.0 on Friday for the first time since its second ep ever back on 10/1/10.

• The disaster continues for the CDub, with Nikita down more than half from both its own year-ago Thursday premiere and from Smallville's year-ago rating in the timeslot. Supernatural was also down huge, dropping a half point from last year's premiere.

• NBC got a great showing from Dateline, which more than doubled its lead-in and averaged a 2.0 demo on Friday for the first time in almost two years - since 12/11/09.

• Same-week encores of Up All Night, Whitney, Modern Family and Revenge all did fine, with Revenge once again making big strides on the year-ago episode of The Whole Truth (whose Friday encore managed just a 0.7 last year).

FULL TABLE:

	Viewers	A18-49	Share	Skew	Last	Lead	LeLa	Avg	Rank	TRUE
Modern Family (R)	3.93	1.0	4	33%	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	1/1	1.12
Modern Family (R)	3.80	1.1	4	37%	+10%	+10%	+0%	+10%	1/2	1.39
Revenge (R)	4.21	1.1	3	33%	n/a	+0%	n/a	n/a	1/1	1.26
20/20	3.34	1.0	3	38%	-17%	-9%	+57%	-17%	2/2	1.11
A Gifted Man	9.45	1.4	5	19%	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	1/1	1.72
CSI: NY	10.68	1.8	6	22%	n/a	+29%	n/a	n/a	1/1	2.14
Blue Bloods	12.06	2.0	6	21%	n/a	+11%	n/a	n/a	1/1	2.29
Up All Night (R)	3.11	0.8	3	33%	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	2/3	0.82
Whitney (R)	3.09	0.9	3	37%	n/a	+13%	n/a	n/a	1/1	1.15
Dateline Fri	7.24	2.0	6	35%	n/a	+122%	n/a	n/a	1/1	2.39
Kitchen Nightmares	3.90	1.6	6	53%	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	1/1	2.01
Fringe	3.48	1.5	5	55%	n/a	-6%	n/a	n/a	1/1	1.69
Nikita	1.85	0.6	2	42%	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	1/1	0.75
Supernatural	2.01	0.8	3	51%	n/a	+33%	n/a	n/a	1/1	0.96

KEY (with much more detail at the New Daily Spotted Ratings page):

Viewers - The total number of viewers (age 2+, in millions) that watched the program.
A18-49 - Adults 18-49 rating. Percentage of US TV-owning adults 18-49 watching the program.
Share - Adults 18-49 share. Percentage of US TV-watching adults 18-49 watching the program.
Skew - Percentage of the total audience that falls in the 18-49 demo.
Last - A18-49 percent difference from previous episode.
Lead - A18-49 percent difference from lead-in program.
LeLa - A18-49 percent difference between the show's lead-in and its lead-in for the previous episode.
Avg - A18-49 percent difference from the show's average demo for previous original episodes this season.
Rank - The A18-49 rating's rank among the show's episodes that have aired so far this season.
TRUE - True Strength, a metric developed last summer that adjusts the A18-49 rating for overall viewing levels, competition and lead-in.

(R) - Repeat.

More Spotted Ratings in the Index.