Spotted Ratings, Thursday 3/15/12: A Mother Looking For Her Demos

WHAT MATTERS:

• Oh, those sneaky overnights. Missing appeared to have a solid start based on the HH numbers, but it ended up skewing pretty ancient. Of its 10.60 million total viewers, only about a quarter of them were in the demo. The show started out even with this fall's Charlie's Angels, and there is not much room to drop now. Not a good start, but perhaps better than it appears because of the difficulty of the hour.

• Amazingly, Missing was not even the top scripted program in the 8:00 hour. That went to Community, surging in its first episode in over three months. This performance was 0.4 above any previous result this season and the highest-rated ep in over a year. 30 Rock was also way up in its 8:30 debut. I'm not discounting the hype machine Truly helping out Community, but this would appear to be pretty telling about just what a big deal The Big Bang Theory is at 8/7c, despite all the "its audience is its audience" claims re: Community. Both shows get one more week free of a CBS comedy presence.

• Elsewhere on those two nets, it was pretty meh, as The Office dropped despite the bigger lead-in, Grey's Anatomy ticked down to a new low and Awake steadied in week three but increased in total viewers (another result of CBS' absence - no The Mentalist to chew up the 50+ers).

• The encore of Touch after American Idol looked a little stronger than recent The Finder originals, but I think it was still reasonable to expect better. Hard to make much of a judgment till the originals show up.

• Night one of March Madness was about even year-to-year; last year, the 7:00 game scored a 1.5 and the second game got a 1.4.

FULL TABLE:

Info				Show				Timeslot		TRUE
	Viewers	A18-49	Skew	Last	LeLa	Avg	Rank	Tavg	Lead
Missing	10.60	2.1	25%	n/a	n/a	n/a	1/1	+29%	n/a	2.68
Grey's Anatomy	9.62	3.0	40%	-3%	+40%	-19%	16/16	-13%	+43%	3.04
Private Practice	6.85	2.1	39%	+0%	-3%	-13%	13/16	-17%	-30%	2.11
NCAA Basketball	4.30	1.5	45%	n/a	n/a	n/a	1/1	-58%	n/a	1.64
NCAA Basketball	4.13	1.5	46%	+0%	+0%	+0%	1/2	-45%	+0%	1.59
Community	4.75	2.2	59%	+47%	n/a	+37%	1/11	+42%	n/a	2.81
30 Rock	4.00	2.0	64%	+43%	+57%	+28%	1/11	+8%	-9%	2.43
The Office	4.87	2.4	63%	-8%	+11%	-18%	18/19	-17%	+20%	2.37
Up All Night	3.49	1.7	62%	+0%	-8%	-14%	14/20	-15%	-29%	1.53
Awake	5.12	1.6	40%	+0%	+0%	-11%	2/3	+26%	-6%	1.71
American Idol Thu	16.02	4.6	37%	-6%	n/a	-13%	8/9	+12%	n/a	6.23
Touch (R)	8.57	2.2	33%	n/a	n/a	n/a	1/1	-32%	-52%	1.61
The Vampire Diaries	2.64	1.2	58%	-14%	n/a	-11%	11/16	-10%	n/a	1.59
The Secret Circle	1.62	0.7	55%	+0%	-14%	-18%	13/16	-16%	-42%	0.56

KEY (click to expand)

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.
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.
Tavg - A18-49 percent difference from its timeslot's previous original entertainment average this season.
TRUE - True Strength, a metric that adjusts the A18-49 rating for overall viewing levels, competition and lead-in. (Note: these are PRELIMINARY TRUE calculations. Finals come next week.)

(R) - Repeat.

Much more detail on these numbers at the New Daily Spotted Ratings page.

More Spotted Ratings in the Index.