Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Spotted Ratings, Monday 9/24/12: Peacock-blocked


I don't think I'm being too dramatic when I say that 2011's premiere Monday was something of an affirmation about the power of broadcast TV. The season that followed was one of the strongest in recent years. Premiere Monday 2012 sets a pretty different tone.

WHAT MATTERS:
  • Let's start with CBS.
    • First of all, the returning comedies all disappointed. I'm not big on using the year-to-year comparisons since premiere Monday 2011 was so Ashton-inflated, but bottom line is I expected about a half point better out of How I Met Your Mother, 2 Broke Girls in its 9/8c debut and Mike and Molly. Only 2BG even got back to last season's finale numbers.
    • From the disappointing to the disastrous. Hawaii Five-0 mystifyingly went a whooping 0.8 points below last season's finale numbers and 0.4 behind the previous series low. I guess there's a lot of crossover with Revolution or something, but this looks pretty ridiculously bad. 
    • And CBS' only new comedy of the fall was Partners, which was down nearly a third from HIMYM right out of the gate. If this was their best new comedy, it certainly becomes more understandable why they didn't add a fourth comedy hour. It's also all the more frustrating considering how much comedy strength the network had last year.
  • The big premiere Monday winner was NBC, which continued to crush even against the full wave of competition. The Voice dropped by just three tenths week-to-week after finals and did a bit better than I expected. Revolution took a fairly standard 17% week-two drop, but this one feels a little better than fairly standard because there was more competition and... well, it's a 3.5 at 10:00.
  • An all-star edition did absolutely nothing to stop the bleeding as Dancing with the Stars was down over a third year-to-year and also way down from the against-Voice spring 2012 premiere (3.5). Castle tanked in finals to a similarly down year-to-year level thanks to being pre-empted in Green Bay for Monday Night Football. (They'd probably rather have had DWTS and Castle in retrospect.)
  • On Fox, The Mob Doctor was down from last week's 1.5. My thinking coming in was that 1.1 is a definite pull next week, 1.2 is a close call, and 1.3 may earn it another week or two simply because of how the Monday pre-emptions break in subsequent weeks. We'll see.
  • ESPN's super-controversial Monday Night Football (6.4) topped the evening and was somewhat surprisingly even with last week's big numbers. (Seemed like a worse matchup going in...) But the real story for my money was the SportsCenter (3.1) that followed and dug into the game's ridiculous ending. It was the most-watched SportsCenter in history (6.46 million).
FULL TABLE:

InfoShowTimeslotTrue2
Viewers A18-49 Last LeLa Rank y2yTLa Ty2y
Dancing with the Stars Mon 14.11 2.5 n/an/a 1/1 -38% +67% -37% 2.39
Castle 10.45 2.1 n/an/a 1/1 -34% +40% -34% 2.26
How I Met Your Mother 8.84 3.6 n/an/a 1/1 -23% +157% -23% 3.30
Partners 6.56 2.4 n/an/a 1/1 n/a +71% -54% 2.12
2 Broke Girls 10.14 3.7 n/an/a 1/1 -48% +131% -65% 3.47
Mike and Molly 9.45 3.1 n/an/a 1/1 -35% +94% -56% 2.76
Hawaii Five-0 8.06 1.8 n/an/a 1/1 -47% +100% -47% 1.84
The Voice Mon 12.18 4.4 -6%n/a 2/3 n/a -6% +132% 4.24
Revolution 9.21 3.4 -17%-6% 2/2 n/a -17% +106% 3.33
Bones 7.61 2.3 +0%n/a 1/2 n/a +0% -12% 2.44
The Mob Doctor 3.85 1.3 -13%+0% 2/2 n/a -13% -50% 1.28
The LA Complex (S) 0.57 0.2 +0%n/a 7/12 n/a -50% -56% 0.27
The LA Complex (S) 0.39 0.2 +0%n/a 7/13 n/a +0% -33% 0.26

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.
Last - A18-49 percent difference from previous episode.
LeLa - A18-49 percent difference between the show's lead-in and its lead-in for the previous episode.
Rank - The A18-49 rating's rank among the show's episodes that have aired so far this season.
y2y - The show's A18-49 rating compared to its rating a year ago.
TLa - The show's A18-49 rating compared to the network's rating in the timeslot one week ago.
Ty2y - The show's A18-49 rating compared to the network's rating in the timeslot one year ago.
True2 - The second edition of True Strength, a metric that adjusts the A18-49 rating for overall viewing levels, competition and lead-in. PRELIMINARY CALCULATION. For finals, see SpotVault.

(R) - Repeat.

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

More Spotted Ratings in the Index.

5 comments:

Spot said...

Amazing. So much was made about how The Voice and Revolution were going to tumble once competition arrived, and they actually stood pretty firm. ABC? Slight disappointment. FOX? Expected disappointment. CBS? Hit the panic button! Then calm down, build another panic button, and hit that one, too! Everything was .8 less than what I expected, except for Partners, which was 1.4 less than my guess. And this was supposedly the pick of the litter! If they knew their development slate was so weak, why cancel Rob? Why give Rules just 13 episodes? Why put yourself in a position where you have only one new comedy the rest of the year? It amazes me that I'm saying this, but the only network who is really taking this comedy resurgence seriously is NBC.

Spot said...

Dear LORD, that's a horrible number for Five-0. Nearly a half-point behind the previous low. The idea that there's crossover w/ Revolution sounds like a pretty good explanation to me. It probably siphoned off a decent number of men who watch Five-0 for the action scenes.

Spot said...

The Voice - extended hours of blind auditions turned out to be a good idea
H50 - one more proof exploitation shows (teenage, pure action ...) are having shelf life of max 4 seasons
The Mob Doctor - will not last for more than 3 episodes, cause after it network must do makegoods to advertisers (I think it's 3 episodes, not sure though)

Spot said...

With such a huge syndie deal and CBS reaping the benefits, I can't see them getting rid of it, but perhaps it takes the Sunday 10:00 death slot sooner than expected.

Spot said...

The finals don't help CBS much. HIMYM is a little closer to where I thought it would be, but Hawaii Five-0 still tanked hard, which I didn't expect.

Castle's looking like it's in trouble, too. Man, is Revolution really taking that many of their viewers?

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