Friday, May 10, 2013

Demos Year-to-Year, May Sweeps 2013 Winners/Losers


Though I retired the formal daily year-to-year posts, after the premiere week I did pledge to shoot for at least one weeklong summary to put a spotlight on where we are vs. one year ago during each sweeps period. I'm trying to pick out the most "normal" week from each period, so this time I'm dipping back to week one (April 25 to May 1), when almost all regular schedules were still airing. Would've done this a week earlier but all the upfront coverage got in the way!



Top 10 year-to-year SHOW losers
1. Smash (Sa 8-9pm vs. M 10-11pm) -78%
2. Touch (Fr 9-10pm vs. Th 9-10pm) -68%
3. Fashion Star (Fr 8-9pm vs. Tu 10-11pm) -53%
4. 90210 (Mo 9-10pm vs. Tu 8-9pm)  -50%
5. American Idol Wed -38%
6. Dancing with the Stars Tue -38%
7. Once Upon a Time -33%
8. Hawaii Five-0 -32%
9. The Cleveland Show -31%
10. American Idol Thu -30% 

In one year, Smash has quite literally moved from the best timeslot on NBC to the worst. Touch and Fashion Star can also blame timeslot downgrades for much of their problems. Beyond that, most of these declines are unfortunately fairly "real."



Top 10 year-to-year SHOW gainers
1. Shark Tank (Fr 9-10pm vs. Fr 8-9pm) +43%
2. Scandal +40%
3. Grimm (Tu 10-11pm vs. F 9-10pm) +36%
4. Supernatural (W 9-10pm vs. F 9-10pm) +29%
5. The Voice Tue (Tu 8-10pm vs. Tu 9-10pm) +26%
6. 60 Minutes +25%
7. The Voice Mon +23%
8. 48 Hours +11%
9. The Big Bang Theory +10%
10. America's Funniest Home Videos +7%

It took until May because of how Scandal was scheduled, but we finally get to see it on the show list, as its series high-tying 2.8 went up against one of the show's many 2.0 results from last season. Shark Tank had a somewhat anomalous comparison (it's usually been up, but not this much), while Grimm and Supernatural certainly benefited to some degree from timeslot upgrades.



Top 10 year-to-year TIMESLOT losers
1. Red Widow (vs. GCB, ABC Sunday 10-11pm) -62%
2. Happy Endings (vs. Shark Tank, ABC Friday 8-9pm) -57%
3. 90210 (vs. Hart of Dixie, CW Monday 9-10pm) -54%
4. Oh Sit! (vs. Gossip Girl, CW Monday 8-9pm) -50%
5. Rules of Engagement (vs. 2 Broke Girls, CBS Monday 8:30-9pm) -42%
6. Touch (vs. Fringe, Fox Friday 9-10pm) -40%
7. American Idol (Fox Wednesday 8-10pm) -38%
8. Dancing with the Stars (ABC Tuesday 9-10pm) -38%
9. Splash (vs. Last Man Standing/Cougar Town, ABC Tuesday 8-9pm) -36%
10. Vegas (vs. CSI: NY, CBS Friday 9-10pm) -33% 

It's always unfortunate when you make this list despite being compared against a show that got cancelled. ABC has some Sunday soul-searching to do.



Top 10 year-to-year TIMESLOT gainers
1. Shark Tank (vs. Primetime: What Would You Do?, ABC Friday 9-10pm) +82%
2. Supernatural (vs. America's Next Top Model, CW Wednesday 9-10pm) +80%
3. Law and Order: SVU (vs. Rock Center, NBC Wednesday 9-10pm) +50%
4. The Voice Tue (vs. The Biggest Loser/The Voice, NBC Tuesday 8-10pm) +47% 
5. Scandal (ABC Thursday 9-10pm) +40%
6. The Mentalist (vs. NYC 22, CBS Sunday 10-11pm) +39%
t-7. Smash (vs. Escape Routes, NBC Saturday 8-9pm) +33% 
t-7. Hannibal (vs. Awake, NBC Thursday 10-11pm) +33%
9. Grimm (vs. Fashion Star, NBC Tuesday 10-11pm) +27%
10. The Following (vs. House, Fox Monday 9-10pm) +26%

As has been the case for most of the season, Arrow would be the runaway #1 if I included comparisons vs. repeats: it was +260% vs. a repeat of The LA Complex. The one thing that makes me think Hannibal has a decent shot is how much better it's continued to perform vs. the year-ago Thursday 10/9c occupant Awake. Yes, Awake was a huge bomb, but it just illustrates that Hannibal could be doing several tenths worse than it is, especially since the ABC/CBS competition is stouter this year.

2 comments:

Spot said...

Interesting stuff. One thing that I find really interesting about this season is that although there have been some HUGE returnees bomb (Smash, Touch, Happy Endings, Apartment 23), it has been the new class that is responsible for the decline almost exclusively!

Counting only scripted shows, returning shows are down by only 12%! The new shows class though, is down 23% from last year's class, which is almost double!! Scripted returning shows are averaging a 2.04 this season whereas new shows are averaging only a very modest 1.50 - a 35% difference! Last year, new shows averaged a 1.95 whereas returning shows averaged a 2.31 - an 18% difference, which is practically half of the difference we have this season.

Moral of the story? Yeah networks are struggling as usual but returning shows held up much better than we give it credit for (especially because its numbers are deflated by the bombs that I have mentioned before) - the problem was the terrible class of freshman shows!

Spot said...

This was an historically bad class of rookies.

ABC: 2 shows renewed out of 9 (The Neighbors, Nashville)
CBS: 1 out of 5 (Elementary)
CW: 3 out of 5 (Arrow, Beauty and the Beast, The Carrie Diaries)
FOX: 2 out of 4 (The Mindy Project, The Following)
NBC: 2 out of 9 (Revolution, Chicago Fire)

Network total: 10 out of 32 renewed (31%)

Plus Hannibal, of course. The sad part is, except for The Following and Arrow, the few that aren't returning probably aren't going to make it to Season 3. Some of the others debuted big but have faded fast (Revolution, Elementary), while the others have just slogged along at below-expectation levels. (Mindy, Beauty)

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