WHAT MATTERS:
- FINALS UPDATE: American Ninja Warrior (2.1) adjusted up to make it +0.3 week-to-week and tie a series high, but it took the tenth away from Running Wild (1.1). The Whispers (0.8) also adjusted down, putting it in 0.8 territory for the third time in four weeks.
- With a two-tenth increase, American Ninja Warrior (2.0) pulled narrowly back ahead of The Bachelorette (1.9) in the race for Monday supremacy. The shows' respective lead-outs Running Wild (1.2) and The Whispers (0.9) were even in the prelims.
- The CW was flat again at 8/7c with Penn and Teller: Fool Us (0.5) but had decreases in the 9:00 hour with Whose Line Is It Anyway? (0.4) and Cedric's Barber Battle (0.2). CBS' repeats (0.8/0.9/0.7/0.7) were also slightly down for the most part.
WHAT MATTERS:
- FINALS UPDATE: American Ninja Warrior (1.8) went up, while Running Wild (1.2) and Cedric's Barber Battle (0.5) went down. This put Wild on par with the premiere of The Island.
- NBC welcomed back sophomore Bear Grylls reality series Running Wild (1.3) at just a tenth below last year's series premiere, when it was an 8/7c lead-in to American Ninja Warrior rather than a 10/9c lead-out as it is now. Perhaps more importantly, this was ahead of all results from previous timeslot occupant The Island.
- Usual reality leaders The Bachelorette (1.9) and American Ninja Warrior (1.7) were both slightly down from last week, but Bachelorette lead-out The Whispers (0.9) inched up from its low.
- CW entries Whose Line Is It Anyway? (0.5) and Cedric's Barber Battle (0.4) and most of the CBS repeats (led by 2 Broke Girls (1.0)) were up a bit from last week.
WHAT MATTERS:
- FINALS: American Ninja Warrior (1.9) adjusted up, putting it even with last week. The Island (0.9) and Whose Line Is It Anyway? (0.4) adjusted down.
- The CW was in full original business on Monday for the first time with a solid return from Penn and Teller: Fool Us (0.5), tying the 0.5 it hit in almost every week of its first season run. Back on a weeknight, Whose Line Is It Anyway? (0.5) was at the high end of its spring Friday ratings, though a hair behind the average from last summer. And even Cedric's Barber Battle (0.3) inched up, though it's still the big weak link here.
- ABC had a minor uptick from Monday leader The Bachelorette (2.0), but The Whispers (0.8) was unable to come back from last week's low. Fox's So You Think You Can Dance (1.0) was barely up and NBC's American Ninja Warrior (1.8) and The Island (1.0) slightly down. CBS averaged a 0.7 with softer than usual repeats.
WHAT MATTERS:
- The battle of Monday reality staples has shifted back in The Bachelorette's favor across the last two Mondays, with Bachelorette surging to a 2.0 (vs. American Ninja Warrior's 1.8) on June 22. The shows preliminary tied at 1.9 last night. But this is a duel without a loser, as both shows are still up year-to-year.
- It's not quite as rosy for the shows' lead-outs; The Island has stabilized at very low 1's (1.0 on June 22, 1.1 last night), while ABC's drama The Whispers briefly increased alongside Bachelorette on June 22 (1.0) but slipped back to a new low 0.8 last night.
- The third wheel in the Monday reality smackdown is Fox veteran So You Think You Can Dance, which has hit a pretty ugly 0.9 each of the last two Mondays, only about tying the repeat lineup on CBS.
- And the CW, which will be all original starting next week with the return of Penn and Teller: Fool Us, brought back former Friday failure Cedric's Barber Battle (0.2) a week early with no sign of improvement.
WHAT MATTERS:
- FINALS UPDATE: Shark Tank (1.8) adjusted up. I will understand if you disagree, but I'm counting the Bruce Jenner interview as a special and not under the 20/20 banner. It was never referred to as "20/20" in my TiVo listings, and I have used the special distinction on other one-off news telecasts in the past. Kinda got the sense the network was trying to lump it in with 20/20 after the fact. Shrug.
- Just over two months after NBC's breakthrough SNL40 special, ABC had its own stunningly enormous piece of event television. A two-hour interview in which Olympic legend Bruce Jenner came out as transgender (5.2) averaged 16.86 million viewers overall. It had a 5.0 demo rating in the 9:00 hour that grew to 5.3 at 10:00. On a Friday in late April, these numbers are practically unthinkable, roughly four times what a "normal" ABC News 20/20 outing tends to deliver.
- Pre-tune for the Jenner interview surely helped Shark Tank (1.7), which was up a couple ticks in its move to 8/7c for the last four weeks of the season.
- Though 8/7c shows like The Amazing Race (1.1) and Grimm (1.0) were flat, the interview clearly took a toll in the last two hours. Dateline (0.8/0.9) was below 1.0 for a Friday original for the first time this season, while Blue Bloods (1.0) on CBS also took a major hit. Hawaii Five-0 staying at its previous low 1.1 feels like a win by comparison.
- Week two of the CW's lineup of Cedric's Barber Battle (0.4), Whose Line Is It Anyway? (0.4) and The Messengers (0.4) was preempted in top market New York City, so downward adjustments are expected.
WHAT MATTERS:
- FINALS UPDATE: 20/20 adjusted down and the two-hour rating for The Amazing Race adjusted up to 1.1.
- The CW's new Friday night lineup did... what a lineup introduced this late in the regular season tends to do. But newbie Cedric's Barber Battle (0.2) was rejected in particularly sound fashion, which prevented an original Whose Line Is It Anyway? (0.4) from doing any better than last week's repeats. Whose Line? hit a bunch of 0.4's at this time last spring, so this isn't exactly a catastrophe, but the network may end up moving it to 8/7c to take advantage of the local programming lead-in. Leading out of Whose Line? was new drama The Messengers (0.3); it built narrowly from Whose Line? in total viewers but clearly didn't do enough to make the network look bad for treating it this way.
- Finale night for ABC's comedies saw Last Man Standing (1.1) and Cristela (0.9) each inch down. Cristela had pretty decent retention these last few weeks, but it will likely end up suffering from ABC having so many other comedy options. And Shark Tank (1.5) was #1 as usual but unable to rebound from last week's irregularly low point.
- Without originals for the crime dramas, CBS had a low-end two-hour edition of The Amazing Race (1.1/1.0), while NBC's Grimm (1.0) gave back last week's slight uptick.
Cedric's Barber Battle
Fridays, 8/7c, CW
It's the season finale of Best Case/Worst Case, covering the last few shows that will air a significant stretch of episodes before the end of the regular season. But since all of these except Weird Loners
should continue airing into the summer, I will again note that these averages only cover regular season episodes.
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