WHAT MATTERS:
- The summer season was in need of some good news, and NBC was happy to provide it with another very strong premiere for America's Got Talent (3.0). It nearly matched last year's post-The Voice premiere (3.1) and was noticeably above it in total viewers. That helped new drama The Night Shift (1.6), even with barely 50% retention, to inch past NBC's biggest drama premiere of last summer (Camp, 1.5).
- Even opposite a strong NBC, ABC had a pretty good night with the return of Extreme Weight Loss (1.3), which was a tick above last year's premiere. And Celebrity Wife Swap (1.2) jumped to a new season high with its most compatible lead-in yet.
- Then... there was Fox, and the trainwreck we all knew was coming. It started with episode two of Riot (0.6), which was actually a tenth above the post-Glee premiere from two weeks ago. But dating show I Wanna Marry Harry (0.4) dropped huge from the measly 0.7 posted after American Idol last week. Networks usually do away with these "affront to humanity" kinds of shows pretty quickly unless the ratings are outstanding. Since this one's in the complete opposite direction, don't expect it to stick around for long.
WHAT MATTERS:
- How do you give a new series launch the least possible media coverage? Premiere it during upfront week. How do you give it the least possible lead-in support? Put it after Glee. Throw in the show's total lack of inherent appeal and you get a 0.5 rating for the premiere of summer improv comedy show Riot. The only silver lining is that it might be able to get some "momentum" since its lead-in will improve with American Idol's performance finale next week. Arguably even more egregious was Glee dive-bombing to 0.6 in its penultimate season finale. Fox is still figuring out the "right" number of episodes for Glee's final season, but that number is pretty clearly zero. If you're keeping score at home, this was seventy percent below last year's finale (2.0).
- Most of the shows on other networks are eyeing week-to-week increases in their season finales.
- CBS seemed to fare best with NCIS (2.6), the final Tuesday edition of NCIS: Los Angeles (2.5) and Person of Interest (1.9) all up by multiple ticks;
- The last two About a Boy episodes (1.6/1.5) each improved their slots after last week's terrible numbers;
- ABC's Agents of SHIELD got it usual adjustment and thus inched up week-to-week, while the comedies were each up two;
- And the CW lost some steam in finals due to a New York city pre-emption but still had a nice two-tenth rebound for The Originals.
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