Spotted Ratings, Sunday 7/22/12

WHAT MATTERS:

• Despite airing on a special night, ABC had a surprisingly big finale from The Bachelorette, up by three tenths year-to-year for both the finale and the "After the Final Rose" special. That brought the season as a whole up to within 1% of the 2011 season (2.42 vs. 2.44).

• Fox's Teen Choice Awards was down just a tick year-to-year but continued to rate a lot worse than animation repeats would have. Big Brother took another double-digit drop in week two of its second night.

• Cable saw a 20%ish week two drop from Breaking Bad (1.2), but that's still the second-biggest number in series history and still way up year-to-year (vs. a 0.9 for last year's second ep). A&E continues to impress with another total viewer high and a near-demo high from Longmire (0.9). Lifetime had the worst Sunday of the big cablers with Drop Dead Diva (0.6) and Army Wives (0.9) way down from last week. USA's mini Political Animals (0.5) was down about 10% from its already weak start.

Spotted Ratings, Sunday 8/7/11

WHAT MATTERS:

• CBS' Big Brother (2.8) once again dominated Sunday and again tied the season high that it's posted on several occasions now. Lead-out newbie Same Name (1.6) bounced back from its week two decline to actually post an outright series high in week three.

• The Teen Choice Awards (1.1) were way down year-to-year in adults 18-49 but up from the last couple years in teens according to Fox research.

• ABC's original special Ty's Great British Adventure 2011 (1.0) starring the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition host posted ratings about on par with recent encores of EM: HE in the hour.

Above based on preliminary adults 18-49 ratings unless otherwise noted.