The War of 18-49, Big Brother

BIG BROTHER (CBS)

Scheduling history:  Since airing throughout the week in season one, Big Brother has traditionally been scheduled on three nights per week. Early in the run, the third day was a very low-priority evening (Friday or Saturday), but since season seven it's been Sunday. The first two days have been some mix of Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, with Wednesday/Thursday/Sunday the arrangement for the last half decade.

Spotted Ratings, Wednesday 7/6/11

WHAT MATTERS:

• Week two of NBC newbie Love in the Wild (1.9) dropped three-tenths from last week's premiere, but its lead-in retention (54%) was identical to last week with America's Got Talent (3.5) coming down 15% week-to-week. Still a fairly "meh" performance.

• So You Think You Can Dance (2.4) had its best showing in a few weeks and was up 20% from last week's 2.0.

• Another Casey Anthony-themed primetime edition of Nightline (1.3) got only a one-tick bump from last week.

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

True Strength: Ratings Across the Season

A few days ago, we looked at adults 18-49 viewing levels across the season. Basically, they start low, mostly build up until the dead of winter, then precipitously decline from there (at least until Nielsen changed its methodology). But how does that match up with ratings?

War of 18-49 Update, CSI (2010-11)

Let's take a look at the 2010-11 season (the eleventh overall) of CSI on CBS.


2010-11 adults 18-49 low/average/high: 2.3/2.96/3.4

Rating the Ratings: In what was overall a pretty terrible season for the CSI brand, it might be the mothership that actually had the best year of the three. Its 13% drop year-to-year was its smallest percentage drop in the last five seasons, as it finally managed to slow down the bleeding that's been pretty serious especially since William Petersen left (but to some extent even before that). In the last few weeks of the season, its year-to-year drops grew to around 20%, but otherwise it was one of the healthier recent seasons. It also reclaimed its crown as the highest-rated of the CSI series, a position it lost for the first time last season. Still, those drops were enough to make CSI one of CBS' weaker 9/8c offerings, so it's getting bumped to Wednesdays at 10/9c in the fall while newbie Person of Interest will inherit the timeslot CSI's held for over a decade. Grade: C+.

Here's the now updated War of 18-49 post for CSI.

Spotted Ratings, Tuesday 7/5/11

WHAT MATTERS:

• With season one of The Voice in the books, that left NBC's other Tuesday tentpole America's Got Talent free to take over the night. And take over it did. The two-hour Vegas episode of Got Talent (4.5) hit the second-highest mark in the history of the series, only falling shy of the series premiere back on 6/21/06. Its lead-in was another original ep of Got Talent (3.4), the last of the audition episodes. It was up a tick from last week's 8:00 audition ep.

• Fox moved its second night of MasterChef (2.1) to 9:00 (having already moved the Monday edition there earlier), and it got a three-tenths week-to-week boost.

• ABC's 101 Ways to Leave a Game Show (1.9) continues to hold up surprisingly well, maintaining the rating of its first two weeks despite a repeat Wipeout lead-in (1.6). Combat Hospital (1.1) was even at last week's weak levels.

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

War of 18-49 Update, Criminal Minds (2010-11)

Let's take a look at the 2010-11 season (the sixth overall) of Criminal Minds on CBS.

2010-11 adults 18-49 low/average/high: 3.1/3.46/4.0

Rating the Ratings: Across the previous three years, there was no show on TV more consistent ratings-wise than Criminal Minds, averaging right around a 3.6 demo year in and year out. So a 4% drop for the show in 2010-11 almost seems like a big deal! Though its competition remained pretty stout (with Modern Family growing into one of TV's biggest hits this season), the show also had a consistently solid lead-in for the first time in years, with a couple cycles of Survivor shifting over to Wednesday. All things considered, I think I should be a little harder on this season than the typical -4% year. Maybe this slight downturn is a sign of bigger things to come. Grade: B-.

Here's the now updated War of 18-49 post for Criminal Minds.

War of 18-49 Update, CSI: Miami (2010-11)

Let's take a look at the 2010-11 season (the ninth overall) of CSI: Miami on CBS.


2010-11 adults 18-49 low/average/high: 1.8/2.42/3.2

Rating the Ratings: Let's get the bad news out of the way first: the show's 2.42 average in 2010-11 was down an ugly 33% from its 2009-10 average. That's pretty bad almost any way you slice it. But there was some good news (or excuses?): the show provided a decent timeslot improvement for CBS compared to what they usually got from the final season of Cold Case last season. And it was certainly in a much tougher situation, having to face Sunday Night Football, frequently start with delays due to CBS' football overruns and lead out of decently-rated Undercover Boss rather than the biggest scripted show on TV (The Big Bang Theory) as the previous year. But none of that really covers up that 33% number. In a year, this went from the strongest 10:00 show on TV (and also the highest-rated of the CSI series last year) to a pretty mediocre player that wasn't necessarily a mortal lock to even come back. As we'll see later this week, this was just one bad story in a particularly rough season in CSI-land, but the show still returns to the Sunday hour next season. Grade: D.


Here's the now updated War of 18-49 post for CSI: Miami.

True Strength: Viewing Levels 103 - Viewing Across the Season

(Sorry! I said we'd get to actual ratings next time, but the thing I devised for the last post led to something else. I am pretty sure we'll get to actual ratings next time.)

Until I started doing my daily ratings spreadsheets, I really had no good sense of anything about viewing levels. But what I assumed as far as the entire year was that they'd be high for the hype of the fall, maybe drop a bit as shows settle from big premieres, then increase again as the weather gets awful, then decrease again in the late spring as the weather heats up. That certainly matches up with ratings even for relatively "stable" shows, which frequently do well in the fall and winter, then decline in the spring.

Well, based on what we can use on an apples-to-apples basis (before the March 28 methodology change), that's... sort of close to the truth. It's kind of annoying Nielsen made this change in the middle of a season, but they did... so here's the line graph of weekly averages:

True Strength: Viewing Levels 102-2 - How Non-TV Events Affect Viewing

Last time, we looked at how big "TV Events" tend to drive up viewing by a sort of somewhat reliable percentage of their rating. This time, we're going to take a look at the other thing that impacts TV viewing levels: "Non-TV Events." These are external factors out in the (gasp!) "real world" that cause fewer people to watch TV. (I suppose some external factors like nationwide bad weather would actually drive up viewing, but I'm not sophisticated enough to be able to tackle that one just yet.)

These are particularly tough to tackle because of the "self-fulfilling prophecy" I mentioned a couple posts back: fewer people watch, so the networks make less and less of an effort to put big-rated programming in the low-viewing periods, so even fewer people watch. It's a vicious circle. It makes things a little more complicated than it is for the "TV Events" we just looked at. Viewing goes up for the Super Bowl mostly because... people are watching the Super Bowl. However, there's not one huge thing we can point to on the weekends.

Spotted Ratings, Thursday 6/23/11 & 6/30/11

WHAT MATTERS:

• ABC premiered an all-new Thursday on June 23. While the results were somewhat promising on premiere night, all three shows dropped in week two as the 4th of July weekend nears. Wipeout (2.4 on June 23, 1.9 on June 30) was already close to its disappointing Tuesday numbers last night, Expedition Impossible (2.4 on June 23, 1.8 on June 30) started nicely but dropped 25% in week two and Rookie Blue (1.6 on June 23, 1.4 on June 30) is already below all but its last couple results from last summer.

• Elsewhere in the original world, So You Think You Can Dance (2.0 on June 23, 1.8 on June 30) continues to struggle on Thursday, with the latter result tying its worst summer rating ever, while NBC burnoff Love Bites (0.8 on June 23, 0.7 on June 30) continues to at least be on the schedule, but certainly not successfully. The Thursday standout among repeaters remains The Big Bang Theory (1.8 on June 23, 1.5 on June 30).