Spotted Ratings, Wednesday 2/1/12

WHAT MATTERS:

• The final pre-sweeps evening saw American Idol keep on fallin' week-to-week. Lead-out Mobbed did over twice its previous average but still dropped over half the Idol lead-in. That's a much worse performance than last season's post-Idol episode, which got a 3.8 out of Idol Thursday's 6.8.

• NBC's Whitney and Are You There, Chelsea? block got a nice rebound even though the timeslot really wasn't any less competitive than last week. CBS had their annual Super Bowl's Greatest Commercials special in the 8/7c hour too. Things will ratchet up even more going forward; ABC returns next week, then Survivor's back in two weeks.

CBS True Power Rankings, January 2012

Here's part two of our journey through the five networks' scripted series by ranking their season-to-date TRUE averages. I've pushed the introductory stuff from the first post to the bottom.

Other networks: ABC | CBS | NBC | Fox | The CW

ABC True Power Rankings, January 2012

Hell yeah. It's Power Rankings week. In case you missed the first set, I use season averages in my True Strength metric to rank each network's shows by genre. All averages this time are through January 29.

One change: This time, I am continuing to use the full list of TRUE scores this season, but I'm dropping both the biggest and the smallest result from each show's list (unless it has less than three results). With most shows (especially returning ones) this won't make a huge difference, but it does have the double benefit of 1) reducing the early-episode inflation present especially in new shows and 2) also dropping the occasional major outlier that the TRUE calculation can't properly portray for whatever reason.

Other networks: ABC | CBS | NBC | Fox | The CW

Spotted Ratings, Tuesday 1/31/12: Beat It

WHAT MATTERS:

• Featuring the music of Michael Jackson, Glee hit numbers unseen since its last pre-baseball episode back in early October. That bounce provided only a tiny bump to New Girl and none to the down Raising Hope.

• It certainly didn't hurt Glee that this Tuesday was otherwise another boring edition of "last week before sweeps." CBS and (mostly) ABC were repeats. Celebrity Wife Swap signed off at 0.2 below its previous results.

The True Top 25, Week Ending 1/29/12 (2011-12 Week 19)

The final full week of January was an extremely slow one as almost all of the usual suspects squeezed in an extra repeat before sweeps begins. American Idol officially topped the True Top 25 for the first time, but The Big Bang Theory soared on Thursday despite facing American Idol and posted its biggest TRUE of the season. It beat the Thursday Idol in TRUE and was pretty close to the Wednesday one. It feels like Big Bang topping the TRUE charts even against Idol (and maybe even the raw 18-49 charts) is almost inevitable at this point considering Idol's usual late-season dips.

Spotted Ratings, Monday 1/30/12 (FINALS)

WHAT MATTERS:

• Both Alcatraz and House rose in finals and finished down by 0.2 from last week despite relatively little competition from CBS and NBC. It feels psychologically better than when they were down by 0.3, but I still think Fox might have hoped they'd hold better given the lack of competition. The "true test," as they say, comes next week against a relatively full slate.

• Otherwise, it was a slow and relatively steady calm before the storm, as NBC has its most anticipated Monday (if not day, period) of the season next week with The Voice and Smash premiering.

Spotted Ratings, Sunday 1/29/12 (FINALS)

WHAT MATTERS:

• NBC was back in the driver's seat on this Sunday thanks to the AFC/NFC Pro Bowl, but it was down from last season's 4.7.

• But the game was relatively little sports competition compared to most previous Sundays, so ABC was able to benefit with an increase from Once Upon a Time and the Hallmark Hall of Fame movie A Smile As Big As the Moon, which did four tenths better than ABC's debut Hallmark film back on November 27.

• The return of Napoleon Dynamite was predictably way weaker than either of its debut episodes two weeks ago (as was the entire Fox lineup that aired that week). This time, it got no help whatsoever from a near-season low from lead-in The Simpsons, down 56% from its post-NFL airing!

• Not facing an NFL championship game, the bipolar Undercover Boss put back on its 3.0 hat and now certainly has to be having CBS execs wondering whether this show should really be thrown away on Friday.

Spotted Ratings, Saturday 1/28/12 (FINALS)

WHAT MATTERS:

• Fox once again got great-for-Saturday numbers thanks to the UFC, though the full rating was 20% weaker than the last time Fox had UFC back on 11/12/11.

• This was pointed out elsewhere and I thought it was kinda funny: a movie about figure skating, Blades of Glory, beat actual figure skating head-to-head. The US Figure Skating Championships posted typically weak ratings.

Spotted Ratings, Friday 1/27/12: Upchuck

WHAT MATTERS:

• NBC aired the two-hour series finale of Chuck, which at least capped off an otherwise very low-rated final season with growth in each of its last three episodes.

• In the last Friday before CBS returns for sweeps, ABC was once again the dominant network. Shark Tank was down from last week's premiere but still beat Kitchen Nightmares head-to-head and tied its best Friday results from last season, while Primetime: WWYD? was up a tick.

• With the usual 9/8c drama suspects mostly sitting out, Fringe got a small uptick despite lead-in Kitchen Nightmares tying its season low.

SpotVault - Touch (Fox) - 2011-12

Touch

Mondays, 9/8c, Fox