The Basics:
| bc | Rank | y2y | Rank | TPUT | Rank | bc/TPUT | Rank |
| Thursday 9:00 | 10.8 | 8 | -10% | 20 | 35.3 | 9 | 31% | 9 |
As with the other Thursday hours, 9:00 on Thursday is the least-viewed of the 9:00 hours on the five weeknights. It was not nearly as competitive last year as
Idol/
Big Bang-laden 8:00, and it had the second-biggest year-to-year drop of the whole week. NBC's
The Office problems stood out the most, but ABC, Fox and the CW were all down in the general 10% range as well.
WHAT MATTERS:
- Meaningful football's back in broadcast primetime with the premieres of regular games on ABC and Fox. While I predicted ABC would easily outrate Fox for the season, even I was surprised by the extent of the opening night shellacking, as ABC's Alabama/Michigan game had five times the demo numbers of Fox's USC/Hawaii offering. ABC reported it was tied as the biggest Saturday Night Football premiere since they picked it up, though several other games last year did as well or better. Both games were blowouts and dropped considerably over the course of the telecast (ABC had a 3.7 in the game's first full half hour at 8:30, while Fox had a 0.8 at 8:00). Fox was also beaten handily by the Clemson/Auburn primetime matchup on ESPN (1.4).
- As I always note, the biggest viewing drops surrounding many holidays come on the eve of the holiday, not on the day itself. (Night-centric holidays like Valentine's Day and the 4th of July are more the exception.) The viewing drop wasn't really felt on Saturday (the football arrival probably helped) or on Labor Day Monday, but Sunday (also the last Sunday of the year without the NFL) was in the vicinity of 15% less viewed by 18-49ers than the previous Sunday (33%ish vs. 39%ish). That was certainly felt on broadcast, where Big Brother took a huge drop and ABC's specials totally bombed. Several cable shows sat out the evening, but the Breaking Bad finale (1.3) posted merely average numbers that I have to feel would've been better on a normal evening.
WHAT MATTERS:
- Grimm lost one last tick in what was recently confirmed as its final Monday episode. (NBC will air a The New Normal preview in the slot after The Voice's premiere next week.) Without a Ramsay cooking show leading out, the last two episodes of Hotel Hell this summer were the two weakest yet.
- On cable, this summer's reign of VH1's Love and Hip Hop: Atlanta (2.4) came to an end with the second half of the reunion. But it launched season two of T.I. and Tiny (2.2 at 9:00, 2.1 at 9:30) quite nicely, as that show was up nearly 50% from the year-ago series premiere. ABC Family's Switched At Birth (0.9) returned down a tick from its last season's premiere in January.
The Basics:
| bc | Rank | y2y | Rank | TPUT | Rank | bc/TPUT | Rank |
| Wednesday 9:00 | 12.1 | 5 | -9% | 18 | 35.9 | 6 | 34% | 5 |
It's a fairly average 9:00 weeknight hour in terms of broadcast viewing and overall viewing. But the combined broadcasters took an above-average hit year-to-year even though ABC and CBS were pretty healthy. Fox losing so much ground with
American Idol gets some of the blame, but most of it goes to NBC, who had the weakest performance of any network in any weeknight hour here, not even averaging a 1.0 demo for the regular season!
The Basics:
| bc | Rank | y2y | Rank | TPUT | Rank | bc/TPUT | Rank |
| Tuesday 9:00 | 10.6 | 10 | -6% | 11 | 36.2 | 5 | 29% | 11 |
Tuesday at 9:00 was by far the least competitive of the weeknight 9:00 hours, with really only
New Girl (especially early in the season) and
The Voice toward the end of the season counting as real standouts for their networks.
The Basics:
| bc | Rank | y2y | Rank | TPUT | Rank | bc/TPUT | Rank |
| Monday 9:00 | 12.6 | 4 | +13% | 1 | 38.5 | 2 | 33% | 6 |
Monday 9:00 was the only 2011-12 hour where the combined broadcasters did a whole lot better than in 2010-11. Of course the biggest stories were
The Voice and the absolute explosion early on by
Two and a Half Men, but Fox also made some improvements at times by airing
House rather than stuff like
The Chicago Code. It's also the second most overall-viewed hour of the whole week, trailing only Sunday 9:00.
The Basics:
| bc | Rank | y2y | Rank | TPUT | Rank | bc/TPUT | Rank |
| Sunday 8:00 | 13.1 | 3 | +2% | 5 | 37.9 | 3 | 35% | 3 |
As is true of every Sunday hour, it has the most broadcast viewing and the most overall viewing of any hour of the week at this time. But the former stat in particular is way inflated by
Sunday Night Football in the fall. In the second half of the season, this hour was surprisingly uncompetitive, with only ABC a real standout relative to the rest of the schedule. But the arrival of
Once Upon a Time and the continued football strength helped the hour slightly gain year-to-year.
America's Next Top Model
Fridays, 8/7c, The CW
WHAT MATTERS:
- Tons of local pre-emptions on the final night of the NFL preseason helped take a big chunk out of nearly every broadcast show.
- On cable, the Fox News RNC coverage (9.06m viewers, 1.5 A18-49) again crushed the broadcasters, while South Carolina/Vanderbilt on ESPN (1.8) opened the college football season with the second-biggest number of the night.
The Basics:
| bc | Rank | y2y | Rank | TPUT | Rank | bc/TPUT | Rank |
| Saturday 8:00 | 4.6 | 21 | -8% | 14 | 28.2 | 21 | 16% | 21 |
The ultimate TV graveyard, with the least broadcast viewing and the least overall viewing and the least percent broadcast viewing of any of the primetime hours.
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