Spotted Ratings, Tuesday 9/3/13

WHAT MATTERS:

• On another mostly upward night for broadcast originals, the biggest surge came on cable, where BET's The Game (1.9) wrapped up season six with a huge bounce from its usual low-1's level this summer.

Fall 2013 Best Case/Worst Case, Thursday 8/7c

The Basics:

	bc	Rank	y2y	Rank	TPUT	Rank	bc/TPUT	Rank
Thursday 8:00	10.3	6	-8%	7	32.1	15	32%	4

Even with ABC a mess as always, and even with NBC still airing low-rated comedies, and even with Fox's singing shows collapsing, this was still the weeknight 8:00 hour down the least year-to-year. Credit another incredible year of raw numbers growth from The Big Bang Theory, a really strong 8:30 import in Two and a Half Men, and a surprisingly stout The Vampire Diaries.

Spotted Ratings, Monday 9/2/13

WHAT MATTERS:

• As I said in last week's Power Rankings, while I thought Mistresses was near the bottom of the pack among ABC's shows this summer, it was close enough that it might be one big Whodunnit?-esque spike from getting right back in the renewal mix. And that may have happened on Monday night, as the show skyrocketed to a 1.4 that tied its post-Bachelorette series high. If it can hold this number or even grow again for next week's finale, it's definitely got a shot.

• The other noteworthy originals also had good nights; Under the Dome hit its best number since July and a two-hour American Ninja Warrior had an outright season high.

Spotted Ratings, Labor Day Weekend Roundup 8/30-9/1/13

WHAT MATTERS:

• A couple quick Friday notes: America's Next Top Model did indeed bounce back from last week's 0.2 blip, and I just want to note that The Neighbors (which I ripped in its Friday repeat debut two weeks ago) has upticked each of the last two weeks.

• College football began its three-month reign of the Saturday ratings world this weekend, with the ABC debut between Georgia and Clemson up a notch from last year's Michigan/Alabama premiere. It was also a much better game than last year's 27-point Alabama rout, which was a point bigger in the opening half hour than this game.

• Sunday saw the effects of Labor Day weekend take center stage in one of the least-viewed Sundays of the year. (The only Sunday that my estimates say was lower-viewed in the last calendar year was on Memorial Day weekend three months ago.) Almost everything was down noticeably, including the top show of the night, AMC's Breaking Bad (2.2). Because ABC's MDA Show of Strength Telethon was not ad-supported, it wasn't counted in finals and thus avoids becoming what I think would've been the first 0.2 demo rating by a big four network on a night other than Saturday.

Intro to Nielsen Ratings: Demos and DVRs

This week, I'm unveiling a project I've been picking away at for months, an expanded version of my old Intro to Nielsen Ratings post. The three-part series began with the most basic factual info on how Nielsen ratings work and definitions of common terms. Today, we plow forward with the reasoning behind this site's reliance on Live + Same Day and adults 18-49 ratings.

As on the old post, please let me know if there's anything I should add, clarify or correct in these posts. I just want to get everything right.

Fall 2013 Best Case/Worst Case, Wednesday 8/7c

The Basics:

	bc	Rank	y2y	Rank	TPUT	Rank	bc/TPUT	Rank
Wednesday 8:00	9.3	10	-13%	16	32.2	13	29%	8

Though Wednesday 8:00 wasn't the weakest weeknight 8:00 hour on broadcast (it edged Tuesday 8:00 by less than a tenth), none of the big four broadcasters really had anything positive to report this year. ABC saw The Middle take a downturn, while The Neighbors was much weaker than 2011-12's Suburgatory. CBS' Survivor continued to trickle downward, NBC had weak comedies, and Fox saw its singing shows keep crumbling. The year's best story by far was on the CW, where Arrow was without a doubt the second-most impressive new show the network has ever developed.

Intro to Nielsen Ratings: Basics and Definitions

This week, I'm unveiling a project I've been picking away at for months, an expanded version of my old Intro to Nielsen Ratings post. The three-part series begins today with the most basic factual info on how Nielsen ratings work and definitions of common terms. The next two parts, coming later this week, are more philosophical/opinionated, detailing the reasons why this particular site uses the numbers it uses.

As on the old post, please let me know if there's anything I should add, clarify or correct in these posts. I just want to get everything right.

Fall 2013 Best Case/Worst Case, Tuesday 8/7c

The Basics:

	bc	Rank	y2y	Rank	TPUT	Rank	bc/TPUT	Rank
Tuesday 8:00	9.3	11	-9%	10	33.2	11	28%	10

The 2012-13 season was brutal for Tuesday programming in general, but the 8:00 hour was the healthiest of the night, and Tuesday was one of just two nights of the week on which the 8:00 hour had the most broadcast viewing. This was mostly because NBC scheduled The Voice in the 8:00 hour for most of its two seasons, but CBS was also at its strongest with the mothership NCIS, and ABC did best in this hour in the fall with the Dancing with the Stars results.

Fall 2013 Best Case/Worst Case, Monday 8/7c

The Basics:

	bc	Rank	y2y	Rank	TPUT	Rank	bc/TPUT	Rank
Monday 8:00	10.0	7	-14%	19	34.6	7	29%	7

Monday became the biggest night of the week for entertainment programming in 2012-13, but the overall broadcast viewing still took a well above average year-to-year dip in the 8:00 and 9:00 hours. The continued meltdown of Dancing with the Stars plus the CBS comedies coming back to earth were the main factors. CBS' 8:30 occupants did a particularly egregious job trying to hang with last year's huge 2 Broke Girls average.

Fall 2013 Best Case/Worst Case, Sunday 7/6c

The odyssey begins again. The critically-acclaimed fall TV preview Best Case/Worst Case is officially back on the air, examining one hour of the fall primetime schedule each day between now and the start of the 2013-14 season. I'm not doing a full-fledged intro this season since almost all the info is exactly the same. The only new addition is a look at last year's picks for the same shows (Last Pick), plus how much I missed by (Miss). I've added that info to the old Best Case/Worst Case intro, which you can consult if you're new to all of this.

Additionally, you might notice that I have done a major shake-up of the site layout, something that I've been very slowly working on all summer. It's the first significant layout change since the day of the very first War of 18-49 post over three years ago! (Shout-out if you're one of the elite few who remembers the old green & yellow layout from this blog's first year of existence.) I thought it was overdue to put the site's current strengths front and center, as the old blue/blue/blue layout was designed around features that don't even exist anymore. There may be a few tweaks to come, but I wanted to go ahead and get it installed today because I've made the Best Case/Worst Case tables wider and didn't want to have to un-widen and re-widen them. Please give me any feedback you can think of on this new look, as I want it to be an improvement on the old one.

Today, we're warming up for the Best Case/Worst Case big guns with this look at the usually dull Sunday 7:00 hour. As I said last year, this hour generally has overall viewing in line with a Friday or Saturday primetime hour, but it gets to pretend it's a real boy during football season because it houses the end of the late afternoon NFL games.