Best Case/Worst Case: American Crime, Mike & Molly, American Idol

Best Case/Worst Case lays out possible scenarios for broadcast primetime TV seasons yet to premiere. Here's what's premiering tonight!

Spotted Ratings, Tuesday 1/5/16

WHAT MATTERS:

• FINALS UPDATE: The NCIS twins adjusted up to 2.7/2.5, meaning New Orleans tied its raw series high.

• On a night of crime drama crossovers, CBS' NCIS (2.6) and NCIS: New Orleans (2.4) beat out NBC's Chicago Fire (1.8) and Chicago Med (1.9). For CBS, the mothership NCIS hit a new season high and was just barely below its 2.8 on this night last year. But it's always the second show that benefits even more; New Orleans easily crushed its previous season high 1.9 and actually came incredibly close to a series high (2.5 a couple times last year). However, this major boost was of very little help to Limitless (1.4) at 10/9c, even with Bradley Cooper returning.

• It's hard to complain much about Chicago Fire (1.8) and Chicago Med (1.9), as they ended up with fairly average numbers despite lacking their usual support from The Voice. Instead, their lead-in was the return of summer staple Hollywood Game Night (1.2), which did a fine job to go just a bit below its summer average after America's Got Talent.

• Fox began another tough trip down the two-hour Tuesday comedy road, but at least for tonight it wasn't too disastrous. New Girl (1.4) had a pretty good return at 8/7c, down three tenths from last year's September premiere but nearly matching what it did on this night last year (1.5). And Brooklyn Nine-Nine posted a 1.2 in its move back to Tuesday, about what it usually did on non-NFL Sundays.
• The newbies remain the bigger issues; Grandfathered (1.0) at 8:30 and The Grinder (0.8) at 9:30 each dropped four tenths from their respective veteran lead-ins and were just barely above their late fall deliveries in the 8:00 hour.

• If anybody really got lost in this shuffle, it was ABC, where a one-off original Shark Tank (1.2) went well below its usual Friday numbers leading out of another weak repeat of The Muppets (0.6). Beyond the Tank (1.1) had good retention at 10/9c, but a tough Thursday lead-off role awaits for that show. The CW stayed in repeat mode with The Flash (0.3) and iZombie (0.2).

SpotVault - People's Choice Awards Ratings, 2002-Present

The People's Choice Awards on CBS

Best Case/Worst Case: Beyond the Tank, Hollywood Game Night, New Girl

Best Case/Worst Case lays out possible scenarios for broadcast primetime TV seasons yet to premiere. Here's what's premiering tonight!

Spotted Ratings, Monday 1/4/16

WHAT MATTERS:

• FINALS UPDATE: Adjusting up were Superstore (1.8, now tying the average for its full one-hour preview after The Voice), Supergirl (1.9, now its best rating since week two) and Scorpion (2.2, now tying the season premiere). Bachelor Live (1.0) went down a notch.

• Winter Mondays began much better for the broadcasters than winter Sundays. On NBC, that meant a rare glimmer of hope in the comedy department. Superstore opened its Monday 8/7c run with just over 6 million viewers and a very solid 1.7 demo rating. Lead-out Telenovela (1.3) dropped noticeably from there, but was not as far off the map as it looked like it could've been in its December preview.
• But NBC did have a fairly soft start out of The Biggest Loser (1.2), 25% below its last opener in September 2014. TBL may not drop as much post-premiere since it had pre-premiere competition when it opened fall 2014, but it seems clear there's been some damage to the franchise in the last couple years.

• On ABC, The Bachelor (2.2) kept chugging along with another strong premiere, matching last year's opener. After-show Bachelor Live (1.1) had pretty bad retention at 10/9c, even if it had about the same rating as a typical Castle episode these days.

• High viewing and no Monday Night Football added up to the usual January bounty on CBS, where Supergirl (1.8), Scorpion (2.1) and NCIS: Los Angeles (1.6) all saw big surges. It was a new season high for LA, a best-since-premiere rating for Scorpion and a best-since-week-four rating for Supergirl.

• And Fox, which will mostly be punting on Mondays until The X-Files and Lucifer show up in three weeks, was still reasonable on this night with two-hour special Superhuman (1.2). The CW had another better-than-its-usual-lineup Monday with repeats of Whose Line Is It Anyway? (0.5/0.4) and Penn and Teller: Fool Us (0.4).

Best Case/Worst Case: The Bachelor, Superstore, Telenovela, The Biggest Loser

Best Case/Worst Case lays out possible scenarios for broadcast primetime TV seasons yet to premiere. Here's what's premiering tonight!

Spotted Ratings, Sunday 1/3/16

WHAT MATTERS:

• FINALS UPDATE: CBS finals put 60 Minutes at 2.8, Undercover Boss at 1.6 (tying the season premiere) and the Limitless repeats at 0.8/0.6. The final 7.9 for Sunday Night Football was the franchise's best rating in over a month.

• Week 17 in the NFL always sees a late-afternoon national window for both CBS and Fox. This year, CBS was the big winner in that window with Peyton Manning's return in Denver (a prelim 5.4 average in the 7:00 hour), while Fox was the loser with blowouts in its relevant games (3.3 at 7:00 and 2.2 at 7:30). That was very inconvenient for Fox, since it was premiering two new comedies on the night. But even light of that, it was a very unpromising start for Cooper Barrett's Guide to Surviving Life (1.2) and Bordertown (1.1). Each show shed over a third of its respective lead-in (The Simpsons (2.0) and Family Guy (1.7)). These shows should get a bit more help with a playoff game lead-in next week, but beyond that it's gonna get even tougher.

• ABC also had a rough comedy premiere night as the return of sophomore Galavant (0.9) could only tie its low from last season (which was set against the AFC Championship Game). This night wasn't quite as ripe for sampling as last year's opening night, when Galavant scored a 2.0; on this night, Galvant still had to deal with primetime NFL. But it was still about as easy as it'll ever be, as the Golden Globes loom next week.
• ABC sandwiched Galavant with America's Funniest Home Videos (1.1) and the beginning of a repeat run for Quantico (0.4/0.4).

• The CBS prelims were 2.4 for 60 Minutes (8:00-9:00), 1.4 for Undercover Boss (9:00-10:00) and 0.7 for a repeat of Limitless (10:00-11:00). If anything, these shows should adjust up in finals since they all started about five minutes before the hour on the East Coast. More on that and NBC's solid-rated NFL game (7.2/7.1/6.9 prelims) after finals!

Cablemetrics: The Librarians, Legends, Agent X, The Expanse

These numbers are current through Wednesday, December 30.

WHAT MATTERS:

• Though the broadcast networks almost completely shut down for business during the holiday weeks, cable had a surprising volume of scripted originals powering through. Many of those were on TNT, including the last episodes of cancelled Agent X (0.28/0.21) and Legends (0.15/0.09/0.10). The only real standout of the week was The Librarians (0.55); even with a nice finale spike, it was -42% in its sophomore season, but that still puts it a clear step ahead of most other TNT winter offerings.

Best Case/Worst Case: Galavant, Cooper Barrett's Guide..., Bordertown

Best Case/Worst Case lays out possible scenarios for broadcast primetime TV seasons yet to premiere. Here's what's premiering tonight!

Spotted Ratings, Thursday 12/31/15

WHAT MATTERS:

• Even with big College Football Playoff games on ESPN, it was generally a good night for the New Year's Eve special programming on broadcast.
• ABC's Dick Clark's Primetime New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest exactly matched last year's big ratings with a 2.3 in the 8:00-10:00 window and a 3.9 in the 10:00 hour.
• Year two for Fox's Pitbull's New Year's Revolution (0.8/0.9) actually picked up a little steam year-to-year, beating the 0.7 in primetime in 2014.
• The only real negative was NBC's New Year's Eve Game Night with Andy Cohen (1.0), which paled in comparison to recent primetime airings of New Year's Eve with Carson Daly (including a 1.5 last year). 8:00-10:00 special A Toast to 2015! (1.0) matched last year's special.

• As for those CFB Playoff games, the household overnights (9.7/9.9) were substantial yet down over a third year-to-year from the enormous New Year's Day overnights a year ago (15.5/15.3). The games were not particularly exciting, but this kind of slippage goes down as a pretty clear strike against airing the games on the much more crowded New Year's Eve, when work and parties are a much bigger factor. Still, it's unclear how much the NCAA can do about it, since this arrangement was largely about protecting the Rose Bowl's traditional New Year's Day window.

• CBS averaged 0.6 with repeats (led by 1.0 for The Big Bang Theory) and the CW had a 0.3 for a repeat iHeartRadio special.