Spotted Ratings, Wednesday 3/30/11: Ain't No Sunshine

WHAT MATTERS:

•  Another sleepy Wednesday with most shows slightly down week-to-week. The most notable by far was Mr. Sunshine, which still arguably had some shot at a renewal coming into today but dipped four-tenths below any previous airing. (And down 33% from last week's episode after a Modern Family original.) That's not good.

• Survivor hit an outright series low again rose in finals but tied a series low. The only program to rise from its last episode was Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior, up a tick, but that was mostly because it didn't have the original Minds lead-in this week.

Spotted Ratings, Tuesday 3/29/11: Nice Body!

 WHAT MATTERS:

• ABC brought its spring lineup to the table for the first time on this Tuesday, with the Tuesday premiere of Dancing with the Stars hitting its highest spring Tuesday premiere numbers since 2007. (Another great start for the franchise this season, but the lack of American Idol on the night should significantly help the Tuesday numbers too.)

• The series premiere of Body of Proof did pretty well. It was easily ABC's second-most impressive scripted premiere this season, trailing only No Ordinary Family's 3.2 back in October. Though it did drop a chunk from its DWTS lead-in, it's not nearly the dive taken by the Detroit 1-8-7 premiere this fall (it lost 48%) or even, perhaps more encouragingly, the Castle series premiere in 2009 (which dropped 51% from DWTS). It even edged the Castle premiere (3.0) in raw numbers.

• Most shows didn't make big moves despite the increase in competition, but I will mention the 10% drop for The Good Wife against similarly female-led Body of Proof since it led to a new outright series low.

Spotted Ratings, Monday 3/28/11: Dancing To Victory

WHAT MATTERS:

• There may be adjustments in finals, but as of right now, Dancing with the Stars (5.1) and Castle (3.3) both beat their combined broadcast competition. (Castle would get a 51 if not for the adjustment for the 10:00 hour.) Credit the only other two legit nets on the evening (CBS and Fox) being in repeats, but still an impressive week-to-week retention for those two programs.

• The arrival of Dancing has something to do with it, but I feel I should mention that the lack of original Two and a Half Men is taking a toll. The regularly-scheduled Two and a Half Men repeats have been getting weaker and weaker since the show's original finale on February 14. This string of repeats got as high as a 3.3 back on February 28, around the height of the Sheen drama, but last night's managed just a 2.3 - down 30% in a month and its weakest repeat all season. The net's other comedy repeats were also well below average.

Spotted Ratings, Sunday 3/27/11

WHAT MATTERS:

• Just like on Thursday, almost all original programming was up from its last original. The biggest movers were 60 Minutes, which benefited from the huge NCAA lead-in (which caused a 17-minute CBS overrun and threw things off a bit), and American Dad!, which moved from 7:30 to higher-viewing and higher-lead-in 9:30 for a week.   

• Probably the most significant rating was week four of Secret Millionaire, which picked up two ticks and has ABC breathing a sigh of relief following its double-digit drops in weeks two and three. Looks to be in good shape now.

Scheduling Five-Spot, WE 3/27/11 - NBC Summer, The Paul Reiser Show, Fringe, ABC Summer, Southland/Lights Out

Here's your Scheduling Five-Spot for the week ending March 27, 2011:

NBC Summer - NBC will have originals (or almost-originals) on five different nights this summer. Monday's got the return of Law & Order: LA bleeding into June, Tuesday and Wednesday have America's Got Talent, Friday has Dateline and the second window of Friday Night Lights, and Sunday will have season two of The Marriage Ref. The net still hasn't set the whole summer sked, as they seem to be waiting on other announcements before slating reality newbies Still Standing, Love in the Wild and It's Worth What? Look for at least one of those to get scheduled around Got Talent.

Spotted Ratings, Saturday 3/26/11: No Ordinary Saturday

WHAT MATTERS:

• The first half or so of primetime was ruled by the tail end of the UConn/Arizona basketball game (3.1, but heavily subject to finals adjustment), which preliminarily about equaled its combined broadcast competition.

• It doesn't matter for the show, but it's another example of the "Friday/Saturday effect" to put in our pockets. A Saturday edition of doomed No Ordinary Family (1.0) was down around 30% from the show's recent Tuesday episodes.

Spotted Ratings, Friday 3/25/11: 'Shark' Tanks

WHAT MATTERS:

• The big rating of interest on this evening (at least to me!) was the Friday premiere of Shark Tank (1.2). That 1.2 leading off the evening does not look good for a premiere, as it's down a stout 37% from its Sunday "preview" five days prior. It's also 19% below its average in its four Friday episodes all the way back in the opening weeks of 2010. It is ahead of Supernanny's average in the hour, so all hope is not lost, especially since the show actually grew from its timeslot premiere number in all three season 1 timeslots it had. It may need to do that again.

• Fringe ratings matter less now with the show recently renewed for season 4, but the 1.4 demo was up week-to-week. (Came down in finals to reduce those gains, though.) I don't buy into the idea that early renewals can (or are designed to) provide a short-term ratings boost, but I guess this'd be a piece of evidence in that theory's favor. Might be an idea worth looking at sometime!

• In unscripted news, it was Fox's Kitchen Nightmares and the rest of ABC's lineup below average while Who Do You Think You Are? and Dateline on NBC were both at season-second-best levels.

• CBS had basketball again, and again we saw the effect of just one other network airing March Madness (compared to three last week). The Kentucky/Ohio State classic in the second game was by far the highest-rated game of the tourney to date.

Spotted Ratings, Thursday 3/24/11: The Rise of Everything

WHAT MATTERS:

• Not too often we get to say this, but all ten original entertainment programs in primetime were up from their last originals. That still left most of them below average for the season, as most were rallying from terrible numbers posted on HUT-depressed St. Patrick's Day. The biggest movers were Private Practice, Parks & Recreation, 30 Rock and, oddly, recently-axed Perfect Couples. The big movers certainly benefited from the increased HUT (after finals, I estimate around a 9% increase in overall 18-49 viewing week-to-week) and the presence of original Grey's Anatomy and The Office on the evening. Those weren't around last week.

• The two CBS bball games were much higher than last week's first round games and also much less down year-to-year, as predicted in yesterday's Five-Spot. The 7:00 game was down 32% and the second game down 23% year-to-year.

Ratings Five-Spot, WE 3/20/11 - March Madness Ratings In-Depth

It wasn't a hugely interesting ratings week, so I decided to dedicate this whole Five-Spot to a more in-depth look at the first week of March Madness. I think it's worth the effort because this year has had such a drastic shift in the way the tourney is covered, and it's pretty tough to find all this info consolidated in one place anyway.

First Four on TruTV - Despite considerable joking in the sports media about how nobody would be able to "find" TruTV, three of the First Four games on Tuesday and Wednesday did outdraw the Tuesday play-in game on ESPN last year. Even the first 16-vs.-16 matchup (1.200 million) edged last year's play-in (1.053). And the at-large matchups (1.354 million for Clemson/UAB on Tuesday, 1.253 for USC/VCU on Wednesday) did much better than the 16-vs-16s. UTSA/Alabama St. early on Wednesday brought up the rear with just 786,000 total viewers.

Spotted Ratings, Wednesday 3/23/11

WHAT MATTERS:

• Credit CBS and ABC with this much: we've certainly gotten to see how new shows Mr. Sunshine and Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior perform in a variety of situations. A week after getting a 2.5 in the "best" situation (original Minds lead-in, repeat Law & Order: SVU competition), Suspect Behavior declined double-digits when given the "worst" situation. (The Minds repeat lead-in was above average but so was the original SVU competition.)  

• Sunshine got to air after an original Modern Family after two straight weeks with repeat lead-ins. While it predictably bounced back, its 52% drop from Modern was its worst yet and worse than anything Cougar Town's ever done in the timeslot.

• The Middle is taking a hit from the constant Idol competition. A week after it had its weakest repeats of the season, an original hit a new season low. Same with Survivor, which actually tied a series low.