Schedule Five-Spot, WE 4/29/12 - CBS Summer, The Lying Game, Fringe, Happily Divorced, Community

Here's the Schedule Five-Spot for the week ending April 29, 2012:

CBS Summer - CBS revealed the deets on yet another relatively light summer of original programming. For the third straight summer, Big Brother will air on Wednesday/Thursday/Sunday, with the premiere coming on Thursday, July 12. Dating series 3 goes after the Sunday edition of Big Brother starting on July 22. Their other new summer series, reality program Dogs in the City, will start much earlier in the summer, airing Wednesdays at 8/7c starting May 30.

Demos Year-to-Year, Thursday 4/26/12

Demos Year-to-Year is back for its fourth May sweeps! As was true in February, expect Wednesday and Thursday to be in negative double digits all sweep long thanks to American Idol. The NBC Thursday numbers will usually be bad, but they're a bit exaggerated on this night since the year-ago evening was Steve Carell's Office finale.

CW True Power Rankings, April 2012

For the first time in seven weeks, it's the True Power Rankings! This is the most critical edition of all, because the networks have just about all the ratings info that they will take into final decision-making time. This should be fun, since lots of new shows have entered the mix since last we spoke. Let's go.

As last time, the numbers below take the ten most recent final TRUE scores (as of April 22), drop the highest and lowest result, and average whatever's left.

Previous CW Power Rankings: November | January | February

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

Spotted Ratings, Thursday 4/26/12

WHAT MATTERS:

• May sweeps opened on a really sour note for CBS, as The Big Bang Theory was down several more ticks from what was already a season low three weeks ago, previously smokin' hot Person of Interest totally melted down and The Mentalist took a hit too. Usually CBS is pretty resilient to this sort of thing, but they had a really bad evening last year on NFL Draft night too.

• As for the draft, its combined rating on ESPN and the NFL Network was up over 20% from last year (3.3 -> 4.0). The NFL Net grabbed a greater share of that audience this year, as its demo nearly doubled from last year (0.4 -> 0.7).

• The troubles continue for Touch, fast plummeting out of "deserves renewal" territory. That's a low for itself but also below anything eventually Friday-exiled The Finder did after American Idol, though Idol is also weaker now than it was then.

• This may be the week that makes me a believer in Scandal, as it posted its fourth straight 2.0 against the draft and the return of The Mentalist.

• 30 Rock bumped up by just one tenth in its second live episode, a far cry from the massive bump (2.1 -> 3.1) it got the first time it tried this back in October 2010.

Fox True Power Rankings, April 2012

For the first time in seven weeks, it's the True Power Rankings! This is the most critical edition of all, because the networks have just about all the ratings info that they will take into final decision-making time. This should be fun, since lots of new shows have entered the mix since last we spoke. Let's go.

As last time, the numbers below take the ten most recent final TRUE scores (as of April 22), drop the highest and lowest result, and average whatever's left.

Previous Fox Power Rankings: November | January | February

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

NBC True Power Rankings, April 2012

For the first time in seven weeks, it's the True Power Rankings! This is the most critical edition of all, because the networks have just about all the ratings info that they will take into final decision-making time. This should be fun, since lots of new shows have entered the mix since last we spoke. Let's go.

As last time, the numbers below take the ten most recent final TRUE scores (as of April 22), drop the highest and lowest result, and average whatever's left.

Previous NBC Power Rankings: November | January | February

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

Spotted Ratings, Wednesday 4/25/12

WHAT MATTERS:

• The dull last day before May sweeps saw ABC's Apartment 23 drop more than a half point following a repeat of Modern Family in just its third episode on the air. I expected a 2.1 or 2.2, so this is a bit of a disappointment. But since it's still so early, I don't think it's something the show can't come back from. It looks basically equivalent to what Happy Endings did after repeats, maybe a tiny tad better. Revenge also took a noticeable dip, but again, I'll reserve any kind of larger judgment till after the whole lineup is back. I don't think either of these results are anything to crow about, but here's another take.

• I guess I should mention that Rock Center was up 50%? No? Bueller?

• The LA Complex did about the same (a little better in viewers) compared to the previous evening's premiere, which would suggest (along with the show's huge 8:30 drop) that the CW's local programming at 7:30 is doing much better. Remodeled did something similar in a Friday 8/7c test.

CBS True Power Rankings, April 2012

For the first time in seven weeks, it's the True Power Rankings! This is the most critical edition of all, because the networks have just about all the ratings info that they will take into final decision-making time. This should be fun, since lots of new shows have entered the mix since last we spoke. Let's go.

As last time, the numbers below take the ten most recent final TRUE scores (as of April 22), drop the highest and lowest result, and average whatever's left.

Previous CBS Power Rankings: November | January | February

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

ABC True Power Rankings, April 2012

For the first time in seven weeks, it's the True Power Rankings! This is the most critical edition of all, because the networks have just about all the ratings info that they will take into final decision-making time. This should be fun, since lots of new shows have entered the mix since last we spoke. Let's go.

As last time, the numbers below take the ten most recent final TRUE scores (as of April 22), drop the highest and lowest result, and average whatever's left.

Previous ABC Power Rankings: November | January | February

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

Spotted Ratings, Tuesday 4/24/12: Far From Complex

WHAT MATTERS:

• The last broadcast premiere of the season was also the lowest-rated, as the CW's The LA Complex hit unbelievably low levels, barely half the Ringer average in the hour. It preliminarily even had slightly fewer viewers (under 650,000) than Remodeled (which premiered at about 670,000)! They got it on the cheap from Canada, so that might keep it around temporarily, but that'd obviously be the only reason.

• Most original shows were down about a tick despite a full night of CBS repeats, but there were two notable exceptions: Glee, bouncing back in its Whitney Houston episode, and Private Practice, which totally flipped the script and picked up a whooping half point after its disastrous start on the evening last week.