Spotted Ratings, Saturday 10/27/12

WHAT MATTERS:

• ABC finally had a truly marquee matchup on Saturday Night Football with Oklahoma/Notre Dame and had a huge week-to-week upswing. It edged Fox's World Series on the busiest sports Saturday of the season to date; both these programs were well within the top 25 for the week. It was a rare game on the year-to-year upside for ABC, while the World Series was (as usual with the Saturday game) the lowest-rated of this series and down in the low double-digits year-to-year for the third straight game. Usual contender ESPN managed a 1.5 with Alabama/Mississippi State.

Spotted Ratings, Monday 10/29/12

WHAT MATTERS:

• Hurricane Sandy made for a crazy evening in the TV ratings world on many levels. Power outages surely brought down overall viewing somewhat, but people shut into their houses by the weather and viewing of hurricane coverage on cable and on local broadcast affiliates appears to have more than made up for that, even by already-high Monday viewing standards. These things are tough to gauge in the True2 scores, so I wouldn't read a ton into those for this week. Three of five networks eschewed their regular programming, helping the competitive situation for ABC and NBC. All of this stuff combined somehow added up to somewhat normal numbers from those remaining originals.

First Two Weeks, Emily Owens M.D.

WEEK ONE
Compared to the low-1's premieres of the CW's other fall dramas, Emily Owens M.D. looked like rather disastrous. It managed just a 0.5 demo against a presidential debate simulcast on the big four. The only qualifiers worth mentioning are that the show didn't have much of a lead-in (Hart of Dixie had a 0.6) and it actually built by a bit from Hart in total viewership.

SpotVault - Don't Trust the B----- in Apartment 23 (ABC) - 2012-13 Ratings

Apartment 23

Tuesdays, 9:30/8:30c, ABC

SpotVault - Happy Endings (ABC) - 2012-13 Ratings

Happy Endings

Tuesdays, 9/8c, ABC

SpotVault - Nikita (CW) - 2012-13 Ratings

Nikita

Fridays, 9/8c, CW

SpotVault - The World Series (Fox) - 2012 Ratings

The World Series on Fox

Spotted Ratings, Friday 10/26/12

WHAT MATTERS:

• For the first of two straight Fridays, the majority of the excitement will take place in the 8/7c hour. NBC did well by my way off-base standards with the pilot of Mockingbird Lane. Good number, but I kinda doubt it's eye-popping enough to reverse NBC's passing on the show. Shark Tank remained on top in the hour and absolutely mowed down the return of Kitchen Nightmares, down by nearly half year-to-year.

• The much better lead-in and the Halloween theme vaulted Grimm atop the night. It tied the show's biggest number of the season and was its biggest Friday number since the pilot exactly 52 weeks ago.

• It remains troublesome in CW land as America's Next Top Model dropped to 0.4 for the first time in a couple months and Nikita ticked down to zero point TWO.

• The finals were a big help to CSI: NY and Blue Bloods, each of which were up double digits to at or tied for season-high levels. Undercover Boss joins next week, but it's noteworthy that those shows sure did a lot better airing after NCIS than after Hawaii Five-0.

CW True Power Rankings, October 2012

The much-beloved True Power Rankings are BACK. I line up every entertainment program in broadcast primetime by network/category using my timeslot metric True2, offering my take on the ratings strength of the shows.

Two changes of note this year. First: next week, I will create a separate page for each network, and I will update those every week when I do all the SpotVault updates. This will keep the numbers linked on the right sidebar much more up to date than last year. But the full-fledged versions in which I actually write stuff will be considerably less frequent. The current plan is to do those four times: now (beginning of November sweeps), early January (beginning of midseason), late February (end of February sweeps) and late April (beginning of May sweeps/pre-upfront). Subject to change!

Second change: I'm trying yet another new "formula" for the averages below. The A18-49 and True2 averages now average the last third of the season's episodes to date, rounded up. This seems like a decent way to quickly remove the value of inflated series premieres and give a show a larger sample if it's aired a larger number of episodes. I list how many episodes have aired (through the last full week, ending October 21) and how many of those are counted in the averages for each show.

Other October True Power Rankings: ABC | CBS | NBC | Fox | CW

The Question, Friday 10/26/12: Is NBC Missing Out on a Ratings Munster?

Tonight, NBC will shift its supposedly dead The Munsters remake Mockingbird Lane into holiday special mode. They've actually promoted the busted pilot a decent amount, and I would guess that there is a certain ratings level at which NBC reconsiders their decision not to pick the show up. I also don't think it's getting to that level, but maybe I am way underestimating The Munsters appeal among 18-49 viewers. I say it does better than a Grimm repeat would but doesn't make it up toward Grimm original numbers (which is where it would probably start to raise some eyebrows).

Over/Under: 1.05.