SpotVault - Sunday Night Football (NBC) - 2014-15 Ratings

Sunday Night Football

Sundays, 8:30/7:30c, NBC

SpotVault - Thursday Night Football (CBS) - 2014-15 Ratings

Thursday Night Football

Thursdays, 8:30/7:30c, CBS

SpotVault - CFB on Fox (Fox) - 2014-15 Ratings

CFB on Fox

Saturdays, 7:30/6:30c, Fox

SpotVault - Saturday Night Football (ABC) - 2014-15 Ratings

Saturday Night Football

Saturdays, 8:30/7:30c, ABC

Spotted Ratings, Wednesday 9/17/14

WHAT MATTERS:

• It was good news/bad news for the first two new drama premieres of the season. Start with the good: The Mysteries of Laura (2.0) actually almost matched the two-hour finale delivery for America's Got Talent (2.3), though Talent was up to 2.7 in the 9:30 half-hour. I wish I had adjusted my morning The Question line after seeing how well Talent did on Tuesday, but this seems like a pretty solid showing even given that context. Most of these post-Got Talent previews have dropped 25%+ the next week, but Laura has given itself a chance to withstand that and still be in the mix.

• Meanwhile, Fox's Red Band Society (1.3) attracted very little interest, down a tenth from its Hell's Kitchen lead-in (1.4). We still don't know quite how much more carnage is to come on Fox's schedule, especially from Tuesday thru Friday, but this is not good as much more competition will come next week.

• Without an irregularity in the 9/8c hour, Extant (1.1) rallied for its likely series finale. This was its biggest rating since July, though almost all of the ratings since July were 1.0.

Fall 2014 Best Case/Worst Case, Thursday 10/9c

Best Case/Worst Case moves to the Thursday 10/9c hour, when (as at 9/8c) ABC will try to post huge numbers against relatively little broadcast resistance.

Spotted Ratings, Weekend Roundup 9/12-9/14/14

WHAT MATTERS:

• The Friday premiere of Utopia (0.7) was two tenths behind the Tuesday premiere. Fox then burned off a leftover episode of Kitchen Nightmares (0.6), and did the same with a couple American Dad! episodes (1.3/1.3) on Sunday.

• A major rain delay to CBS' first Saturday afternoon SEC game plus another special primetime Notre Dame game on NBC produced an interesting quirk: all four broadcasters were airing football simultaneously for much of the 8:00 hour. CBS' game was the clear winner, drawing about a 2.5 in primetime, and it may have hurt the other three nets (all of whom were way down from their last airings, but all had much worse matchups as well). But it didn't much boost the two-hour Reckless finale (0.6/0.5).

• On Sunday, the second Sunday edition of Sunday Night Football (8.5) was up a tick from the same game last year, while the Miss America Pageant (1.7) was down three ticks year-to-year. As a preview of the kind of lead-in Madam Secretary may get on Sunday, 60 Minutes got a 2.9 after an NFL that averaged a 9.3 in the 7:00 half-hour. (It may go even higher next week since CBS has a rematch of last year's Super Bowl in the late afternoon.)

The Question, Wednesday 9/17/14: Will Viewers Band Together for Laura or Red Band Society?

The first two new dramas of the broadcast fall season premiere tonight. NBC previews procedural The Mysteries of Laura after the finale of America's Got Talent, while Fox will try to recapture the spirit of Glee with teen drama Red Band Society. Neither show exactly feels like a huge out-of-the-box hit in the making, so tonight's pre-premiere Wednesday is key. The Mysteries of Laura gets a far better lead-in than it should ever see from local programming, while Red Band has no original scripted competition in an hour that will soon be overstuffed with it. It's another one of those nights that's not about which network beats the other one; it's about whether either network feels good about itself. Will viewers band together for Laura or Red Band Society? That's The Question for Wednesday, September 17, 2014.

Spotted Ratings, Tuesday 9/16/14

WHAT MATTERS:

• The first broadcast scripted episodes of the 2014-15 season didn't go well. There's really no sugarcoating a 41% year-to-year drop for the premiere of New Girl (1.7), and The Mindy Project's -32% (1.3) wasn't much better. But these year-to-year trends were commonplace late last season, and Utopia was the lead-in, so it actually could've been even worse. New Girl saw a big bounce from its episodes late last season, including a 1.2 finale. Now these shows will look to hold up better vs. full competition than they did last year; the nicest thing I can say is there are no other comedies in the slot till mid-October.

• As for Utopia (1.0), it's still very weak, but it was actually up a tenth in its second Tuesday episode, probably putting the immediate death-watch on hold. And it faced quite the unscripted glut, with Big Brother (2.3) back in the hour alongside a Dancing with the Stars results show (2.1). But the biggest unscripted winner of the night was America's Got Talent (2.5), whose performance finale zoomed past its recent deliveries.

Fall 2014 Best Case/Worst Case, Wednesday 10/9c

Best Case/Worst Case moves to the Wednesday 10/9c hour. ABC and NBC will return less than formidable players, presenting a big opportunity for CBS' first new drama lead-out in years.