Spotted Ratings, Thursday 1/5/12: Grey's Ascendancy (FINALS + Jersey Shore)

WHAT MATTERS:

• Of ABC's four all-new days this first week of midseason, Thursday brought by far the best news. Grey's Anatomy (returned from an eight-week hiatus with easily a season high and its biggest numbers since the musical episode on 3/31/11. Throwing out the musical ep, it was the highest number in nearly 15 months! (since 10/14/10)

• The news was good but not quite as great for Winter Wipeout and Private Practice. Wipeout's numbers were a massive improvement on Charlie's Angels in the timeslot and also the Wipeout franchise's highest demo in nearly a year, including the summer telecasts (since 1/13/11). But the numbers were still considerably down from Winter Wipeout's pre-Idol numbers last year (premiered to a 3.8 on 1/6/11). And Private Practice dropped in finals but was still above average.

• The CDub kicked off midseason with the return of The Vampire Diaries and The Secret Circle, with TVD up a tick from its last pre-hiatus number and TSC even.

• Among the three networks in repeats, CBS dominated, with two of four shows hitting repeat season highs and huge The Big Bang Theory hitting its highest number of the season in the leadoff role.

• MTV's Jersey Shore premiere (4.0) actually wasn't the biggest show on TV, and it was down a bit from the last couple season premieres, but it still dominated 10/9c.

Spotted Ratings, Wednesday 1/4/12 (FINALS)

WHAT MATTERS:

• The return of ABC Wednesday did pretty well, with all five shows (The Middle, Suburgatory, Modern Family, Happy Endings and Revenge) up from their last airings on December 7 and very close to their mid-November levels.

• However, it's hard to get too excited about ABC considering the performance came against almost entirely repeat competition elsewhere. Among the unscripted leftovers, CBS' I Get That a Lot did a whole lot better than Fox's Mobbed. Things on Wednesday will heat up considerably starting next week with One Tree Hill and the Whitney/Cheslea hour, then the return of American Idol the following week.

Spotted Ratings, Tuesday 1/3/12: Didn't Work It (FINALS)

WHAT MATTERS:

• The premiere of Work It did pretty weak business, dropping by 17% out of Last Man Standing and rating four tenths behind October 18's premiere of Man Up! in the same timeslot. Though it did do a little better than later Man Up! episodes, it still couldn't even improve the timeslot average. TVMoJoe called it "not an instant flop" which seems rather generous to me.

• Elsewhere on ABC, they got yet another surprisingly OK result out of Celebrity Wife Swap, down just a couple ticks from its preview the previous night, but struggling lead-out Body of Proof did not benefit at all, matching its last airing four weeks ago when its lead-in was just a 1.3.

• The biggest loser (get it?) on premiere Tuesday had to be NBC, where The Biggest Loser barely improved on its fall premiere and was down a horrifying 27% year-to-year. Then Parenthood came back at a series low and two tenths behind any result this season.

• Old money ruled, with CBS' trio of NCIS, NCIS: Los Angeles and Unforgettable all above average and all hitting their highest numbers since at least October. (Unforgettable hit its biggest number since the series premiere.)

Spotted Ratings, Monday 1/2/12: Will You Accept These Ratings? (FINALS)

WHAT MATTERS:

• Happy midseason! Unfortunately, we're not off to a particularly good start on broadcast, probably thanks in part to the Fiesta Bowl on ESPN. The Bachelor returned to ABC down by 17% from last year's opener. It joined pretty much every unscripted program from the fall in premiering down double digits. But the return of Wife Swap in celebrity form did pretty respectably at 10:00, retaining almost the whole Bachelor demo audience. It moves to its regular Tuesday 9/8c timeslot starting tonight.

• CBS' once-piping hot Monday lineup mostly took a hit, with only 2 Broke Girls and Mike and Molly avoiding season lows among the comedies (and then only barely). It continues what has been a topsy-turvy season for the CBS comedies. Usually they do only OK during the fall against Dancing and pop up in January against The Bachelor. This year, they beat the crap out of DWTS but aren't off to a good start in the winter. Most applicable shows were approximately even year-to-year, which is much worse than in the fall.

• Facing their strongest competition yet, NBC's Who's Still Standing? and Fear Factor held up pretty well relative to their holiday hiatus numbers. So I can use my new Tavg number, I'll note that Fear Factor remains a massive improvement on the fall's Monday offering The Sing-Off.

Spotted Ratings, Sunday 1/1/12 (FINALS)

WHAT MATTERS:

• 2012 began with the season finale of Sunday Night Football a.k.a. the de facto NFC East Championship between Dallas and the New York Giants towering over a collection of repeats. It also did miles better than last year's finale (6.9), which was essentially the same game (a battle for the NFC fourth seed) but featuring less ratings-attractive NFC West teams.

Spotted Ratings, Saturday 12/31/11 (FINALS): New Year's Ratin' Eve

WHAT MATTERS:

• Didn't see this one coming! ABC got pretty ginormous ratings out of a full night of New Year's Rockin' Eve, with the average for the first two hours close to what the 10:00 special usually gets. Then, no doubt benefiting from the two extra hours, the 10:00 special set records. There was huge build throughout the evening: 1.5 -> 2.2 -> 2.8 -> 3.3 -> 3.9 -> 4.3.

• Dick Clark Productions only widened their gap over the primetime portion of NBC's New Year's Eve with Carson Daly, which finished well behind last year's 1.2. Earlier in the NBC evening (and on Fox) were some noble attempts to hit the lowest ratings in big-four history, but the repeats of Grimm and Terra Nova did not oblige.

The True Top 25, Week Ending 1/1/12 (2011-12 Week 15)

The last week of 2011 brought one last True Top 25 win for NBC's Sunday Night Football (but NBC football should win again this week with their Saturday playoff game). Despite being over two points stronger in A18-49, this Giants/Cowboys matchup was actually a little Truly weaker than last week's game because of the drastic difference in viewing levels between New Year's Day and the week-ago Christmas Day.

Despite the win, Sunday Night Football was surprisingly somewhat pushed by ABC's primetime New Year's Rockin' Eve special on New Year's Eve. The special had one of the worst Sitch scores you'll ever see (-74%) thanks to pulling a pretty huge rating on what should go down as the least-viewed evening of the 2011-12 regular season. No doubt the last hour benefited from two additional hours of the special leading in.

Most of the rest of the list (19 of 25) belonged to repeats of entertainment programming. As usual, most of those repeats were on CBS. Also as usual, The Big Bang Theory is the best repeater by a decent margin. The only scripted original of the week was Friday's Chuck, and it wasn't within striking distance of the top 25 (finishing at #58).

How I Cover Series Premiere Ratings

I generally don't write much about how other people cover TV news and ratings because 1) I don't care that much and 2) at least in the realm of ratings, it's fairly tough to be so egregiously wrong that it's worth mentioning. But the coverage of series premiere ratings has become a bit of a pet peeve of mine, and it perked up again today when people started calling Work It "not an instant flop" and "not a complete bust." I think those labels suggest a fundamental mistake in the way many if not most people cover series premieres.

Spotted Ratings, Friday 12/30/11 (FINALS)

WHAT MATTERS:

• Thanks to Chuck (and maybe Dateline, not sure yet if it was original) for snapping a string of two straight broadcast days without a single original. But no good deed goes unpunished as, after holding up nicely over Christmas weekend, it dove by a couple ticks this week to a new low.

Midseason Matchups 2012, Sunday

Bold indicates a timeslot change; ALL CAPS indicates a new show

7/6c

Winter/Spring Broadcast: America's Funniest Home Videos (ABC) vs. 60 Minutes (CBS) vs. Dateline (NBC, 2/12) vs. animation repeats/The Cleveland Show (Fox)

Projected A18-49 winner: America's Funniest Home Videos (ABC)

Notes: A bit of a tough winner pick as three different nets were in the mid-1's last winter/spring. 60 Minutes will certainly have the edge when it gets a sports overrun, but I'll give AFV a very slight advantage under normal circumstances.