Here's the Ratings Five-Spot for the week ending January 22, 2012:
- Alcatraz - Fox's new drama Alcatraz got off to a pretty good start two Mondays ago, posting a little over 10 million viewers and a 3.3 A18-49 rating for its two-hour premiere. Impressively, that was a little better than some of Fox's other heavily hyped two-hour premieres, like Terra Nova (3.1 on September 26) and even Fringe (3.2 all the way back in fall 2008). That's an encouraging opening number, and the show held up throughout the broadcast pretty well. If it can settle at around where Terra Nova settled (low-2's), you'd think it would have a leg up on a renewal because it's certainly a less expensive show. Any better than that and it's a lock.
- Justified, White Collar, Southland - The relative flexibility in scheduling on cable means there are usually not the kinds of multi-way season premiere bouts on cable that you often see on broadcast. But last Tuesday was an exception, as three of the biggest cable nets rolled out drama seasons on the same evening. So who won in the three-way battle between Justified, White Collar and Southland? In terms of the year-to-year trends, nobody. All three shows were down by double-digits from their year-ago premieres, and all three had their weakest premieres ever. It looks like there's a good reason why we don't see premiere smackdowns like this on cable too often. In the raw numbers, it was White Collar (3.23 million viewers, 1.1 demo) narrowly beating Justified (3.07 million, 1.0 demo), with Southland (1.76 million, 0.6 demo) lagging well behind.
- Royal Pains - On the other hand, USA's Royal Pains premiered against relatively little cable competition, though all of the timeslot's broadcast dramas (CSI, Revenge and Law & Order: SVU) were original. But Royal Pains continues to be one of those summer shows that simply does not hold up in the regular season. It premiered on Wednesday to a mere 3.26 million viewers and 0.9 demo. That's down from its previous regular season premiere (1.1 demo on 1/20/11) but the more amazing thing is how far down it is from the summer ratings. Last summer, Royal Pains was actually USA's biggest drama (1.46 average) and never got lower than a 1.3. So a 0.9 premiere is fairly striking. I know there are reasons beyond ratings for splitting up seasons, as USA's Ted Linhart often insists, but maybe an actual summer-themed show really does belong only in the summer.
- Archer - FX welcomed back animated series Archer for its third season on Thursday. It posted 1.31 million viewers and a 0.7 demo, down a little bit in viewers from last winter's premiere (1.51 million) but even in the A18-49 demo. FX then used the Archer lead-in to launch a new animated series, Unsupervised. It dropped significantly from its lead-in, finding just 856,000 viewers and a 0.5 demo rating.
- Grimm - With CBS and the CW taking a Friday off from originals, a couple other networks benefited in a big way. As a huge fan of ABC's Shark Tank, I was happy to see that show premiere with its best Friday ratings yet. NBC also caught some of the updraft, as Chuck hit season high ratings (3.82 million, 1.1 demo) in its penultimate week on the air. More significantly (since it'll be around beyond next week) was the big rise from Grimm, whose 5.92 million viewers and 1.8 demo represented drastic increases from recent episodes. Both figures were the best since the show's second week on the air. I've been skeptical of Grimm's ability to hold up on the always difficult Friday night, and there was relatively little competition this week, but this is undoubtedly a pretty encouraging result. It's amazing that a Friday drama on NBC actually doubled the demo rating of Thursday newbie The Firm and slightly beat this week's Parenthood.
For more in-depth TV ratings coverage every day, check out my blog at SpottedRatings.com or follow me on Twitter: @spotupj.
Yay for Alcatraz!
ReplyDeletefox create another syfy series with good storie line using alcatraz like a imaginary base awesome (if they use some part of alcatraz to shoot some inside scene ) i want to know if the goverment alowed wow they nail it good oportunity to know some history about the place only one person i know was a prisioner there was al capone i read other inmates worth like al serve or die inside if the creator put some of his stories during the season will be fantastic.
ReplyDeleteGlad that Grimm has been going up. I really like that show.
ReplyDeleteI'm still not sold on Alcatraz. It's a little too procedural right now.
So White Collar is down just a bit from the summer. Certainly not as terrible as the Royal Pains drop...
ReplyDeleteI agree about Alcatraz, but I guess procedurals work audience-wise. Fringe too was very much a procedural when it started. Good to have some stand alone episodes initially so new views can tune in without having missed anything importnant.
ReplyDeleteThink the same can be said for Grimm which has been a lot of 'monster of the week' episodes to date. It seems (and I hope I am right) to be starting to have some more long term story threads being woven in to the weekly story.
Definitely there are certain USA shows that are better "built" for the regular season than others. It seems the buzzier ones like Psych and White Collar tend to hold up better, while the more disposable ones are better built for summer.
ReplyDeleteIs Psych really considered "buzzy"? I've never percieved it as such, and it doesn't seem to get marketed that way by USA, at least from what I've seen...
ReplyDeleteI would say so. Maybe it's just the people I follow, but I find there's much more Internet love for Psych than for a Royal Pains. This might be a flawed metric, but it's the best one I can think of: 82k followers for @Psych_USA vs. 22k for @RoyalPains_USA
ReplyDeleteThanks! I agree about Royal Pains-- it should be just a summer show
ReplyDeleteI hope more people tune in for Justified. Maybe they didn't know it was back...
ReplyDeleteI think putting it against Southland also split the viewers a bit
ReplyDeleteah, yes. Good call. This time slot is murder. No pun intended. A lot of shows against each other here.
ReplyDeleteYeah and its a shame because both shows could do with some more love. Networks and their conflicting schedules!
ReplyDeleteGood news for Alcatraz, I liked it more than I thought I would, thou it's not a must see for me as yet I am interested to see where it's going. Shame about Justified, I thought it was a strong opener and I'm eager to see what's going to happen to Boyd in jail :o
ReplyDeleteBurn Notice has 50k followers. It lost about 35% of its viewers from Summer to Fall.
ReplyDeleteI don't think it is so much that they are "built for summer" as many people just aren't aware that they air outside of summer. Plus there is less competition from the major networks in the summer.
Psych wasn't on during the summer in 2011, though it lost about 20% from 2010 summer to fall.
Your argument is precisely what I mean by "built for summer" - I think the shows with more generally engaged audiences are more likely to a) know it's on and b) watch in the face of broadcast competition.
ReplyDeleteTo your specific examples, Burn Notice is a show I think most would agree once had buzz but has lot a lot of it. It once held up much better; its winter 2009 season was at that time its highest-rated yet. You're right that Psych dropped, but that percent drop is still much smaller than those 30% or more drops from shows like Royal Pains and Covert Affairs and latter-day Burn Notice.
Thanks Spot
ReplyDeleteyay Grimm! that is all! :)
ReplyDeleteI'm noticing the bleed-off of Burn Notice's audience in the second-half period really started when it moved to fall in 2010 - although I think that's about the time where I started to slide in my own personal determination to watch in w/in reasonable timeframes after the episodes were recorded. (and I wouldn't be surprised if that was when it started for everyone else - certainly, the critical community got really spotty in its coverage around that time).
ReplyDeleteWhile a 1.8 is certainly not a fantastic demo, that's not bad for a Friday, and definitely not bad for NBC. If you would have told me that Grimm would NBC's most successful (and only successful?) drama for the new season, I wouldn't have believed it. Oh poor pathetic NBC...I do look forward to the return of The Voice, along with the premiere of Smash, which seems to me like a perfect pairing.
ReplyDeleteAs people are saying, Royal Pains would perhaps be best if it was in the summer, since you know, it's summer themed and all. I'm glad to see White Collar doing relatively well, in my opinion it's USA's strongest show.
Alcatraz has recognizable fan favorite actors in Jorge Garcia ( Lost), Sam Neill ( Jurassic Park) and ER's Parminder Nagra who oh yeah was also in one of the most popular girl power flicks of all time. Set in one of America's most notorious prisons with all kinds of mysteries surrounding it you have a great potential for a long running series. I am just hoping they don't dumb it down too much. Fox likes to think we are all stupid. Terra Nova has a lot of potential if they'd just let the sci fi stand on its own.
ReplyDeleteI am just appalled by how horrific all things are at NBC. They are scrambling to try to get anything going. I swear at this point they'd be better off going to hard core- no fluff and filler- nightly political coverage and scrapping their comedies and new dramas.
It is time for the nets to quit thinking in 24 week seasons and move to a shorter more dynamic programming model with 6 to 12 episode arcs like cable uses . Break it up with mini-series and keep people tuning in for new stuff.