I want more omar epps, more jesse spencer, more Dr. cuddy, who I think is one of the sexiest women on TV.

I honestly don’t think that the CW is going to go away. I think any kind of combination of broadcast stations is too valuable to just walk away from. Even if they do badly, there is *some* value there.

Dawn Ostroff, the CEO, losing her job though is a lot more likely. If they do worse than last year, I think she’s gone.

Also, of the 8 *new* hours (plus two regularly scheduled repeat hours) they’re going to program, they still have only premiered 6 of them (yet to come are Stylista and Everybody Hates Chris & The Game) Although only Stylista targets the young women demo that CW seems to care about.

Plus, they leased out their entire Sunday night to Media Rights Capital. How those shows do, and how they’re counted for (or against) CW’s chance for survival is anybody’s guess.

Julia, I’ve read the opposite. The biggest difference, I hear, is that Psych is a straight comedy, The Mentalist is a drama about a fake psychic damaged by the murder of his family.

Slight OT, but the retirees are in trouble, as well. Just read in the New York Times that 401Ks are down–while many working people can wait out the bad economy, retirees don’t have that luxury.

It’s really a bad time for all, and probably will get worse.

Last season’s premiere went up against the first hour of the Dancing with the Stars premiere, the only show that can do serious damage to CBS (I’m sure Without a Trace will be higher in the coming weeks).

“Jon, tonight’s address will definitely mess with the ratings in the 2/3 of the country where 9pm Eastern time is in prime-time. Pushing all those shows later will likely reduce their audiences, particularly for the 10-11pm shows.”

Checking it again, it appears it’ll only be 12-14 minutes, so I guess there won’t be any preemptions, but yeah, it’s still not good news for those shows. And from the sounds of it Obama is standing his ground to still do the debate, so the networks might still be fine.

Thanks

As for all scripted shows being lower, I’m not sure on that point. I don’t think enough scripted shows have come back to tell whether this is just a problem for FOX or if it will be a problem across the board.

As for Friday, the debate is scheduled for 9pm Eastern. If it doesn’t happen, the networks would almost certainly put on repeats. They aren’t going to burn anything valuable on such short notice.

If McCain successfully gets the debate pushed back, the networks will probably then have three upcoming nights of programming completely messed up – tonight, Friday (Would they just broadcast repeats?) and whatever night the debate lands on.

Granted, Obama needs to agree to this, but if he does, then, well, poor networks…

wasnt it like the only show except idol that had an above 20 million average last season? well I guess we can say goodbye to that this time!

Fringe is a hit, not a homer which is what I’m sure fox was hoping for, but I doubt their upset. The network would kill to have fringes numbers on their Monday night shows.

Mentalist only gave a mediocre performance, not good but not bad. CBS didn’t look to be aiming for the stars with this one so I give it good chances at survival.

If advertisers want to reach lots of young people on television there are relatively few shows where they can do it efficiently. Advertising on those shows then costs more money, and so the shows themselves are more valuable.

I think the development pipeline will be more or less back to normal by January so while there may be fewer fall cancellations, there may be lots more in January.

http://tvbythenumbers.com/2007/10/09/greys-anatomy-takes-weekly-18-49-demo-honors/1164

As a complete aside, I’d also speculate House makes a lot more in DVD and syndication revenue than NCIS, but that has nothing to do with last night’s ratings…

P.S. and it is possible House will command well more than 50% more ad revenue (it outperformed NCIS in the 18-34 demo by over 100%)

On the Mentalist Baker beautifully morphs Patrick Jane the fake psychic into
Jane the sharp eyed criminal investigator with a mission.

The hair styling and wardrobe change really established the transformation.

But I doubt the Fox programmers are clueless and had to expect some drop off simply by changing timeslots for a show with already diminished ratings post-writer’s strike.

Whether it’s wise to try to build a new franchise with Fringe I can’t say and time will tell. But I don’t buy analysis that says “Fringe is back to its premiere numbers and House is doing it no good.” Its premiere was heavily promoted and aired against zero competition (unless you count the CW).

And before FRINGE they should air a show called LUNATIC about the mental hospital from FRINGE starring an aging Jack Nicholson as Dr. Ratchett and run by Massive Dynamics to house “problems”.

Im just saying.

If you compare House to NCIS, yes, House wins in the demo. But if you compare what each network expects out of these shows, I think Fox is way more concerned about House’s numbers than CBS is about NCIS’s

I don’t watch CW, but the execs must know something if they ordered 13 eps for 90210; plus, as I understand, Gossip Girl has rebounded in the ratings.

FrankJ: I don’t see TSCC getting 4 million in DVR numbers.

I still have to wonder about DVR numbers though. It may not save a show, but to me a large contingent of time-shifted viewers would at least tell FOX that the live viewers from last season did not abandon the show. FOX may find that enough of an incentive to change the show time or the day to try to bring the live viewers back.