Regardless, I think it says a lot that shows like AI get high marks, but shows that actually require the viewer to engage their brains don’t see positive ratings.

On a less analytical note…I don’t like Southland. I want to like it, the premise is good, but it comes off as a little overly scripted to me. It has a few good minutes followed by a few crappy ones. (I’m not to fond of a lot of the character’s personal stories…they just detract from the rest of the plot.)

Hopefully they up the ante and it gets better.

yes, last nights episode was incredibly great, critics loved it, fans loved it, but unfortunately the quality of the show has very little to do with the nielsen ratings.

As far as Fringe goes I agree with you, I think it would hold up relatively well without Idol assuming it stays a 9. I don’t know if I’d be as confident if it were for some reason to move to 8. I’m not sure if at this stage at least Fringe is a show that pulls large numbers of people to the network off the bat.

And Andrew remember, quality is subjective.

Damon Lindelof is a Nielsen viewer. It makes sense! He’s always going on about how he watches Criminal Minds instead of Lost at in their podcasts, and he’s smart enough to know the difference between rerun and original eps. It explains EVERYTHING!!!!!!111

[sarcasm]

So if Fringe was moved, I suspect some viewers would drop off, but then some other viewers of whatever lead-in the new slot had would start watching. Whether that would result in significant bleeding of viewers I don’t know, but it would seem quite a few shows would be subject to that same phenomena. Only a really, really compelling show is likely to drag ALL its current viewers to some other night and then pick up new ones as well.

I don’t know if anyone has ever statistically studied the effects of the night of the week on viewing habits. Do some people only watch on certain nights REGARDLESS of what’s on? Because of work or whatever? To what degree are people just resistant to shows moving and thus disrupting their settled-on viewing schedule? There’s a lot of questions one could ask and I suspect the answers aren’t around.

The problem with the pilot is that they tried to do too much in too short a period of time. Too many characters and too many plots. It doesn’t help that none of the characters really feel natural at this point. Just ‘quirky’ ideas packaged together.

The question for Fringe is do the people that discovered it and stick with it because its on after Idol like it and enjoy it enough to stick with it if it moves somewhere else? That was the same question Lie To Me faced and apparently the answer there was not really.

Of course the other question a lot of people seem to love asking is, would Fringe have found an audience without a House/Idol lead-in? And that’s a bit of a backwards question because you can apply that to countless shows that were built on the back of a strong lead-in – House springs to mind as an obvious example. Its a big hit now but would it have done that without Idol?

Bones will air in repeats on Thursdays leading into So You Think You can Dance. Futon Critic suggests (and I agree) that these are positive indicators of renewal for next season for both shows.

That didn’t bother the 16+ million people who watch The mentalist.

Since when are people going to sit staring at the tube for another hour of a show they don’t understand just because they watched the lead-in?

Fringe numbers are good because the show is interesting and entertaining, the plots are unusual, and the characters are likable – even the frosty DHS dude is interesting since he looks like an alien himself!

Anna Torv is completely likable, more so than any other cop on TV – in fact, the only oddity is how she could ever actually be an FBI agent acting that nice to everybody. John Noble is hilarious, Joshua Jackson is likable – and the villains are excellent as well.

But the real plus are the plots. How many shows have plots like a kid found sealed underground for 80 years? Or a missile comes up from the ground years ago, then returns today – then disappears again after assassins run around trying to grab it and some weird bald dude knows all about it? Or a giant cold virus crawls out a guys mouth after killing him? Or a guy morphs into a monster on an passenger jet? You see this on CSI, Law and Order, even Life? Maybe Chuck?

Some people would watch this stuff simply to say, “Damn, never saw anything like that before!” Especially if the idiot was just watching American Idol…

That explains Fringe numbers to me.

Everyone I know (other than me) either DVR’s Lost or watches full seasons in one go on DVD.

Many people I know are ardent Lost fans, but refuse to watch only 1 episode at once, and watch the whole season on DVD.

So Lost’s numbers are very skewed I think compared to its actual influence.

I correct myself. 4th in the overalls, but 2nd in the demos. That is a difference, although SVU’s numbers compared favorably in the demos to BL. But again, SVU is a 10PM show that has to be put into a 9PM slot somehow, just like Southland if it’s successful.

Yes, yet again, NBC could move Chuck/Heroes to Wednesday…. if they wanted to torpedo the ratings on the expensive SVU by having to move that in return to Monday. And there is no guarantee that Heroes would even benefit going against Lost + sometimes AI, now that all the 18-34 are abandoning Heroes.

Actually, I don’t necessarily advocate keeping Chuck and Heroes together. I would say move Chuck on its own and pairing with with Legally Mad might be the better move, as I would expect Chuck’s and Legally Mad’s audiences to be in a similar age group (though not necessarily similar in gender). Chuck and Heroes have slightly different age brackets in their audiences.

The big question is whether SVU can play an hour earlier. Judging by Tuesday night’s ratings, it wouldn’t matter if 9PM had SVU or the 2nd hour of Biggest Loser: NBC still took fourth place last night.

“ABC is going to become the new NBC, as it only has its few hits and no new ones.”
Well, aside from its tentpole dramas, it still has Dancing with the Stars and Bachelor(/ette), and perhaps the latter will continue to try to keep up ratings by recycling past losers.

“Geez, you guys sure are reactionary. 2.5 won the 8:00 slot tonight. What does that tell you? Answer: Nobody was watching TV!”
Well, adding up the 8 o clock shares = about 30. Meaning everyone was watching cable, not nothing.

Hmm, people seem pretty psyched about possibilities for the two new shows tonight. No mid-season show has made a hit, right? Well, unless you count the now-2.5 LTM. Oh, reading downthread, I forgot that the Poehler show is premiering too. Oh. Exciting.
Although I don’t think any steadily 4.0+ hits have been made in the last four seasons (I’m not counting shows that only get these ratings when directly after, say, Idol.).

Pesach strikes me as a very odd candidate to advance over, say, the first week of the new baseball season.

And too bad about Life. Another great show bites the dust, leaving more free time for me. The finale was especially good and they did seem to wrap everything up in case it has to be the end.

Yes, yet again, NBC could move Chuck/Heroes to Wednesday…. if they wanted to torpedo the ratings on the expensive SVU by having to move that in return to Monday. And there is no guarantee that Heroes would even benefit going against Lost + sometimes AI, now that all the 18-34 are abandoning Heroes.

So your master plan is to ruin the ratings on one show NBC produces (SVU), probably drag down the ratings on another show NBC produces (Heroes), all to raise the chances of some other show NBC doesn’t produce (Chuck). You do realize that the networks actually prefer to be profitable, right?

@Andrea: “Lie To Me is not in trouble and will be picked up for a full season next year”

Why? Why would Fox commit to that now? Take a look at Fox’s current spring M-R schedule: what (aside from possibly LTM) won’t be back next spring? Why would Fox commit to a whole season of a 2.5 rating show when they can order 13 episodes for Fall, see if any of their other new Fall shows are a hit (they will be scheduling at least 2 new hour longs, possibly 3 or more if they don’t go with a ‘Til Death/Earl-other comedy hour to start out with) and go from there?

Simply put, Fox’s 2010 M-R Spring lineup is already set except for one slot: LTM’s. Why commit to the weakest link now? (Yes, House could be moved from Monday to some other night, like Wednesday next year. But it will still air sometime between M-R in the spring.)

Whatever the reason for the move was though I think the time might have come to switch them back because for whatever reason Lie to Me is sinking at 8, which is a shame because its really growing on me. On a related note I like the idea of a House/Lie To Me combo next year – I think that’s a much better fit than House/Fringe or House/24. Of course I’m not convinced we’re going to see House/Lie To Me next year for various reasons but I like it none the less. Although as it stands what Fox does with House next year (in terms of what it leads into) is one of the more interesting things about their schedule. I’m also wondering if they’ll keep it Monday’s at 8 where its now beating Dancing with the Stars head-to-head.

As far as the Lost drop goes who knows what drops that. I suspect Criminal Minds being an original episode probably played a small part in it plus the fact that everything was seemingly down last night. It’ll be interesting to see if it’ll rebound next week or not or whether it stays below a 4. It’s probably worth pointing out that Lost has lost more than a point from its demo vs. where it was at the start of March. That’s a worrying drop for ABC if the numbers don’t go back up.

On the plus side Lost dropping means that for the retionistas of this world The Unusuals didn’t do as badly as it could have.

It’s already going to end next year and for the fans that’s all that should matter. Ratings will probably pickup near the finale next year because I’m sure a lot of prior fans will want to see how it comes to an end. Last nights episode was great by the way.

Lie to Me is probably safe unless if just starts to freefall. It could, but I think FOX is going to bring it back and pair it with House in the fall. It’s ratings could boost then and it might come back for a full second season.

Remember Fox gave TSCC a full second season when ratings were pretty poor. I could see them pulling something like that with Lie to Me.

There’s your problem right there, alan, you just can’t get away doing that with LOST. It’s no wonder you found it “unwatchable” if you missed several seasons. How can you expect to properly follow a story when you’ve missed a huge chunk of it? And there’s really no excuse for missing any of it, as you can stream all the episodes for free on ABC.com, or of course rent the DVDs (or Blu-rays soon) to catch up.

No, you’re right. Actually, I wasn’t really talking about last night vs. last week, since I didn’t really know last week’s numbers until you just told me. I was just thinking that Lie to Me competes better in the 8PM hour than the 9PM hour. I was looking at it from Fox’s angle, since I doubt ABC plans to move Lost up to 8PM. (although I have seen stranger things happen)