“In fact, I am a newbie to Idol due to its 9-minute overrun into Fringe last week. Adam Lambert’s rendition of “Mad World” spurred my interest in the competition.”

I briefly read that as “Wild World” (a la Cat Stevens), which actually has proved to be an intricate abstraction.

As for “Lie To Me,” its first pre-Idol airing fared quite well, but then it dipped. Last week, however, it seemed the Wednesday at 8 p.m. hour demonstrated very low ratings all around. This week, I think Bones is taking the 8 p.m. slot? So it may take a few more runs to find how well LTM can attract and maintain an audience.

Back to the Tuesday topic: WAT showed a great bump when up against an SVU repeat. I wonder if such details play any role in the renew/cancel decisions?

At the same time I think trying The Mentalist out of CSI isn’t a bad idea although my thoughts on that may change if CSI doesn’t rebound during the course of its final episodes this season. At this point CBS needs to find or groom something to be ready to take over that Thursday 9PM slot because CSI isn’t going to be able to hold that line forever and right now I think The Mentalist might be their best option. They need to work out where its going to build its biggest audience and put it there.

And like I said, you have me pretty much sold on the idea that HUT wouldn€ make a whole heck of a lotta difference, but I’m pretty sure nets have taken that as a factor before. Didn’t ABC move back Lost to take advantage of 9pm? Perhaps to tentpole the night also, but I thought HUT was a factor. Anyway, ICould be wrong on that.

But my other thought is that CBS doesn’t like to move their shows a lot… and like Biggest Loser is rocking on Tuesday 8-9, so is NCIS/Mentalist. Even against Idol. Why play with one of your highest demo shows that stabilized your night.

I’m sure The NCIS spinoff will beat DH at least in viewers but will go against Sunday Night Football and Sunday is their weakest day.

And I suppose with Leno coming in, Practice would be the only competition at 10.

Still, I think the NCIS spin-off will air on a different night to spread the wealth.

And ABC put Private Practice behind Grey’s because their hand was forced. PP was croaking on its own. If that happens with NCIS 2.0 obviously CBS would have to rethink, but if they thought the only place it could succeed was behing the real deal, they would not have paid for it.

I don’t see dropping from close to ten million to eight million to be “dropping like a rock” unless of course it happens in one week. Even then, that still leaves the show with…eight million viewers and a 3.0 demo. Is that enough to get it canceled? Then who cares?

Remember, the only reasons the numbers matter to the FANS – as opposed to the advertisers – is whether it means the show will be canceled or renewed. I couldn’t care less what the drop is in a show as long as it’s not enough to cancel it or indicative of a trend that means it will eventually be canceled within the next season.

The NCIS spinoff should go Wednesdays at 8 and do a ’2 day event’ but it seems wants CBS will stick with the comedies so maybe will go Sundays at 9 to replace the tired Cold Case.

However, I think the whole idea os spinning off a show is more to ‘spread the wealth’.

The two obvious discrepencies here are Parks And Recreation and Private Practice.

Parks, however, could only go on one night due to NBC only airing sitcoms on that night. And barring them launching Parks AND another show on a different night, Parks would obviously take weak-link Kath & Kim’s spot.

As for Private Practice, ABC originally DID try to spread the wealth here, with medium success in season 1, but less than stellar results in season 2. Mixed with the inability to launch anything after Grey’s ABC resorted to moving PP to Thursdays 10 only after it’s initial plan failed.

But look at procedurals… CSI, CSI: Miami, CSI: NY, L&O, SVU, Criminal Intent, and even Trial By Jury all aire on different nights than their counterparts (although at one point Criminal Intent led into Law & Order– but this was done a la Private Practice… or only after ratings for both had deteriorated, and they were attempting to prop them up).

Additionally, Mentalist would almost assuredly lose viewers in a move to new night/time and maybe some ona potential move BACK if Thursday didn’t work out. And historically CBS is least apt to flip flop shows like that anyway.

That being said, it very well may be their plan to air them back-to-back, but i doubt it and don’t think it would be the better choice.

At least not right know but CSI will enter in their tenth season next year and for the first time ever (I think), Survivor beat CSI in 18-49 some time ago. And clearly the show is no the same without William Petersen.

At the same time though I don’t know if I want to move The Mentalist to 10 next year although from what I remember it fared very well when it aired Sunday at 10 as a one-off so actually it might not be out of the question to put it at 10 on Thursday, Sunday or even Tuesday and see what happens. If it doesn’t work you can always shift it around again midseason.

For the record though this is part of the reason why I think the CBS up fronts are going to be much more interesting than people expect. There’s a lot of potentially big decisions for CBS to make next year in terms of what they pick up and where they’re going to put it.

Another issue the HUT level brings up: is CSI really that much stronger than NCIS anymore? I think it’s getting harder to say now that CSI has taken a significantly bigger hit this year than NCIS. CSI has the advantage of airing in the 9pm hour, but a disadvantage of having rougher competition. NCIS is the opposite, having an easier time with competition, but airing earlier at 8 with fewer available viewers.

At any rate, I don’t think the payoff (which I think would be small in the best case scenario) would be worth the risk of moving one of the only good demo-scoring shows CBS has had in a while to a new night and time in it’s 2nd season (and having to rebuild the newly stabilized Tuesday nights at the same time).

Lourdes: “The thing with Fringe is that I believe the lead actress is just blah.”

Anna Torv is just fine. She’s playing the part as expected – an earnest, not overly aggressive or experienced FBI agent thrown in the deep end of bizarre events. I find her completely believable. But then she’s also cute as a button, and I’m male, which probably is part of it. But she’s never struck a false note that I can detect.

People complain there’s no “chemistry” between Torv and Jackson. Guess what? The series seems to be trying to hook up Peter Bishop with Dunham’s sister. Not to mention that this isn’t the X-Files, and I don’t expect everyone to be placing bets on when Mulder and Scully get it on. Considering that for most of the series so far, Dunham was involved with a dead man, it’s a little hard to see how she would immediately fall for Bishop just to keep the X-Files die-hards happy.

“I understand everything that goes on, but can’t just follow.”

What’s wrong with this picture? The show is far easier to follow than X-Files was. Which is probably why the critics hate it – it’s somewhat simpler than X-Files and not as moody, so the critics don’t like it because it’s not “arty”. It’s a perfectly straight-forward sci-fi show.

Then we have the “scientists” (read: “geeks”) complaining that it’s “not science, it’s fantasy”. Apparently the word “fringe” is lost on them. It’s not supposed to be a hard science show. It’s supposed to be a show about weird stuff, and stuff that may not be scientific at all. Show me a science fiction show which is about hard science elsewhere. There aren’t any. It’s not easy to do “science fiction” about hard science, by definition.

The only problem I have with Fringe is with the last two episodes being stand alone after the hiatus. I don’t why show schedulers do this. The episode before hiatus had one of the apparent villains turn into…something and smash his way through a wall out of the hospital. The last two episodes have ignored that event completely. Makes no sense in terms of continuity of the overall story arc. Even Terminator did better than that – when they came back from hiatus, they at least addressed the fact that Sarah was shot, even if it was done in an incredibly badly paced episode.

The Mentalist has aired on numerous other days, via special broadcasts, and almost always ends up being one of the top scripted shows of the evening. Sometimes, it even bests NCIS. It’s repeats perform reasonably well, too. There’s no doubt that NCIS and The Mentalist are a good match, however.

Otoh, All you have to do is look at the ratings long term to see how Fringe has been helped by AI, and House before it. It doesn’t do well stand alone and it’s reruns perform rather badly in comparison.

I suppose I should start checking out the other articles on the site, too!

Like I said I don’t disagree with the basic point that there’s a degree of Idol (and House) inflation to Fringe’s numbers but I don’t buy the notion that people are watching Fringe every week just because its on after Idol if they’re not at least enjoying it in some way shape or form. People aren‘t that stupid. Fringe’s numbers are inflated going on after Idol because it exposes the show to a huge audience.

My over reaching point is that we don’t know how many people who have discovered Fringe because it was on after Idol or House would stick with it if it moved elsewhere in the schedule. And I’m not sure Lie To Me is an effective comparison on that point.

Why is LIE TO ME now getting worse numbers?

There is truth to retention. They teach it in school! The idea behind retention isn’t “hope,” but reality. People are lazy even with a remote control.

Are there people who simply watch the show because they were watching HOUSE or IDOL before hand? YES. It would also appear to be in the order of millions of people. I’m not going to suggest that all 9.79M people who watched the last half hour of FRINGE last night watched IDOL before hand (I wouldn’t even be shocked to find out 6M of them didn’t) but I do believe a fair number were there simply due to the lead in.

http://tvbythenumbers.com/2009/04/15/tori-spelling-leads-cw-to-best-90210-rating-in-two-months/16793

I don’t however disagree with the basic point that there’s some degree of Idol inflation (and House inflation before that) to Fringe’s numbers my basic point is that I don’t think people are watching Fringe purely because its on after Idol and that the people who are sticking with it are getting some kind of enjoyment out of it. Like I said I have no idea if they’re enjoying it enough to follow it somewhere else on the schedule but its incredibly simplistic to argue that people will just watch anything that’s on after Idol regardless of whether they’re enjoying it – especially when you make that argument about a weekly series. A one-off special like The Osbournes show I can see the merits of that argument but for Fringe I don’t.

I expect a lot of people were exposed to it the first time because it was on after House or Idol but I don’t think people stick with it purely because its on after House or Idol.

Does anyone have that info?

FRINGE benefits greatly from FOX giving it great lead ins.

Personally I don’t buy the idea that Fringe is only doing well because its on after Idol. I don’t think the 10 million people who watch Fringe watch it just because its on after Idol and they can’t possibly change the channel – for them to stick with it they have to be enjoying it to some degree. At the same time I don’t know whether the majority enjoy it enough to find it if it moves somewhere else on the schedule.

Retentionistas don’t need to answer,.

Against Momma’s Boys (2.5) it scored a 3.2

Against Dateline (4.1) it scored a 3.5

I wonder how week two of The Unusuals will fare tonight. I’m guess between Castle’s and Cupid’s (finals). ABC is truely having a rough spring.

According To Jim’s valiant return scored the second lowest demos in the Tuesday 8pm time slot all season! (narrowly beating two repeats of Better Off Ted two weeks ago at 0.9/0.7) Yes, lower than every holiday special, Charlie Brown cartoon, all episodes of Homeland Security USA, an episode of America’s Funniest Videos, and even all episodes of Opportunity Knocks! Ouch!