| Scoreboard |  |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rating/Share: Adults 18-49 | 5.5/15 | 2.6/7 | 2.4/7 | 1.7/5 | 1.5/4 | 1.1/3 |
| Rating/Share: Adults 18-34 | 4.2/13 | 2.6/8 | 1.5/5 | 1.8/5 | 1.2/4 | 1.2/4 |
| Total Viewers (million) | 17.13 | 6.74 | 9.43 | 4.29 | 5.68 | 2.36 |
There was an hour of American Idol, so naturally FOX led the night with a 5.5 rating with adults 18-49, with American Idol drawing an 8.0 rating and Bones drawing a 3.0 rating (and 10.76 million viewers) from 8p-9p.
Because Bones aired instead of Lie To Me, it's hard to do completely direct comparisons to last week, but everything was up from last week, a bit, including American Idol. TV watching in general was up a bit from last Wednesday. Lost bounced (at least a little) off its series lows last week to a 3.9 in the demo. The second installment of The Unusuals dropped from last week's premiere of a 2.1 rating down to a 1.9 rating. People said I was crazy for predicting the show would be canceled with only one data point, but now there's two.
It's still doomed. The Unusuals 1.9 rating still contains a minute of Lost that will be stripped out in the finals and The Unusual's second half hour wasn't very solid, averaging only a 1.6 rating with adults 18-49.
NBC ran nothing but repeats of the Law & Order franchise with the SVU flavor at 9pm sandwiched in between Law & Order episodes. The repeat of SVU outperformed last week's season (and likely series) finale of Life.
Scrubs and Better Off Ted also improved from last week, but I'm not sure Scrubs' 2.0 rating or Better Off Ted's 1.9 rating are anything to cheer about, even if the performance was better than The New Adventures of Old Christine and Gary Unmarried. Normally ABC would surely gloat about this victory, but since the CBS sitcoms were repeats...
I'll update this post with the full data table sometime before 9:30am PT or as soon as I re-watch Hurley try to change the future so we'll have a world that never had to endure any Ewoks!
Update: Table now added. We hear the CSI:NY at 10pm was the lowest 18-49 rating ever for an original episode with a 2.8.
Previous Wednesday overnight reports are available for comparison.
Full details:
| Time | Net | Show | 18-49 Rating/Share | 18-34 Rating/Share | Viewers (Millons)2 |
| 8:00 | FOX | Bones | 3.0/9 | 2.2/8 | 10.76 |
| ABC | Scrubs | 2.0/7 | 2.1/8 | 5.30 | |
| CW | America's Next Top Model | 1.8/5 | 1.9/7 | 3.76 | |
| CBS | The New Adventures of Old Christine (R) | 1.6/5 | 0.9/3 | 5.68 | |
| NBC | Law & Order: (R) | 1.3/4 | 1.0/4 | 5.57 | |
| 8:30 | ABC | Better of Ted | 1.9/6 | 1.9/6 | 4.72 |
| CBS | Gary Unmarried (R) | 1.8/5 | 1.0/3 | 5.87 | |
| 9:00 | FOX | American Idol | 8.0/20 | 6.1/18 | 23.49 |
| ABC | Lost | 3.9/10 | 4.0/12 | 9.01 | |
| CBS | Criminal Minds (R) | 2.5/6 | 1.5/4 | 10.51 | |
| NBC | Law & Order: SVU (R) | 1.5/4 | 1.2/3 | 5.51 | |
| CW | 90210 (R) | 0.4/1 | 0.6/2 | 0.96 | |
| 10:00 | CBS | CSI: NY | 2.8/8 | 2.0/6 | 12.01 |
| ABC | The Unusuals | 1.9/5 | 1.7/5 | 6.21 | |
| NBC | Law & Order (R) | 1.7/5 | 1.4/4 | 5.95 |
Shows are sorted by Adults 18-49 rating in each time slot.
Nielsen TV Ratings: ©2009 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved.
Definitions:
Fast Affiliate Ratings: These first national ratings, including demographics, are available at approximately 11 AM (ET) the day after telecast, and are released to subscribing customers daily. These data, from the National People Meter sample, are strictly time-period information, based on the normal broadcast network feed, and include all programming on the affiliated stations, sometimes including network programming, sometimes not. The figures may include stations that did not air the entire network feed, as well as local news breaks or cutaways for local coverage or other programming. Fast Affiliate ratings are not as useful for live programs and are likely to differ significantly from the final results, because the data reflect normal broadcast feed patterns. For example, with a World Series game, Fast Affiliate Ratings would include whatever aired from 8-11PM on affiliates in the Pacific Time Zone, following the live football game, but not game coverage that begins at 5PM PT. The same would be true of Presidential debates as well as live award shows and breaking news reports.
Rating: Estimated percentage of the universe of TV households (or other specified group) tuned to a program in the average minute. Ratings are expressed as a percent.
Share (of Audience): The percent of households (or persons) using television who are tuned to a specific program, station or network in a specific area at a specific time. (See also, Rating, which represents tuning or viewing as a percent of the entire population being measured.)
Time Shifted Viewing – Program ratings for national sources are produced in three streams of data – Live, Live+Same Day (Live+SD) and Live+7 Day. Time shifted figures account for incremental viewing that takes place with DVRs which are currently in approximately 24.4% of all U.S. TV households. Live+Same Day (Live+SD) include viewing during the same broadcast day as the original telecast, with a cut-off of 3:00AM local time when meters transmit daily viewing to Nielsen for processing. Live+7 Day ratings include incremental viewing that takes place during the 7 days following a telecast.
For more information see Numbers 101.
well bones won the 8pm hour by a wide margin
well the comedies on ABC/CBS and repeats of Law and Order are not exactly good competition.
well i expected bones to win the hour. im also glad it beat recent showings of lie to me
WHAT is wrong with Lost???
at least better off ted improved a little but will it be enough? i hope so! wow the unusuals did bad!
Way to go Robert! NOW you can say that The Unusuals won’t be back.
I can’t imagine that NBC will axe L&O. An extra reason i havn’t seen mentioned yet is there reliance on it for repeat filler. It works o.k. in that department. Not wonderful, but o.k.
They have 6 hours of new/repeat of various L&Os this week.
Going up against repeats probably helped, and I hope that a lot of the people who saw Better Off Ted stick around in future weeks. I was surprised at how much I was laughing out loud this week (and last). It would be the perfect intelligent, non-laugh track, comedy fill for when Scrubs goes off the air permanently.
well that’s official, all the news series of ABC bombed LOL.
I can only see bringing back Castle and Surviving Suburbia.
Bones rocks.
L&O is definitely coming back; it repeats too well for it not to.
ABC must be extremely frustrated – they can’t even launch a single new show successfully. At least NBC has an excuse – they have no massive hit show.
It was kind of lame that ABC here in the Dallas area decided not to air Scrubs or Better Off Ted but instead aired Good Morning Texas After Dark in that hour. I don’t know if it was just Dallas or Texas as a whole but it was pretty stupid. Not only that but Scrubs will instead air at 3:42am on Sunday Morning while Better Off Ted not airing at all.
unfortunately for ABC, Better Off Ted is probably (though they are all closely clumped together in their weakness) their healthiest new entrant this whole season.
That is BAD.
Hi, long time lurker, first time poster. Is it normal for some shows to post higher 18-34 ratings than they do 18-49 ratings? It seems so counter-intuitive.
Bones really is the underrated hit on FOX and I’m glad it’s been given an opportunity to air all it remaining episodes. I think CBS should launch the NCIS spin-off in this slot and capitalised on it, it would do a lot better than the comedies.
CSI: NY does have a very loyal audience even with Criminal Minds in repeats, is there a reason why they aired a new episode while the rest of the schedule was repeat rather than wait a week and air a new episode with new episodes of the other shows.
I know its (still) childish but Lost being below a 4.0 again this week makes me smile.
Bones at least proves that Wednesday 8PM isn’t the complete wasteland its appeared to be the past couple of weeks. Not sure if it being noticeably ahead of Lie To Me really means anything in the grand scheme of things for Lie To Me but we’ll see. I do however wonder how Bones would have done against an original CBS line-up. I don’t think there’s any real overlap in the audience but it would at least have been a better comparison point vs. Lie To Me’s performance in the slot.
And is the bubble finally starting to burst on the CSI franchise?
Of all the new shows on ABC I hope that Better Off Ted is given a second season to try to grow an audience. I know that this will most likely not happen but this is the funniest show I have seen in a long time. Those Veridian Dynamics commercials are hysterical! I bet you it would be a hit if it was on NBC right after the Office. Better Off Ted is exactly what ABC needs if they want to compete with NBCs single camera comedies. Ultimately ABC just can’t seem to get the ball rolling with any comedy if it doesn’t air right after Dancing With the Stars so who knows what may happen. My advise to ABC, if you want to have a comedy block you need to pick a time slot and stick to it. Stop shifting them all over the schedule and give them time to grow, it’s not going to happen overnight!
KHL, it is indeed rare for a show to get 18-34 numbers close (or bigger) than it’s 18-49 numbers. It is also very vey impressive.
Wow. Nothing after Lost ends up working on ABC. The last season of Lost on ABC may be a blessing for them. I know they love the show, the DVD sales, the online content hits but because of the type of show it is and the audience that watches it, it can’t help launch a new show.
With that being said I think ABC needs to try to let some shows stick around for next season. The Unusuals isn’t a show that will carry ABC to many victories but it is a somewhat solid show with a good cast and a storyline that’s easy to follow. I think some shows need to be given patience so they can hit their strides creatively. There are many shows I loved that took a good season or so till it hit it’s creative high. I think we, the viewing public, might be missing out on some good quality tv due to the itchy trigger finger of the networks. I understand why they do it but as a viewer it’s disapointing.
I’m also confused as to the scheduling of a glorified recap show next week for Lost. What’s the point? If they were going to air 17 hours why didn’t they start the season later to allow for the show to be shown back to back as they have done before (with much fan approval)? It is nothing but a momentum killer for any good episode the week before.
I agree with Tommy, I would like to see Better Off Ted given a second season, mainly because its getting much better every week and I think with some decent marketing it could become a regular performer. On a side note, does anyone else think that ABC’s marketing team all needs to be fired? Not only are all of the previews NOT in HD, they look terrible, the sound is awful, and they tack on “ABC’s” to everything like they own the world.
Lost ratings- meh, dont care. The show is signed to finish, and as long as I get to keep watching, I will not fret over the numbers.