"The Big Bang Theory" dropped from a 5.7 overnight rating with adults 18-49 to a 5.6 in the finals likely largely due to viewing on the Baltimore CBS affiliate of "Monday Night Football" being stripped out. It was still a series high with adults 18-49 for TBBT.
The news wasn't as cheery for "Castle" which dropped two ticks, from a 2.3 to a 2.1, also likely due to Monday Night Football airing on the Green Bay and Milwaukee ABC affiliates.
Finals courtesy of "Travis Yanan:"
Monday broadcast finals
Santa Claus is Comin' to Town (R, 96% coverage ABC normally 97%)
- 7.604 million viewers
- 4.1/6 HH
- 2.5/7 A18-49Find My Family
- 5.232 million viewers
- 3.5/5 HH
- 1.5/4 A18-49Castle
- 7.804 million viewers
- 5.1/9 HH
- 2.1/5 A18-49How I Met Your Mother (97% coverage CBS normally 98%)
- 8.785 million viewers
- 5.3/8 HH
- 3.5/10 A18-49Accidentally on Purpose (97% coverage)
- 7.913 million viewers
- 4.8/7 HH
- 2.8/7 A18-49Two and a Half Men (97% coverage)
- 14.840 million viewers
- 8.8/13 HH
- 5.0/12 A18-49The Big Bang Theory (97% coverage)
- 14.377 million viewers
- 8.4/13 HH
- 5.6/13 A18-49CSI: Miami (97% coverage)
- 12.719 million viewers
- 8.0/13 HH
- 3.7/10 A18-49Law & Order: SVU (R, 8pm, 93% coverage NBC normally 98%)
- 6.537 million viewers
- 4.4/7 HH
- 1.4/4 A18-49Law & Other: SVU (R, 9pm, 61 minutes)
- 5.775 million viewers
- 3.8/6 HH
- 1.6/4 A18-49The Jay Leno Show (59 minutes)
- 4.678 million viewers
- 3.2/5 HH
- 1.4/4 A18-49Carrie Underwood Holiday Special (120 minutes)
- 8.548 million viewers
- 5.2/8 HH
- 2.3/6 A18-49One Tree Hill
- 2.568 million viewers
- 1.6/2 HH
- 1.2/3 A18-49
- 1.6/5 A18-34
- 2.5/7 W18-34Gossip Girl
- 2.210 million viewers
- 1.5/2 HH
- 1.2/3 A18-49
- 1.7/4 A18-34
- 2.5/7 W18-34
Again, not worried about Castle unless that trend continues in January. Lots of factors hurting that show this week. The one-week “hiatus” was a boneheaded move on ABC’s part. I told my wife last week that there was a new episode this week, and yet she was still surprised when I told her last night that the episode this week was new.
So, yeah. I fully expect the numbers to right themselves and continue their upward trend when the true hiatus ends. No worries.
Ryan47 i dont know, but those numbers make me nervous series low in 18 – 49 and in viewers and plus find my family tied castle numbers in the finals. But, i m so mad caue yesturday was a great episode with the double plot coming inti one plot, im a HUGE CASTLE FAN, IM ALSO AS BIG CASTLE FAN, AS I AM AS A CHUCK FAN, AND I AM A HUG CHUCK FAN. mY TOP 5 SCRIPTED SHOWS ARE:
1. CHUCK
2. CASTLE
3.Modern Family/curb your enthusuiasm tie
4. THE MIDDLE
5. Tie between V Coguar town eastwick and the forgotton and hank whichwasant one of my favorites so i guess not hank. It was entertaining though.
o and i forgot lie to me and big bang theory
Find My Family went up 3 ticks? Is that right? Castle at a 2.1 is still not bad.
Rob, you’re kidding yourself if you think 2.1 is “not bad.” Castle’s main strength has been consistency. At least ABC knew exactly what they could get with Castle. Hopefully it will bounce back to 2.4 or so when it returns, but the show won’t be renewed for a third season if its new consistency level is 2.1.
Julia I didnt say that Castle will get renewed with a 2.1 but it got that on its own. It couldve done worse. Plus the show wasnt on last week and I was surprised that it was on last night. When the Bachelor returns it will go back up to a 2.4-2.5
chapeau to TBBT , I’m surprised that a commedy that make fun of Schroedinger’s cat is already @ the 3rd season with such large audience
This from @travisyanan on Twitter: “Please note Find My Family had a 1.5/4 A18-49, not the 2.1/5 I originally posted (read the Castle demo and wrote that down by mistake)”
So the above numbers for Find My Family (at time of post) are wrong and not tied with Castle.
The 2.1 for Find My Family was a mistake — Travis corrected it over at pifeedback. It should really have been a 1.5. So while no one can really argue that a 2.1 for Castle is good, it did that with basically no lead in whatsoever and in a week when even many savvy fans seem to have expected a repeat. If it stays that low for several weeks of new episodes with a half-way decent lead in, it will be in serious trouble. But for one week under adverse conditions . . . I’m not going to let it worry me.
Bingo cards:
No one knew Castle was airing a new episode.
Castle had a bad lead-in.
Keep them coming!
How long is Find My Family supposed to be airing? 1.5 is horrible.
Fixed the FMF 18-49 rating/share.
HIMYM is very consistent with that 3.5 demo, impressive. TBBT 5.6 with football preemption at that, amazing. If there were no football I guess it could have gone as high as 5.8
GG and 0TH numbers are almost identical with GG having a sligh edge in A18-34.
ABC’s Holiday special did fine and Carrie’s numbers are also OK
Vinny, My top 5 favorite shows are
Smallville, Supernatural, Legend of the Seeker, Castle, and Desperate Housewives.
I bet Castle will get higher ratings when it comes back in Janurary especially with Alyssa Milano guest starring!
I agree Castle could do a lot worse–and will, if it ever airs before 10pm–on Monday, or any other night. It needs minimal competition and a strong lead-in to average even 10mil viewers and 2.5 in the demo, and for those who haven’t figured it out, even at its PEAK, with every possible advantage, Castle gets crappy ratings.
Men of a Certain Age hit it hard–and believe it or not, was actually slightly YOUNGER-skewing last night.
I hope the Carrie Underwood special did well enough for Fox to bring it back next year. If nothing else, the bit where we learn how she really won was pretty funny.
Oh ok I knew Find My Family’s 2.1 wasnt right. Wow so Castle grew .6 out of its lead-in. Thats good.
At least Castle built on the horrible Find my Family lead in. Anyway, when The Bachelor airs 8-10, Castle should benefit from the lead in. With all of ABC’s freshman dramas performing questionable, Castle may have a good shot at a third season. The Big Bang Theory still did the best out of men then any other series at 9:30 ever (atleast since Men aired in the slot out of Raymond) When Men eventually ends, The Big Bang Theory could work as a 9:00 replacement.
So Castle was gaining most weeks and passed the first test when it didn’t have DWTS as a lead in. It has a repeat then comes back with season lows out of the blue? So it was gaining and then hits a season low and no one finds that strange other than to bust out the bingo cards.
While it won’t survive with those numbers it had a pretty nice jump from a horrible lead in at least.
The problem with the “Fan Excuse Bingo” thing is when it’s used to devalue legitimate explanations for abnormal performances for a show. 2.1 is an abnormal rating for Castle, its lowest of the season, and significantly lower than its last original airing. Its last original airing was the highest of the season, following a trend of upward ratings and did not follow an unusually high lead in. (In fact, the ratings for that first episode of Find My Family were lower than Castle’s usual DWTS lead in.) So it seems reasonable to me to look for a rational explanation.
While it is certainly possible that 0.6% of the demo suddenly decided they didn’t like the show, that doesn’t seem particularly likely, coming as it did on the heels of an upward trend. I’m not denying that some of the viewer turnout may have been dissatisfaction with the show, but for an established and relatively stable show, that’s a huge sudden drop to blame entirely on viewers losing interest. So I proposed two other explanations that could help account for it, one of which is demonstrable fact — it had a significantly smaller lead in than it usually has had or can generally expect to have — and one of which is anecdotal from posts I’ve seen here and on other sites today — that people didn’t realize that there was a new episode.
The point at which these become excuses rather than explanations, in my mind, would be when they are used consistently for almost every episode. That is not the case here.
Frankly, if we’re going to use “Fan Excuse Bingo” whenever people try to offer explanations for why a particular episode is down unusually in the ratings, we may as well also have “Hater Excuse Bingo” for all those explanations offered for why shows are up unusually, such as “______ (fill in the name of a popular show that airs opposite) was a rerun that night,” “_______ (fill in the name of popular actor) was guest starring,” “________ (fill in the name of show star or episode theme) is hot right now because of __________ (fill in name of other project or scandal),” “it had a higher than usual lead in,” etc. These are all potentially legitimate explanations for ratings being unusually up and they are no more nor less pathetic than the ones I quoted above.
If you’re going to discount the value of explanations for abnormalities in the ratings, you may as well dispense with all the analysis and limit comments to strictly cheering good ratings for shows you like and bad ratings for shows you dislike and mourning the opposite. Personally, I think that would make for a pretty boring site.
(rant over)