Because of Monday Night Football, the Fast National ratings for Monday (October 21) were extra provisional and subject to change in the Finals.
That prompted me to want to glance at some of the final figures, including early successes for CBS’ revamped Monday, the predictable final pecking order for The CW’s Monday dramas and a few cable shows.
This won’t be my most in-depth analysis, but it’ll supplement the regular morning ratings story, which is really all I aspire to.
Click through for the details…
*** The second week of CBS’ shuffled Monday lineup looked encouraging in Fast Nationals, but that was including Minneapolis preemptions for the Vikings game. The Finals are a bit more of a mixed bag. Both “How I Met Your Mother” and “2 Broke Girls” were down by 0.1 among adults 18-49 (not an especially big deal, but not up) and both shows were down an equally tiny bit overall. “Hostages” ended up totally flat with last week — like on-the-nose flat with 5.16 million viewers and a 1.2 key demo rating. The good news was for “Mom,” which lost a couple viewers, but rose 0.3 in the key demo to a 2.3 rating. I always say that anything less than a 0.2 of wiggle is essentially meaningless, but when you get to a 0.3, that’s at least something to smile about for CBS. I thought Monday’s “Mom,” featuring Oscar winner Octavia Spencer, was the most interesting episode the show has done thus far, even if I’m still not finding it close to reliably funny. Two weeks ago, before CBS moved “2 Broke Girls” to 8:30 and inserted “Big Bang Theory” repeats at 9, “Mom” was at 6.86 million viewers and a 2.1 key demo rating so, at the very least, CBS’ move has stopped any dropping “Mom” was doing. For now.
*** The “Bones” wedding got a small bump in Finals to 7.6 million viewers and a 2.2 rating among adults 18-49, up from last week’s 7.3 million and 2.0 key demo rating.
*** The CW’s ratings were a total jumble because of football preemptions in New York City and they ended up being every bit as meaningless as I expected them to be. In Finals, “Hart of Dixie” averaged 1.05 million viewers and a 0.4 key demo rating to the 820,000 and 0.3 key demo rating for “Beauty and the Beast.” That 0.1 was pretty much the across-the-board demo advantage for “Hart of Dixie” across most age ranges, though “Beauty and the Beast” tied “Dixie” among adults 12-34 and women 12-34 (and “Dixie” had an advantage of 0.2 among women 18-49, which again means that these numbers are basically meaningless).
*** Last week, “Blacklist” slipped to a 3.0 rating among adults 18-49 in Finals. This week, it did a 3.0 in Fast Nationals and stayed put with that and, down a hair, 10.44 million viewers. This was the fifth airing for “Blacklist.” The fifth episode of “Revolution” last fall drew only 8.61 million viewers, but it did a 3.3 key demo rating. That episode had a slightly stronger lead-in from “The Voice” and it was also up from the previous week. I don’t know why. I hate doing research and then getting more confused when things don’t line up with the narrative I’m trying to tell. Yeah, I’ve got nothing.
*** Nobody cared that the Monday Night Football game was between two hideously bad teams. The Giants-Vikings game did a 4.88 rating among adults 18-49, better than the 4.66 rating for last Monday’s game between the Colts and Chargers.
*** VH1 got big numbers for its “CrazySexyCool: The TLC Story,” which drew 4.9 million viewers and did a 2.85 rating among adults 18-49, “CrazySexyCool” did a 4.52 rating among women 18-34, which even beat “The Voice.” Among women 18-49, it did a 3.62 rating, better than Monday Night Football and topping everything on the networks other than “The Voice.”
That’s that for that…