THE PROGRAMMING INSIDER Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Prime-Time Metered Market Monday Ratings: CBS and NBC Share Leadership
Ratings Box: What's Hot/What's Not
On the Air Tonight: Prime-Time Programming Options
TV Tidbits: Notes of Interest
TV Trivia Time: Me Dharma, You Greg _______________________________________________________________________
Prime-Time Metered Market Monday Ratings: CBS and NBC Share Leadership
Monday 9/08/08 Note: The following results exclude New Orleans.
HH Rtg/Shr CBS 5.1/ 8 NBC 5.1/ 8 Fox 4.3/ 6 ABC 2.9/ 5 CW 2.7/ 4
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Note: Comparisons to the year-ago evening were not available.
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Note: The fast national results for Monday will be posted at PIFeedback.com by 12 p.m. ET. Go to the website, click on Ratings Box (the first category), then Last Night’s Results, and Monday, September 8, 2008.
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-Yesterday’s Winners: Deal or No Deal (NBC), Two and a Half Men R (CBS), CSI: Miami R (CBS)
-Keep a Positive Eye On… …the female demos for the CW’s Gossip Girl
-A Compatible Fit: One Tree Hill (CW)
-Disappointing: America’s Toughest Jobs (NBC)
-Noticeable Erosion: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (Fox), Prison Break (Fox)
-Yesterday’s Losers: High School Musical: Get in the Picture (ABC), CMA Music Festival: Country Music’s Night to Rock (ABC)
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-Countdown to the Start of the New Season: 13 days
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-Ratings Breakdown: CBS and NBC shared overnight Monday leadership, each with an eight-tenth of a rating point advantage over third-place Fox. Next was ABC, followed by the CW, which built by a noticeable 13 percent from its opening season Monday one week earlier.
NBC’s Deal or No Deal, which debuted in first-run daytime syndication yesterday (see Ratings Box below), opened the evening with a dominant 6.5 rating/10 share in the overnights from 8-9 p.m. Growth in the 8:30 p.m. half-hour was 22 percent (5.9/ 9 to 7.2/11). Second in the 8 p.m. hour was the sophomore-season premiere of Fox’s Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles at a 4.5/ 7. While I will remind you that these are just overnights and we have to wait and see what the demos look like, comparably Sarah Connor was down by a hefty 35 percent from its series debut on Monday, Jan. 14, 2008 at 9 p.m. (6.9/10). Yes, this is disappointing.
Third overall from 8-9 p.m. were repeats of CBS’ The Big Bang Theory (3.8/ 6) and How I Met Your Mother (3.9/ 6), followed by week two of the new season of the CW’s Gossip Girl (2.7/ 4) and the series-finale of ABC dud High School Musical: Get in the Picture. Had this reality/competition aired on The Disney Channel where it belonged, the results might have seemed better.
Since the CW has a great deal at stake with Gossip Girl, here are two key observations to make note of:
1) These are the metered markets, not the fast affiliate or final national results, so we have to reserve full judgment until we see the female demos. 2) Compared to the second-season opener one week earlier (2.5/ 4 on Sept. 1), this was an increase of eight percent in the overnights. So, logically, the demo results will also increase. And, yes, this is a good thing!
CBS stepped into the 9-10 p.m. winner’s circle care of repeats of Two and a Half Men (6.8/10) and The New Adventures of Old Christine (5.4/ 8), which moves into the Wednesday 8 p.m. time period (with an encore telecast) on Sept. 17. While 30 Rock’s overrated Tina Fey is the favorite to snag the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series on Sept. 21, it is more worthy Julia Louis-Dreyfus that should be making another trip to the podium.
Week three of America’s Toughest Jobs on NBC and an original installment of Fox’s Prison Break tied for second in the 9 p.m. time period, each with a 4.2/ 6 in the overnights. Comparably, America’s Toughest Jobs dipped by seven percent from it’s week-ago performance. Take a look at the three-week track:
Prison Break, meanwhile, remains down in the vicinity of about 15 percent from its year-ago overnight delivery. Over at ABC was two-hour special CMA Music Festival: Country Music’s Night to Rock at a mere 3.3/ 5 in the overnights from 9-11 p.m. Take a look at the half-hour breakdown:
CMA Music Festival: Country Music’s Night to Rock 9:00 p.m.: 3.6/ 5 9:30 p.m.: 3.5/ 5 10:00 p.m. 3.2/ 5 10:30 p.m.: 2.9/ 5
Obviously, viewers were not interested in rocking! Capping off the 9 p.m. hour was the CW’s One Tree Hill at a 2.7/ 4 which a) built by 12 percent in the overnights from one week earlier, and b) fully maintained the Gossip Girl lead-in.
First at 10 p.m. was a repeat of CBS’ CSI: Miami (5.5/ 9), which I predict will squash upcoming NBC drama My Own Worst Enemy, followed by NBC’s Dateline (4.7/ 8) and the second half of ABC’s aforementioned CMA Music Festival: Country Music’s Night to Rock.
Source: Nielsen Media Research data ____________________________________________________________________________
Ratings Box: What’s Hot/What’s Not
-New in First-Run Syndication – Day One: What follows are the day one overnight rating results for the five first-run syndicated strips debuting yesterday -- The Bonnie Hunt Show (Warner Bros./Telepictures), Deal or No Deal (NBC), The Doctors (CBS Television Distribution), Family Court With Judge Penny (Program Partners) and Judge Karen from Sony Pictures Television. As always, the benchmarks are lead-in and year-ago time period averages. These are weighted overnight averages. And the rule of thumb, of course, is that one day of overnights does not a hit or miss make. Let’s be patient and see what happens.
The Bonnie Hunt Show (Warner Bros./Telepictures) 52 markets
Sept. 2007 time period avg: 1.1/ 4 Lead-in avg.: 1.4/ 5 BONNIE HUNT: 1.1/ 4
Full retention from the year-ago time period average is, of course, a positive. But retention of just 79 percent out of the lead-in average is the weakest of the five debuting first-run strips.
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Deal or No Deal (NBC Universal) 52 markets
Sept. 2007: 1.4/ 3 Lead-in: 1.5/ 4 DEAL OR NO DEAL: 1.3/ 3
Consider this a promising start for the daytime version of Deal or No Deal, with 87 percent retention from the lead-in and 93 percent from the year-ago time period.
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The Doctors (CBS Television Distribution) 54 markets
While there was slight erosion from both the lead-in and year-ago time period averages, The Doctors debuted higher in the metered markets than any premiere last season (including TMZ, which often airs in higher profile time periods). Consider this very respectable sampling.
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Family Court With Judge Penny (Program Partners) 33 markets
Sept. 2007: 0.8/ 3 Lead-in: 0.9/ 3 FAMILY COURT WITH JUDGE PENNY: 0.9/ 3
Comparably, Family Court With Judge Penny was the only new strip to build from the year-ago time period average, with growth of 12 percent. Good start, Josh and Ritch.
MNTV 8:00 p.m. Street Patrol (R) 8:30 p.m. Street Patrol (R) 9:00 p.m. Jail (R) 9:30 p.m. Jail (R)
ION 8:00 p.m. ER (R) 9:00 p.m. NCIS (R) 10:00 p.m. ER (R)
New Show Descriptions:
Fringe (Fox) A man referred to as our generation’s Einstein, who has been institutionalized for the last 20 years, is recruited with his estranged son to confront the spread of powerful and unexplained phenomena in this new drama from Lost and Alias creator J.J. Abrams. Lord of the Rings co-star John Noble and former Dawson’s Creek star Joshua Jackson heads the ensemble cast.
Privileged (CW) After a 23-year old Yale educated journalism major named Megan Smith gets fired from her job at a tabloid, she meets a cosmetics mogul and becomes the live-in tutor for her twin teenage granddaughters in wealthy Palm Beach, Florida. The girls, of course, are beautiful and rebellious, and Megan is determined to win them over while enjoying the new perks of her new job. JoAnna Garcia (Reba), Lucy Kate Hale, Ashley Newbrough and Ann Archer star.
-Debuting Tonight on BET – Somebodies: Cable net BET will premiere Somebodies, a half-hour sitcom (and its first scripted series) tonight at 10:30 pm ET. Based on a student film that made it to Sundance in 2006 and filmed on location in Athens, Georgia, Somebodies is the coming of age story of a 22-year-old African American man and his friends in a small Southern town. The writer and star, Hadjii, wrote all upcoming 10 episodes without a writing staff and directed four of the episodes. Busy guy!
What was Dharma’s middle name on sitcom Dharma & Greg?
a) Freedom b) Rain c) Rainbow d) Sunshine e) Tempsestt
The answer to yesterday’s question…
What was Rhoda Morgenstern’s occupation?
a) department store clerk b) restaurant hostess c) secretary d) window dresser e) writer
Is: d) window dresser. Remember this?
“My name is Rhoda Morgenstern. I was born in the Bronx, New York, in December, 1941. I’ve always felt responsible for World War II. The first thing I remember liking that liked me back was food. I had a bad puberty: it lasted 17 years. I’m a high school graduate; I went to art school. My entrance exam was on a book of matches. I decided to move out of the house when I was 24. My mother still refers to this as the time I ran away from home. Eventually I ran to Minneapolis where it’s cold, and I figured I’d keep better. Now I’m back in Manhattan. New York, this is your last chance!"”
-Current kudos goes to: Mark-Allen, Mark Amato, David Ballarotto, Gerry Bixenspan, Kimay Bloch, Susan Brandes, Jordan Breslow, Dave Carfolite, Paul Certo, Larry Collins, Mark Cosenza, Reid Davis, Josh Emmett, John Ferlazzo, Bill Graff, Kerry Hughes, Ken Jobe, Mary Kalnin, Kathryn Kieser, Tom Kilgallon, Stephen LaRue, Marie LeFevre, Kathy McClung, Marc Miller, Alan Perris, Jodi Perris, Darlene Pietrak, Chrissie Poore, Gordon Purcell, Andrea Regusters, Stacy Roberts, Lisa Tatum-Roehrig, Lance Ross, Michael Salerno, Anthony Salerno, Dewayne Snype, Michelle Stanton, Andrew Stearn, Jill Tarlow, Diane Warner, Larry Weinstok
FOX: Terminator is above last week's PB number for the hour, but down compared with the final episodes of last season. The show introduced a second set of 'bad guy robots' that seems to have a different agenda than the first, adding depth to the plot, but the action sequences/logic of this show are still its weakness. Prison Break It looks like it held steady with last week's 9pm hour. Still, a very weak ratings start to the season. Gossip Girl/One tree Hill: Growth is a very good sign last week to this week even if it is likely to be just the proportional growth in 18-34 eyeballs in front of TV on Monday between the two weeks. CW was wise to stick with GG last season as it looks like it has finally turned a corner.
