Although only two episodes into the new season, NBC is seeing great results in having James Spader on its roster. His ‘The Blacklist’ powered the Peacock Network into the top position with a powerful second episode of his new series to secure the 10P time slot with 12.08 million viewers, beating the highly touted and last year’s #1 in the timeslot, ABC’s ‘Castle’ (which drew a respectable 10.9 million). ‘The Blacklist’ drew 4 million more viewers than the program in that timeslot did last year on NBC. Is Spader worth the money?
This is not to overlook NBC had the #1 program draw of the evening in ‘The Voice’ which drew 14.15 million viewers, but it had to win the all important 10PM slot. While ABC’s Monday night is always strong with ‘Dancing with the Stars’ (12.81 million viewers) and ‘Castle’, the rest of the line evenings competition was pitiful.
CBS showed a continuing slide. It’s aging ‘How I Met Your Mother’ with 7.73 million viewers was the networks highest rated show. It only finished a distant third in the 8P period. ‘We Are Men’ with 6.40 million viewers was the lowest rated season comedy debut in that networks history. ‘2 Broke Girls’ attempted to climb back with 7.59 million, but ‘Mom’ dropped back down into the 6’s with only 6.93 million viewers. The came the disappointing and much touted limited series, ‘Hostages’ which only had 5.99 million viewers. It’s time to consider throwing out the entire Monday schedule and rethink how to attack reality and powerful drama.
ABC, on the other hand, had two good shows beginning with ‘Dancing with the Stars’ and ‘Castle’. We are all relieved that Richard Castle is no longer in danger of dying because his show continues to be a force at 10P.
As for FOX, ‘Bones’ is a good show that is up against some big reality competition. It’s 7.07 million viewers placed it fourth at 8P and actually rose above what they did a year ago. Newcomer, ‘Sleepy Hallow’ rose to 7.93 million. It’s fascinating premise and characters one can ‘like’, combines with an audience level that was just slightly down from the week previous…not bad for a second episode. Not bad for a new show up against ‘The Voice’.
The CW with it’s ‘iHeart Radio Music Festival Night’ actually was down 33% from last year’s programming on this evening. It simply has to do better than that.
For the evening, NBC was #1 (13.461 million viewers) with an 8.2 rating and a 13 share; ABC (12.157 million) was second 7.8/12; FOX (7.497) was third with 4.57; CBS (with only 6.773 million viewers) was fourth (4.47); Univision (3.4 million) was fifth with 1.8/3 and The CW (1.053 million) & Telemundo tied for sixth at 0.6/1. Bottom line: NBC was up 2 million+ viewers for the evening. CBS was down more than 1 million+ for the evening. Is there a correlation here?
In late night, NBC’s ‘The Today Show with Jay Leno’ crushed the competition with a 3.0/8 followed by ABC’s ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’ 2.2/6, again due to the powerful lead in. Then CBS’s ‘Late Show with David Letterman’ (2.0/5) dropped to last in late night programming. NBC’s ‘Late Night with Jimmy Fallon’ followed ‘The Tonight Show’ with a 1.5/6 household rating and share. ‘CBS’ ‘Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson’ had a 1.0/4. This Ferguson outing barely beat NBC’s ‘Last Call with Carson Daly’ (0.9/4) an hour later.
Now you know how important the 10PM time slot is on broadcast television. It also indicates how important James Spader is to any network that has him in a series.
However, there is also a little thing called cable. And on Monday evening, 13.717 million viewers were watching ESPN’s ‘Monday Night Football’ with the New Orleans Saints hosting the Miami Dolphins, the #2 program on all of television. Over on TBS, game #163 was the extra and last game of the regular season in baseball where 3 million were watching the Tampa Bay Rays defeat the Texas Rangers to continue their quest in the playoffs. Another 3.6 million were watching the WWE wrestling ritual that is a fixture on Monday evenings on USA Network; while 1.8 million were watching VH1’s ‘Basketball Wives’; 1.2 million were glued to MTV’s ‘Teen Mom III’; 1.5 million were watching reruns of ‘Castle’ on TNT….you get the picture.
People are…
Switching channels!
OVERTHESHOULDERMEDIA 