It has been quite a week for The Tiffany Network as it has dominated since Tuesday. Friday was no exception as Boss (‘Undercover Boss’) busted out of the gate at 8P with a 2+ million lead finishing with 7.82 million viewers. Followed by Beach (‘Hawaii Five-O’) dominating the 9P time period with the distance between CBS and all of the other competition by 2.6 million compiling 9.08 million viewers. Then came the hammer, Blue (‘Blue Bloods’), the rock of the Black Rock schedule on Friday which doubled the entire remaining competitors and finished with 10.19 million viewers. It was that kind of a night for CBS. In particular, ‘Five-O’ had a fascinating plot which brought in an element rarely seen on this show. Then, ‘Blue Bloods’ did what only ‘NCIS’ can do, twist and turn a plot until, in the end, the lesson is completed. CBS has found a Friday night lineup that can dominate for years.
Why? No other network has a clue to the real audience on Friday. And that is why all of the other networks get buried. ABC, which finished second for the evening, began in the hole with ‘Last Man Standing’ at 8P with 5.86 million, followed by ‘The Neighbors’ at 0830 (4.13 million); at 9P ‘Shark Tank’ delivered 6.41 million while at 10P, ’20/20′ finished with 4.86 million. At least the Alphabet Network gave their schedule a chance with original programming as an alternative.
That can’t be said for the others. NBC began the evening thinking people actually wanted to watch a rerun of ‘The Michael J. Fox show’ (only 2.84 million did) and then for further futile sampling, a rerun of ‘Sean Saves the World’ at 830P dropped a bit around the Mendoza line with 2.83 million viewers. Finally at 9P, ‘Dateline’ came in with an original episode and drew 5.24 million for their two hour stint. But the Peacock Network had no chance against gilded hammers on the Tiffany Network.
FOX grabbed onto the #3 position at 8P with an original presentation of ‘MasterChef Jr’ which finished with 3.78 million viewers but then the Animal Network fell into the “I give up” with a rerun of ‘Sleepy Hollow” and drew only 2.22 million, looking more like NBC strategy than FOX.
The CW began with a rerun of ‘The Tomorrow People’ at 8P (1.09 million) and finished at 9P with ‘America’s Next Top Model’ that could only manage 1.13 million viewers.
For the record, CBS finished #1 with 9.03 million viewers; ABC #2 with 5.42 million; NBC #3 with 4.44 million; FOX #4 with 3.0 million and The CW grabbed 1.11 million viewers.
Behind the broad strokes, it is interesting to understand how perfectly the CBS lineup is constructed. The audience increase every half hour throughout the evening. Note that a 8P, ‘Undercover Boss’ was #1 with 7.13 million viewers and at 8:30P, it increased to 8.5 million viewers. It handed that lead off to ‘Hawaii Five-O’ at 9P where it drew 8.95 million but by 930P, it had increased its audience substantially to 9.21 million. Then the Rock of Friday’s Black Rock (‘Blue Bloods’) came in by destroying the competition with 10.04 million and continued to put the pedal down at 1030P by adding final viewers to bring 10.34 million viewers in the last half hour of broadcast network prime time programming for the evening. So there is no doubt about the dominance for CBS on this evening, it was first in total viewers (9.03), first in A18-49 (1.4) and first in A25-54 (2.0).
Clearly, on Friday evenings, viewers are NOT….
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