ABC dominated Monday on broadcast, but couldn’t come close to the power of ESPN and the Monday Night Football lineup of the Chicago Bears against the Green Bay Packers. ABC beat their broadcast rival on this night by 19%. ‘Dancing With the Stars’, with guest star Cher, pulled in 14.38 milion viewers for a 9.7 rating and a 15 share from 8P-10P, which was 5% ahead of last week. Its real coup was beating ‘The Voice’ on NBC by 28%. At 10P, ‘Castle’ in its yearlong battle with ‘The Blacklist’ edged ahead with 11.91 million and a 6.9/12 which was 1.63 million viewers ahead. This week’s ‘Castle’ episode was superb. It was one of the few episodes in the series history that was not filled with humorous banter, but deadly serious while Richard attempted to mend the fence between his daughter and himself in an exciting ‘who done it’. It finished 26.32% ahead in the A18-49 demo from this day last year in this same time period. It should be noted that in Milwaukee, the Packers/Bears game preempted ABC’s regular lineup in order for tthe local ABC affiliate, WISN-TV, pushed ‘Dancing With the Stars’ to 130A on Tuesday morning and ‘Csstle’ to next Sunday.
While ABC clearly won among the broadcast channels on Monday, ESPN dominated all of television with the Green Bay Packers facing their main rival, the Chicago Bears on ‘Monday Night Football’ at historic Lambeau Field, the main cathedral of professional football, saw more than history repeat itself as the Bears beat the Packers in their 187th clash in pro football’s longest series dating back to 1921, 24-20. Packer’s star and offensive captain, Aaron Rodgers, while being tackled by Shea McClellin (Rookie defensive end, a first round draft choice from Boise State), fractured his collarbone on the third play in the first quarter while driving the Packers down field for a score, suffered his third lose to the Bears, all on Monday Night football telecasts. In his other nine meetings with the Bears, both in the regular season and in post season play, he has won all nine. The game on ESPN drew 16.102 million viewers for a 10.1 rating, the highest in the history of ESPN’s MNG of 2013. The rating peaked at 945P with an 11.1 rating. In Chicago, the game delivered a 20.3 rating on on ESPN and a 13.7 rating on WCIU (IND) for a combined 34.0 rating in the DMA. In Milwaukee, the game drew a 13.9 rating on ESPN and a 36.4 rating on WISN (ABC) for a combined 50.3 rating in the market. The top 10 metered markets (in addition to the markets of the competing teams) were New Orleans (18.2); Las Vegas (17.3); San Diego (14.9); Indianapolis (14.4); Sacramento (13.9); Phoenix (13.8); Tampa-St. Pete (13.8); Denver (13.5) and Seattle-Tacoma (13.1).
NBC was disappointing. After all, Monday had been their night this season but their #1 reality show, ‘The Voice’ could only draw 11.63 milion, the lowest of the year. ‘The Blacklist’ with 10.28 million viewers also saw its lowest totals of the year, also finishing behind their ABC competition. But do not take this as any fault of this specatular James Spader drama that could very well become a television classic. What a hit this would be on CBS. But if you missed this episode of Spader’s notorious criminal, Ray “Red” Reddington and the visit back to his homestead at the conclusion of this episode, you will be one of the nearly 5 million who will re-watch it on their DVR as it will most assuredly be the biggest Live+7 increase of the week. You can already see the PR stream from The Peacock Network churning the A18-49 totals. Certainly they will be crowing about this demo. But they needn’t worry. This IS great series that would make any network proud. Perhaps NBC can rebuild its image and programming acumen after Zucker nearly destroyed it. It can be said that this is the first really legitimate critically acclaimed, audience approved hit on The Peacock Network since ‘Friends’ and ‘Frasier’ ended their runs in 2004.
CBS with ‘How I Met Your Mother’, in its last season, drew 8.7 million at 8P which was followed by a disappointing ‘2 Broke Girls’ performance at 830P as it could only draw 8.1 million. At 9P, the season premiere of the best pinch hitter in any network lineup, ‘Mike & Molly’ busted back and smacked 9.11 million viewers the highest for The Tiffany Network for the night. At 830P, ‘Mom’ dropped nearly 1.8 million and finished with 7.32 million. But it was at 10P, where CBS fell out of bed. ‘Hostages’ dropped another 2.41 million viewers on the network and finished with 4.81 million viewers. Lucky for the network it had no competition from The CW or FOX during this hour. Yet, FOX’s affiliates 10P local news hours most probably trounced this mediocre effort by CBS. The ‘Eye’s’ affiliates can’t be happy this performance.
Over at FOX, the last appearance of ‘Bones’ at 8P on Monday (they are moving to Friday’s at 8P next week) was them battle with 7.02 million viewers, the network’s top show for the evening. But it was the new show, ‘Sleepy Hallow’ with its first original show in two weeks that disappointed. It could only draw 6,94 million viewers.
At The CW, ‘hart of Dixie’ drew 1.03 million at 8P while ‘Beauty and the Beast’ finished with a horrible 670,000 viewers. Not a good finish at the old CW. It need a whole new way of thinking about what it will do when it grows up or does it continually want to fight for its life in the newbie world where it think ‘hip’ is actually a world one uses today.
For the record, ESPN was #1 with 16.102 million viewers representing a 10.1 rating. ABC was #2 with 13.559 million viewers and a 8/7 household rating and a 14 share. NBC finished #3 with 11.182 million and a 7.3/11 while CBS #4 drew 7.135 million viewers and a 4.8/7. FOX #5 finished with 6.978 million and 4.6/7. Univision #6 finished with 3.4 million viewers while Telemundo #7 drew 1.5 million. The CW #8 drew just 852,000 and a 0,8/1 to finish dead last, with no other way to put it.
ACROSS THE POND: BBC1 with its series ‘Ripper Street’, was the top show on the top network in the UK on Monday evening, drawing 4.34 milion viewers , an 18.9% share of the audience at 9P. However, it saw a 700,000 drop from the week earlier, speculating that perhaps ol ‘Ripper Street’ isn’t holding interest it once had.
That may be partially due to this season’s premiere of ‘The Choir’ on BBC Two which at the same time drew 2.66 million viewers or 11.6% of the available television audience. That network had a very good lead beginning at 8P with ‘University Challenge’ that drew 3.18 milion (13.1%) followed by ‘MasterChef: The Professionals’ which was viewed by 3.19 milion (13%) at 830P. Huey Morgan’s ‘Never Mind the Buzzcocks’ finished the evening on Two at 10P with 1.25 million (6.8%).
ITV also had something to say about the drop of ‘Ripper’ while its Martin Clunes drama ‘A Mother’s Son’ brought in 3.24 million (14.2%) at 9P. The network began the evening with ‘Northumbria’ which was heathy with 3.57 million viewers (14.8%) at 8P.
Channel 4’s ‘999’ brought in 1.52 million (6.7%) at 9P while ‘Fresh Meat’ returned for its premiere this season drawing 929,999 at 10P, good for 5.6%.
Channel 5 at 9P pulled in 1.32 million (5.8%) with ‘The Woman with 40 Cats’ while at 10P, ‘Under the Dome’ could only draw 946,000 (5.7%).
BBC Four at 830P had ‘Only Connect’ which pulled in 913,000 (3.7%).
Sky1 with ‘Arrow’ only drew 460,000 (1.9%).
ITV2 at 9P had 637,000 (2.8%) view ‘Peter Andre: My Life’.
E4’s ‘Made in Chelsea’ could only draw 548,000 (3.4%) at 10P.
So, no matter where you were watching television on Monday evening, people were…
Switching Channels!
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