ABC has become a power to be reckoned with on Monday in household viewing. The Alphabet Network behind dancing, where it seems everyone in the world loves looking at people performing the ‘light fantastic’, captured the top broadcast spot for the evening. ‘Dancing with the Stars’ at 8P-10P beat it’s younger demo reality competition over at 30 Rock pulling in 12.508 million viewers while at 10P, ‘Castle’ with another superb episode finished second in its prime time slot with 10.09 million. But before Mondays on ABC becomes a habit, it has to stop setting series lows, as it did on this day. Both programs performed below expectations.
NBC on the other hand, seems to be losing a bit of steam even though it appears to be chugging along just fine. This is not a definitive statement based on numbers, but rather a feeling that something is just slightly off kilter. ‘The Voice’ at 8P-10P pulled in 11.89 million viewers to finish #2 in households in this time period. ‘The Blacklist, NBC’s big hope of a breakthrough drama with sensational DVR Live+7 viewing, finished #1 in its time slot drawing 10.73 million viewers. More on this episode and what it could mean in the future for this show and NBC, in a later comment to be found here. Monday was supposed to be an NBC power evening. Combined with its football programming on Sunday evening, The Peacock Network was counting on the two-day run to give it leverage at the beginning of the week. But now, with stronger CBS competition on Sunday and real ABC strength on Monday, the center piece of 30 Rock programming is in danger. What happens when football goes away in the winter?
ESPN featuring ‘Monday Night Football’ had the third highest program of the evening as an average of 10.957 million viewers tuned into the Miami Dolphins being defeated at Tampa by the Bucs.
FOX did what FOX does best on Monday. It is holding firm with its numbers until the next big hit comes along and that could be next Monday. They haven’t had a legitimate blockbuster hit on Monday since ’24’. In the meantime, ‘Bones’ at 8P, with another great episode of discovery, brought in 7.36 million viewers, largely because of the stars of the show. Emily Deschanel (Bones) and David Boreanaz (Booth) are brilliant. At 9P, ‘Sleepy Hollow’ brought in nearly 7 million (6.986 million to be exact). Both programs had increases over these comparable time slots on this day last year. The stage is set for next week’s debut of J.J. Abrams’ newest series ‘Almost Human’.
CBS has to re-examine its entire Monday night programming philosophy. At 8P, ‘How I Met Your Mother’ finished with 8.08 million viewers, slightly ahead of ‘Bones’. At 830P, 2 Broke Girls’ increased the audience to 8.20 million. At 9P, the best utility program in the world, ‘Mike & Molly’ brought in the top numbers for The Tiffany Network by drawing 8.56 million viewers. But it was at 930P with the new program ‘Mom’ that began the fall. It could only pull in 6.93 million while at 10P, the horrible ‘Hostages’ dropped further to 4.49 million.
USA Network with ‘WWE’ running all evening in prime time, drew an average of 3.768 with the highest at 8P as 3.867 million tuned in.
The CW at 8P had the ‘Hart of Dixie’. 1.16 million watched it. At 9P, ‘Beauty and the Beast’ was view by nearly every other show on the entirety of television at this time with 910,000 viewers braving their eyesight on watching The Little Network That Could at this hour. How lucky can one get, being a producer, crew and actors getting paid to put on a show no one watches.
In late night, ‘Leno’ was tops with 3.0/8; ‘Kimmel’ was #2 with 2.2/6 while CBS’s horrible prime lineup left ‘Letterman’ in the dust with 2.0/5. At 1235A, ‘Fallon’ pulled in 1.6/6, ‘Nightline’ averaged 1.4/5 while CBS’ ‘Ferguson’ barely broke ice with 0.9/3. How bad was this evening for CBS? An hour later at 135A, NBC’s ‘Last Call with Carson Daly’ beat ‘Ferguson’ with a 1.0/4. This should never happen in real life. Can it get any lower for Black Rock than on Monday (or very early Tuesday)?
For the record, ABC finished #1 with 11.7 million viewers and a 7.7 rating and a 12 share. NBC was #2 with 11.503 million and a 7.0/11. ESPN was #3 with 9.527 million viewers; FOX pulled in 7.172 and a 4.5/7; CBS drew 6.793 million and a 4.6/7; USA Network finished with 3.768 million viewers; Univision had 3.5 million viewers and a 1.8/3; VH1 drew an average of 2.671 million viewers for the evening; Telemundo had 1.3 million viewers and a 0.7/1 while for the first time in memory, The CW finished last with 1.03 million viewers and 0.7/1. It is possible that CNN finished further down the ladder on this evening. We’ll wait for the cable overnights to determine how low is a CW low.
ACROSS THE POND:
BBC One’ ‘Ripper Street’ was the #1 television program in the UK on Monday evening. It drew 3.97 million viewers or 17.9% share of audience at 9P. Earlier at 630P, ‘Panorama’ set the stage with 2.75 million (11%). But the issue here was that ‘Ripper’ dropped 300,000 viewers in this third episode of the season. If you go back to last week, it dropped significantly as well from its premiere season episode.
The big challenge is coming from ITV and BBC Two. At 8P, ITV’s ‘Tales from Northumberland’ finished #2 for the evening but #1 in its time slot with 3.52 million viewers good for 14.6% share. At 9P, Martin Clune’s ‘A Mother’s Son’ brought in a solid 2.64 milion (11.3%).
BBC Two on Monday at 8P, ‘University Challenge’ brought in an evening high on Two with 2.81 million viewers (11.7%) while at 830P, ‘Masterchef: The Professionals’ had a strong 2.74 million (10.9%). At 9P, ‘The Choir’ kept the network a real factor with 2.62 million viewers (11.2%). At 10P, with ‘Never Mind the Buzzcocks’ it fell to 1.21 million for only 6.3% share.
Channel 4’s ‘999’ brought in 1.72 million (7.4%) at 9P while ‘Fresh Meat’ could only bring in 840,000 at 10P.
Channel 5 fared much better with Josie Gibson’s documentary ‘Got Thin, Got Fat Again’ as it attracted 1.03 million (4.7%). At 9P. ‘Under the Dome’ increased the audience with 1.1 million (6.3%) at 10P.
BBC Three at 730P brought Novak Djokovic’s ATP World Tour Finals win which was viewed by 1.03 million (4.5%).
BBC Four’s highlight was at 830P, as ‘Only Connect’ was seen by 896,000 viewers (3.6%). Obviously, not many felt connected.
E4 at 10P had ‘Made in Chelsea’ and apparently not many cared as perhaps only those in the neighborhood of Stamford Bridge were watching as only 509,000 viewers (3.2%) took interest.
ITV2 at 9P ran ‘Peter Andre: My Life’ and only 701,000 viewers (3.0%) cared. Sorry, Peter.
As you can see, no matter where you were viewing television, people were…
Switching Channels!
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