There were only three original programs on Friday’s schedule. CBS didn’t care. They ran reruns and won the night. At 8P, ‘Undercover Boss’ rerun drew 5.27 million viewers while at 9P a two hour ‘Garth Brooks Live from Las Vegas’ rerun drew 5.17 million and that was enough. The Tiffany Network is simply that strong. It didn’t have to do anything but present reruns and win on Friday.
ABC at 8P a rerun of ‘Last Man Standing’ drew 4.25 million. At 830, ‘The Neighbors’ rerun drew a horrible 3.03 million while at 9P, a ‘Shark Tank’ rerun drew 5.04 million. At 10P, ’20/20′ ran an original episode and drew 5.5 million, tops for The Alphabet Network on the evening and tops for its time period.
NBC led off, at 8P, with a rerun of ‘Dateline’ and drew a broadcast evening high of 6.27 million viewers, 1 million ahead of ‘Undercover Boss’. But at 9P, nobody wanted to see ‘What We Waisted Our Year On’ as this original broadcast slid to 4.95 million and finally at 10P, a rerun of ‘Grimm’ led The Peacock Network to near bottom by drawing only 2.05 million viewers. Even during the holidays, the affiliates deserve better than this way of program scheduling.
Univision finished #4 for the evening by drawing an average of 2.972 million.
FOX at 8P brought a rerun of ‘Bones’ and drew 2.87 million viewers. At 9P, a rerun of ‘Raising Hope’ didn’t. It drew 1.56 million for the Animal Network of Broadcasting.
Then there is The CW. At 8P, a rerun of ‘The Carrie Diaries’ could only lead off the evening with 690,000 viewers, hardly a satisfactory lead into one of the network’s grand programs series finale. At 9P, ‘Nikita’ simply could not pull in enough new viewers and ended it great run with only 810,000 viewers. It deserved better. It deserved better treatment from its network. It was consistently entertaining and it was one program that knew what it was. It is simply too bad, after four years, more people could not watch this little, terrific show. Shame on The Little Network That Couldn’t.
For the record: CBS was again #1 on Friday with 5.204 million viewers. ABC was #2 with 4.726 million. NBC was next with 4.146 million while Univision finished #4 with 2.972 million. FOX finished with 2.172 million viewers and The CW drew 747,000 viewers.
ACROSS THE POND:
It has been a BBC One kind of Christmas. Again, during the season, it has reclaimed its dominance and topped everything on Friday evening. First off, ‘Miranda’ drew 3.82 million (16.2%) then ‘Death Comes to Pemberley’ drew an audience of 4.4 million (20.1%) at 9P. The PD James adaptation, which serves as a follow-up to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, topped Boxing Day as well. A repeat of Christmas Day’s ‘Mrs Brown’s Boys’ at 1030P brought in 2.94 million.
ITV though a rerun of ‘Bridget Jones’s Diary’ might attract a crowd, but only 1.47 million (7.8%) tuned in at 9.30pm, plus 159,900 watched an hour later on ITV +1.
BBC Two at 730P brought out ‘University Challenge’ and it was the channel’s biggest show of the night with 1.68 million viewers (7.1%). ‘Idris Elba: King of Speed’ drew 1.31 million viewers (5.6%) at 8P while adventurer Ben Fogle and Olympian James Cracknell attracted 1.37 million (6.2%) at 9P for ‘Ben and James Versus the Arabian Desert’. The Tom Hanks’s survival movie ‘Castaway’ brought in 1.64 million (11.1%) at 10P.
Channel 4 had ‘Gordon Ramsay’s Home Cooking’ 715P and could only muster 480,000 viewers. ‘Celebrity Come Dine With Me’ doubled the audience at 8P with 980,000 viewers. At 9P, ‘The Inbetweeners Movie’ drew 1.94 million folks (9.5%).
Channel 5 brought out a double header with Mr Bean 9P with 842,900 while a second episode jumped up to 1.01 million viewers. At 10P, ‘Tommy Cooper’s Christmas’ dropped the audience back down with 851,200 viewers.
BBC Four brought us all an evening dedicated to Swedish popstars ABBA. And Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad never sounded better. At 9P, ‘The Joy of Abba’ brought in 919,500 viewers (4.2%), while an archive of performances of ABBA at the BBC drew 870,600 (4.7%) at 10P (4.7%). At 11P, ‘Agnetha: ABBA and After’ brought in 755,000 (5.9%). Was it your ‘Waterloo’?
No matter where one was watching television on Friday evening, people were…
Switching Channels!
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