So the numbers are in for Thursday night, and I have to say not much in the way of surprises.
Grey's Anatomy (*spit*) was the big winner racking up 17.06 million viewers on average for it's two hour season premier. Meanwhile ABC's Flash Forward has found some excitement kicking in with 12.4million viewers during its premier. You all know my thoughts on GA so I won't go there, as for FF, it's got potential. I caught the premier repeat tonight on ABC, and it's good a lot of quality: directing (David Goyer) and acting (Joseph Fiennes), but I have to say it looks to me like the next Heroes. By that I mean a series that sells itself short time wise, and if it's not careful will quickly run out of places to go and have to re-invent the wheel in order to survive.
Warning to FF's Executive Producers: Be very careful how far you're willing to go the first season.
Other big winners for the night are Survivor: Samoa (11.87m viewers), The Mentalist (14.33m) and CSI (15.72m). Granted if you're shocked by that you don't pay much attention to television...
The mid-swingers were the usual bunch, Bones racked in at 8.8million, and The Office wasn't far behind with 7.33million.
The losers this week though are rather sad to see. NBC's Lineup of SNL and Parks and Recreation failed to find big audiences holding at 4.66 and 4.22million respectively. Meanwhile Fringe took a hard dive down to 5.86million viewers, a real shame, but I'm not sure it can hold up against CSI (similar audiences) in the same time slot. As well NBC's new, and rather funny, comedy Community starring Joel McHale and Chevy Chase took a hit hopping in at 5.36million viewers.
CW continued to scrap the bottom of the barell, actually finishing below Univision in terms of audience. The Vampire Diaries whipped up at modest 3.81million viewers, meanwhile Supernatural walked along with only 2.62million. Not fairing much better is Jay Leno's show which has gone from 17+million down to almost 5million viewers in a manner of 2 weeks... the show will need to stay above the 5m mark in order to really be cost effective against local news networks which cost no where near the same to produce.
Though let's be honest, premier night viewings are always insanely skewed, the same goes for finales. People like to come in and see if anything has changed or grown or just like to see the ending. It's sort of like high school: we were excited when it started, we love it at the end, years later we miss it and highlight the good... all because we forgot how mind numbingly long the middle is! 24 weeks, most shows are down 1... it's weeks 5-20 that define the long term value of a show.
Hope you all enjoyed your night. I'm heading off to bed, Surrogates tomorrow (hopefully a review too - I need to get back to movie reviews bad).
3 better thoughts:
NBC's crappiness is no surprise. Parks and Rec, I'm not even sure how that show managed to get renewed. The only thing good I can say about NBC is they renewed CHUCK, but I think that's only because they knew if they canceled it after the huge fan support they'd really be in trouble. So instead the stuck it as a mid season replacement and I think are just going to slowly let it die. It at least had a steady viewership which I can't say for anything else NBC puts out.
Joseph Fiennes
@Andrew Thanks for that! I always make those blunders, even though the two Fiennes brothers look nothing alike I always mix up their names.
@MVP I think NBC is trying the same tactic with Heroes this year. It's a solid ratings show, but ideas wise they're running on empty so they decide to hand over the 9pm slot (despite no real heavy opponent coming out then). Moving Heroes to 8pm to compete with House, Dancing with the Stars, & How I Met Your Mother... I don't understand NBC at all this fall they're really going to struggle overall on key nights.
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