(12/7 – 12/13)
I work with a guy that has the barest of the bare bones cable packages. Thirteen channels. It amounts to the networks, Discovery, PBS, and shopping. It was a tough week of television for him. There were a lot of repeats. The CW only managed 3½ hours of original programming for the week, for example. Add in a host of Christmas specials and the pickings were a little thin. Taking advantage of all of that, CBS had great numbers for the introduction of Laurence Fishburne on CSI. Some of the other shows that did manage to air originals were not so lucky.
CW - The repeat-plagued schedule this week can be described as the good, the bad, and the ugly. The good? Gossip Girl (2.99m/1.5). The show has found a level, and considering the rest of the schedule, that’s a good number. The Bad? Privileged (1.91m/1.0). I’m still not sure why this one hasn’t worked out, but the move to airing behind Gossip Girl is not helping. And The Ugly? Stylista (1.32m/.6) lost way too many viewers when the Top Models closed up shop. Everybody Hates Chris (1.59m/.6) really didn’t have a chance with the move to Friday. And the Family Entertainment Awards (.95m/.4)? Someone at the little network has to be thinking twice about Smackdown right about now.
NBC - The peacock actually bucked the trend and brought out a lot of first run programming this week. Unfortunately, it was the same old story. With the CBS Monday Comedy block back in action, Chuck (6.94m/2.4) and Heroes (7.72m/3.6) were down. Things were similar on Wednesday, where the return of Criminal Minds and CSI:NY signaled bad things for Life (5.64m/1.9) and Law & Order (7.5m/2.2). The big successes of the week came from The Office (8.76m/4.7) and The Biggest Loser (9.18m/3.6). To give you an idea of just how bad things are at NBC, The Biggest Loser managed a 4.0 in the 18-49 demo from 9 to 10. That puts it above every scripted program on the network, except The Office.
ABC - Things got off to a great start on Sunday with Extreme Makeover (10.39m/3.3), Desperate Housewives (16.09m/6), and Brothers & Sisters (10.55m/3.9). That goes a long way to explaining why ABC is looking at extending Housewives for two more seasons. Unfortunately, it was all downhill from there. Monday held up ok, with Charlie Brown Christmas (11.02m/3.7) and the terrific Boston Legal finale (9.89m/2.3). After that, it just wasn’t pretty. Two episodes of According To Jim (5.05/1.6 – 5.34m/1.7) led to Eli Stone (4.89m/1.4). News of the cancellation isn’t helping Eli, and it seems to be taking down Pushing Daisies (4.86m/1.6) and Dirty Sexy Money (5.24m/1.8), as well. The real stinger though, was Thursday. You don’t usually kick a show for repeat performance, but Grey’s Anatomy (6.26m/2.1) is particularly bad, dropping some 9 million viewers and over three points in the demo.
FOX - Things were similar over at Fox. The difference being their one shining night came on Tuesday with House (13.91m/5.6) and a repeat Fringe (7.08m/2.8). Terminator:TSCC (5.25m/1.9) and Prison Break (5.39m/2.1) delivered what has, unfortunately, become the expected. The only other interesting bit was Secret Millionaire. The show actually held up better than I expected on Wednesday (7.26m/2.8). But another edition on Thursday (5.4m/2.0) dropped considerably. It’s probably just a case of showing up on a weird night, but I’m hoping people have already tired of the show.
CBS - The big winner after all of that, CBS. Unlike the other networks, CBS avoided having any truly bad nights. Going from that angle, it’s a tossup between Tuesday and Friday. The demo numbers were low on Tuesday, but repeats of NCIS (14.11m/2.7) and The Mentalist (13.65m/2.8) still had the most viewers for their time slots. And NCIS was against an original episode of House. Christmas programming brought Friday down, but Frosty The Snowman (7.63m/2.4), Frosty Returns (7.66m/2.4), The Flight Before Christmas (7.61m/2.2), and a Numb3rs (7.44m/1.9) repeat still won the night in both viewers and the demo. Those are pretty solid worst night performances. On the good nights, the Monday comedy block continues to dominate, and the big Laurence Fishburne CSI (20.86m/5.8) capitalized on the Grey’s repeat.
Coming up over the next week, Heroes ends the current chapter, on Monday. Tuesday brings the premiere of Momma’s Boys. Please don’t watch that. Do it for the children. Thursday will offer up no new scripted programming as Password and Secret Millionaire do battle and we all lose. And the CW scales back, only offering two new hours of programming for the week. Man, they need to order something, anything.
Some final numbers to ponder:
My Own Worst Enemy (3.63m/1.5) – I didn’t think it would get that bad. The bar is set rather low for Medium‘s return. And I’ll just get it out there now, Medium might actually have more viewers than Heroes in February.
How I Met Your Mother (10.49m/4.2) – The audience is still growing.
Little Spirit (4.81m/1.4) – If you were betting that anything could get better numbers than Knight Rider, you were wrong.
The Amazing Race finale (10.5m/3.1) – It’s no Survivor, but with these numbers and all those awards, there should be many more races to come.
Eleventh Hour (13.4m/3.8) – One of their better episodes took advantage of the CSI hype.
Clacked by Brett Love 
on Dec 15, 2008 @ 10:00 EST5EDT
I don’t know if it made a difference or not but Little Spirit wasn’t even aired in the Houston area until 3 am. The NBC affiliate decided to use that as 1 of their exemptions where they could air whatever they want and keep all the ad money. I’ll never understand why they don’t wait for repeats to do that. The CBS affiliate always does that to HIMYM when its a new ep even when there are repeats the week before and after. With so few Nielsen familes in the area its gonna hurt the ratings since each family that misses something equals thousands of viewers in the ratings. And if all the Nielsen family idiots miss a show in 1 city then thats several hundred thousand left out in the ratings, at least.