That didn’t take long. When Conan debuted on the Tonight Show, his premiere soundly defeated Letterman. Of course, as expected, the curiosity of the premiere wore off immediately, and the numbers began to drop. Things really got interesting last week as we started seeing the first signs that the late night war is back on. In week 2 for Conan, Letterman actually managed to win a couple nights in the overnight household ratings. NBC is quick to point out that Conan is still tops in the younger demos.
While that is true, it’s worth noting that the last time Letterman managed to top Leno in the overnights was some eight months ago. Considering that the late night shows operate on scales of years, it’s way too early to declare a winner. However, it all does serve to make the late night ratings race, one which Leno had pretty much owned for years, very interesting again. Elsewhere this week, more good news for cable, from The Closer, Burn Notice, and Royal Pains. Back on the networks, The Bachelorette and I’m A Celebrity squared off again, the dancing kids were winners for FOX, and even without Lebron, the NBA was very good to ABC.
Cable - Things are far more interesting further up the dial right now, so let’s start there. I put forward the idea of a Closer/Burn Notice showdown earlier, and we finally have a few early numbers to look at. In week 2, Burn Notice (5.24m) was down just a bit, which is normal. That was no match for the premiere of The Closer (7.1m). It will be fun to see what happens with those two as the season moves along. Also interesting is the two shows following them. In a complete surprise, Royal Pains (5.57m) not only held on to all of its premier audience, it had more viewers than Burn Notice. Things didn’t go quite that well for Raising The Bar (3.6m) following The Closer. That’s down over 50% from the last season premiere.
Elsewhere on cable, records were on the menu. Bravo premiered Top Chef Masters (1.37m), and that was the highest rated Wednesday at 10 premiere the network has ever had. Similarly, The Food Network kicked off the new season of Next Food Network Star (2.2m), and that was the most watched season premiere in network history. Good news was also in the cards for Showtime, with Weeds (1.2m) and Nurse Jackie (1m). That was enough to get Nurse Jackie a renewal already.
ABC - The NBA was good to the network last week. Three games easily won their nights, with the highlight being Thursday’s (16m/6.4) huge showing. That’s as good as firing off another new episode of Grey’s Anatomy. The news was also good for The Bachelorette (7.16m/2.5). Not only did it surpass the reality competition of I’m A Celebrity, but those numbers are up from the previous week. If the show could get on a role like The Bachelor did, it could be a very nice summer for ABC Mondays. Wipeout (8.42m/2.9) was solid as well. In less happy news, The Unusuals (4.66m/1.4) continues to limp to the finish line. And relocations for Surviving Suburbia (2.87m/.6), The Goode Family (1.82m/.5), and Pushing Daisies (2.33m/.7) were largely ignored.
NBC - Like ABC, NBCs highlight for the week also came from sports. Unfortunately, that sport is hockey. And, for whatever reason, the American TV audience just really isn’t that interested. It took a show-stopper of a game seven for the NHL (7.51m/3) to make even a little noise. Game six (5.21m/2) didn’t do nearly as well. Other than that, there wasn’t a lot of good news. I’m A Celebrity took over the schedule on Monday (5.21m/2), Wednesday (4.71m/1.8), and Thursday (5.08m/1.8). The Listener (4.39m/1.3) didn’t offer any help. And Kings (1.59m/.3) was downright dreadful in its Saturday premiere. For some perspective, the CBS repeat of 2 1/2 Men beat everything on the network except game seven of the Stanley Cup. Going the other way, that Kings Demo is so low, that the only show with a lower demo, on all the networks, was a repeat of Jericho on CW. Yikes.
FOX - So You Think You Can Dance was the big winner for the week, bringing good numbers to Wednesday (8.7m/3.3) and Thursday (8.68m/3.2). Elsewhere, Mental (4.83m/1.4) continued to struggle and Don’t Forget The Lyrics (3.81m/1.2) remained steady on Friday.
CBS - A week of repeats was bookended by the rather uneventful combination of the Tony Awards (7.45m/1.3) on Sunday and Harper’s Island on Saturday. Otherwise, it was another relatively successful week of repeats.
CW - The only new programming to report came in the form of Hitched or Ditched (1.51m/.6). Yes, the demo for Hitched or Ditched is twice that for Kings. How could that show, with that cast, go so horribly wrong in the ratings? I have no idea, and I find it rather disappointing. But it does certainly keep the numbers interesting.
Clacked by Brett Love 
on Jun 15, 2009 @ 18:04 EST5EDT
Hrm… what to make of that? FNL’s ratings weren’t better than those of “The Listener” and it got renewed. We’ll see if my streak of 100% of the shows that I review are shown in full (and renewed) will be maintained or not (with a total of 1 shows currently reviewed/renewed) ;-)
Seriously though, those are bad numbers :-(
*POST AUTHOR*
I don’t think you can really use the FNL numbers to gauge anything. At this point, it exists because of the DirecTV deal. Without that, we wouldn’t be looking forward to more stories from Dillon. That doesn’t necessarily spell doom for The Listener though. Depending on how cheap the network is getting it, it’s conceivable that they may want to bring it back as a summer show again next year. With these numbers though, the chances of it ever appearing on the regular season schedule would seem to be a longshot. Of course, in our brave new TV world, you have to follow statements like that with, “Then again, Dollhouse got renewed, so anything could happen.”