It’s that time of the year where it becomes painfully obvious just how lacking the summer television schedule is. Hopefully, you’re getting some nice weather in the exchange. The good news is that the summer television season is now half over. We can now start counting down the weeks until the fall premieres. As for the numbers, things mostly held to form. Although, there were a few interesting additions on the schedule this week. Hell’s Kitchen, Dating In The Dark, and Ruby And The Rockits all had premieres, while Samantha Who? and Kings had finales.
ABC - The Bachelorette (7.81m/2.6) got the week off to a good start, and that carried over into the premiere of Dating In The Dark (6.34m/2.5). Look for that number to drop in week two, but it is a solid debut. Wipeout (6.18m/2.4) was also solid. That’s good enough that the show has already been renewed for another season. The rest of the week, was a little rough. The Superstars (3.26m/1), Better Off Ted (1.87m/.7), Samantha Who? (3.46m/.9 – 3.31m/.9), Surviving Suburbia (2.42m/.6), and Dirty Sexy Money (1.8m/.4) were all disappointing.
NBC – Again, much like ABC, the hits were few and far between. America’s Got Talent remains a success on Tuesday (13.64m/3.4) and Wednesday (11.05m/2.5). The rest of the schedule falls somewhere between, eh, and awful. Those other new entries included Merlin (4.27m/1.1), Meteor (5.21m/1.2), Great American Road Trip (3.46m/1), The Philanthropist (4.74m/1.1), The Listener (3.38m/1), and Kings (1.8m/.4).
CBS – Continuing where they left off last week, Big Brother is still the lone new entry for the network. It’s not exciting, but it does well enough that we can probably plan on seeing the show again next summer. The results were: Sunday (5.58m/1.8), Tuesday (5.79m/2), and Thursday (6.42m/2). Not new, but notable, was the debut of Medium (4.03m/1) on CBS. Those numbers are awfully low, even for a CBS repeat, but it was the first showing, on an odd night. I suspect things will be just fine when the show makes its official debut. Despite the lack of originality, the network was again the most watched on four of seven nights.
FOX – So You Think You Can Dance has been doing most of the heavy lifting this summer, and posted good numbers again on Wednesday (7.32m/2.9) and Thursday (8.42m/2.9). The dancing kids now have a little help. Hell’s Kitchen (6.47m/3) is back. That number is off a bit from the last go round, but still a solid summer success. Elsewhere, the FOX Friday continues to be the FOX Friday with 5th Grader (4.67m/1.2) and Mental (3.69m/.9). It all added up to another week with the network winning the demo on five nights.
CABLE – Well, cable and network to start. President Obama continued his assault on prime time programming with another press conference. After all the various showings were combined it managed 24.7 million viewers. Elsewhere, the good run continues for True Blood (3.85m). That’s just off the series high, and good enough that you can now get your very own bottles of Tru Blood. The news wasn’t quite as good for Hung (2.77m) and Entourage (2.69m), which both suffered drops.
USA was also celebrating as Burn Notice (6.8m) just keeps getting stronger. That’s another series high in viewers. While not setting records, 10 Things I Hate About You (1.6m) is still solid for ABC Family. That led to a very good premiere for Ruby And The Rockits (1.6m).
Clacked by Brett Love 
on Jul 27, 2009 @ 13:01 EST5EDT
