CBS - Clearly, CBS has had the best fall where new shows are concerned. All of the shows managed to finish in first or second in their time slots this week. The new comedies seem to have stabilized at solid levels. The same could be said for Hawaii Five-0 and Blue Bloods. The biggest question mark remains The Defenders. But even at biggest question mark levels, it’s still bringing in almost two million more viewers than NBC’s lauded Law & Order LA. That’s a very good worst example to have. Here’s how they look so far:
Mike & Molly
Hawaii Five-0
The Defenders
$#*! My Dad Says
Blue Bloods
NBC - Things are not so rosy for NBC. They’ve already banished Outlaw to Saturday, and the rest of the new shows don’t bring a lot to celebrate either. The Event, Law & Order LA, and Outsourced all had solid premieres. But the trend of weekly erosion doesn’t cast any of those in the kindest of lights at this point. All of that pre-season promotion for The Event couldn’t have been aiming for 6.42m/2.2. The worst bit is that those are the good stories. Chase and Undercovers started low, and plummeted further. The best bet for NBC is on L&O LA. It is still sneaking by The Defenders to win the demo, and is the show that one would guess will be most resistant to continuous viewer drain.
The Event
Chase
Undercovers
Law & Order LA
Outsourced
The rest of the NBC week: Sunday Night Football (19.12m/7.4) – Chuck (5.23m/1.9) – Biggest Loser (7.08m/2.6) – Parenthood (4.87m/1.9) – L&O SVU (8.74m/2.7) – Community (4.46m/1.9) – 30 Rock (5.18m/2.2) – The Office (6.87m/3.4) – The Apprentice (3.58m/1.3) – School Pride (2.76m/.7) I just left School Pride off the new shows list because those numbers speak for themselves.
ABC – Thanks to Desperate Housewives, Dancing With The Stars and Grey’s Anatomy, ABC is in better overall shape than NBC. With new shows though, there’s not a lot of difference. My Generation is already gone, and The Whole Truth is probably going to be following it soon. The other three are iffy at best. Detroit 187 is disturbingly close to where The Forgotten was at this point last season. And the continued drops for No Ordinary Family are anything but encouraging. What looks like a leveling off last week could be a bit of a mirage. That was the first week that it faced a repeat of Glee, yet it still dropped. The best bet for ABC so far is probably Better With You. At the moment, it’s actually ahead of where The Middle was last season, which is something.
No Ordinary Family
Detroit 187
Better With You
The Whole Truth
The rest of the ABC week: Extreme Makeover Home Edition (8.59m/2.3) – Desperate Housewives (12.67m/3.9) – Brothers & Sisters (8.81m/2.6) – Dancing With The Stars (19.33m/4) – Castle (10.95m/2.5) – DWTS Results (15.53m/3.2) – The Middle (8.54m/2.6) – Modern Family (11.97m/4.7) – Cougar Town (7.38m/3.1) – Grey’s Anatomy (10.97m/4) – Private Practice (7.66m/2.7)
FOX - The news isn’t any better at FOX. Raising Hope has taken advantage of that Glee lead-in just enough to get a full season pickup, but that still finds the network going from first to fourth at the turn of the hour. And that full season pickup brings with it a Running Wilde sized crater when the network has to fill in that 9:30 slot. Because, clearly, at under 3 million viewers on a Wednesday, Running Wilde isn’t long for this world. And, of course, the FOX Friday mystery remains intact. The Good Guys joins a very long list of shows that couldn’t manage to attract viewers to the night. I still contend that the only way the network will find success on the night is to move an established show there.
Raising Hope
Running Wilde
Good Guys
The rest of the FOX week: NLCS Game 2 (8.84m/2.7) – House (9.65m/3.6) – Lie To Me (5.62m/1.9) – NLCS Game 4 (9.27m/2.9) – NLCS Game 5 (11.2m/3.5)
CW - By comparison, the two new shows from the CW don’t look that bad. They’re both hanging right around the usual numbers for the network, and both are easily outpacing Life Unexpected. I imagine there is some concern with the young women demos for Nikita, which have fallen well behind the network’s average, but both shows seem to have found their level, and will get to finish their inagural runs.
Hellcats
Nikita
The rest of the CW week: One Tree Hill (1.89m/1) - Life Unexpected (1.48m/.7) – America’s Next Top Model (3m/1.3) – Vampire Diaries (3.62m/1.7) – Smallville (2.48m/1) – Supernatural (2.48m/1.1)
CABLE
Basic
Premium
Clacked by Brett Love 
on Oct 25, 2010 @ 10:00 EST5EDT
Wow. I continue to be shocked by the numbers for SGU and Caprica. Maybe they need to go to Friday?
*POST AUTHOR*
I’m not really shocked by the numbers. I do think they would both be doing better on Friday. Although, how much better is debatable. If they are going to be on during the week, the smart move would have been to run them over the summer, cross-promoting with Warehouse 13 and Eureka.
Those Caprica numbers also make me scratch my head when I hear talk of another BSG spinoff.
I honestly think that another spin off can work if space ships and battles are involved.
The new spinoff is going to be a CGI type show with CGI backgrounds and take place during the war and not be mind numbingly dull.
Ouch!! The numbers for Terriers are just awful. Such a shame, because the show keeps getting better. Of course, I can only watch online since Fox and Dish are in a tiff, so hopefully Fox takes that into consideration.
Loving the Defenders, and happy they got a full season. Maybe people won’t be afraid to watch now that it’s sticking around.
Oh, and…
Gooooooo H E L L C A T S!