Ratings Clack – Fairy tales are the new vampires

ABC - Well now… who saw that coming? If you expected Once Upon A Time (12.93m/4) to get more viewers than Sunday Night Football and beat every ABC show except Modern Family in the demo, then your crystal ball is quite finely tuned. Because I don’t think anyone else was expecting such a showing for the debut of ABC’s latest entry. That is, quite obviously, a great start for the show. Desperate Housewives (9.17m/3) and Pan Am (5.68m/1.8) paled in comparison on Sunday.

The other good news for the network was the result of their sleight-of-hand scheduling on Wednesday. A repeat of last year’s Modern Family (11.31m/4.5) Halloween episode was slipped in on an otherwise new night. MF still did incredibly well, while The Middle (10.16m/3.2), Suburgatory (9.73m/3.4), Happy Endings (8.33m/3.5), and Revenge (8.72m/2.7) were still all up. Earlier, it was an uneventful week for Dancing With The Stars (17.17m/3.2) and Castle (10.81m/2.4) on Monday.

Last Man Standing (9.88m/2.8) is hanging in there, while Man Up (6.78m/2) still looks to be in an iffy position. Body Of Proof (9.43m/1.8) is looking a little soft with the success of Revenge in the demo. There was more good news Thursday when The Great Pumpkin (7.44m/2.3) stepped in for Charlie’s Angels, nearly doubling the demo from the previous week. Grey’s Anatomy (9.93m/3.7) and Private Practice (6.4m/2.4) remain down, but not out, and Extreme Makeover (4.1m/1 – 4.26m/1.1) is treading water on Friday.

NBC - The peacock had a fairy tale adventure of its own to crow about with the premiere of Grimm (6.49m/2.1). Now, that may not look like much at first blush, but you have to factor in the fact that it was a Friday premiere, against a big World Series Game 7 audience. As an example of what could have been, just look at the premiere numbers for Chuck (3.39m/1) an hour earlier. The Grimm result is probably better than the network could have hoped for. And I say that because Grimm actually had more viewers than everything on NBC last week except Sunday Night Football (12.47m/5.2). Yes, even more than The Office (5.53m/2.9).

That Office number was actually the worst the show has ever had on Thursday. And that was the theme of the night for NBC as Community (3.42m/1.4), Parks & Recreation (3.87m/1.8), Whitney (4.19m/2), and Prime Suspect (4.03m/1.1) were all busy hitting various series lows. Just for a bit of kicks-and-giggles perspective… 10/28/10, also against the World Series… Outsourced (5.94m/2.7). Earlier in the week The Sing Off (4.18m/1.5) and Biggest Loser (5.51m/2) both continued to struggle.

FOX - The sporting gods smiled down on Fox last week. After getting a less than ideal World Series matchup, the network had the great fortune of getting an epic extra-innings Game 6 (21.06m/6.5), leading to a Game 7 (No final number, but estimated 25m viewers). That was a nice gain over the results for Game 4 (15.16m/4.2) and Game 5 (14.32m/4.2). X Factor (12.09m/4.4) was the only other new entry for the week.

CBS - It was another very typical week for CBS, with nothing crazy happening either way in the numbers. The schedule is solid, and just keeps motoring right along.

CW - There are two items to note from last week for the CW. First, have a look at Hart of Dixie (2.01m/.8). With all that is going wrong on the CW schedule, the fact that the show hit a series high in viewers, and tied a series high in demo, in week five is a very good sign. The other bit of good news came with Vampire Diaries (3.28m/1.5) getting another fourth place demo finish as it bested NBC at 8 on Thursday. The rest of the week was made up of Gossip Girl (1.36m/.7), Next Top Model (2.27m/1), Secret Circle (2.31m/.9), Nikita (1.84m/.6), and Supernatural (1.71m/.7).

CABLE - The big news for the week was once again Walking Dead (6.7m/3.6). That was down a bit from the premiere, but still a fantastic result. And that was more than enough to convince AMC to go ahead and green-light a third season of the show. The numbers weren’t nearly as big, but the return of Beavis & Butt-Head (3.29m/1.8) also had a good start on MTV.

Clacked by Brett Love
on Oct 31, 2011 @ 10:00 EST5EDT