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After gaining on CBS for the past few weeks, ABC topped the eye network last night for its first Friday win among adults 18-49 this season. Kudos to ABC for assembling a solid Friday lineup of Supernanny, Primetime: What Would You Do and 20/20. But, after ABC and NBC abandoned scripted programming on Friday this fall, it was comforting to see CBS’ all-original scripted lineup winning the night week after week, proving that it was still worthwhile for the networks to try to program Friday night with scripted series. Will the change of the guard on the night further undermine Friday as a viable scripted night? NBC already announced its midseason schedule, which features only reality/newsmagazines on Friday. Fox, which also just unveiled its midseason plans, is going down from 2 to 1 hour of scripted programming on the night – banished sci-fi drama Fringe. With ABC’s unscripted lineup doing so well, I doubt the network will mess with it. So all eyes will be on CBS, which still packs large audiences on Friday, and whether the network will stay all-scripted on the night following the departure of Medium in January.
For a second consecutive week, an ABC program was the highest-rated on Friday night. Last week, it was Primetime, this time it was 20/20 (2.0/6, 6.8 million), which posted its highest demo rating in 10 months with a Cher interview. Primetime (1.6/5, 5 million) was tied for second place in 18-49 with CBS dramas CSI: NY (1.6/5, 10.2 million) and Blue Bloods (1.6/5, 11.3 million). Overall, ABC, whose lineup also included Supernanny (1.0/4, 4.2 million) at 8 PM, hit a season high for the night with an average of a 1.6/5. CBS (1.5/5) was second while dominating in total viewers (9.6 million). The network’s 8 PM drama Medium (1.4/5, 7.3 million) didn’t get a boost from the official announcement this week that the show will end its run in January, finishing flat with last week. The rest of Friday was mostly status quo: NBC’s School Pride stayed at 0.6, and Fox’s Good Guys at 0.7 demo rating, respectively, to rank as the lowest-rated programs on any network, including CW.
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Don’t count out NBC! School Pride is spectacular and has tested off the charts. Other shows like Chase and The Event have gained an early rabid, die hard following. Outsourced was up this week. The Tonight Show with Jay Leno is the funniest late show show hands down. Jimmy Fallon is a young prince combining comedy and social media.
I have no vested interest in any of this, I just started watching NBC about six weeks ago and can’t stop!
Might be time to go back on your meds, Vicki.
Uhhh what planet are you on? School Pride is a train wreck- its come in last place in the ratings every week of its first and hopefully last season of schmaltzy crap.
That show is just terrible. Badly produced by a talentless hack who only seems to kill half decent ideas. Denise Cramsey is a terrible producer.
But main point being – it has no audience. No one is watching. No one cares about it. And no one will miss it.
@RealityCheck: Denise Cramsey died today. Happy now?
You must be deaf and blind
Zucker?
And no CW ratings now even though they aren’t the lowest rated network? Wow, don’t show too much bias there.
Heyyyyyyyyyy! Is this the introduction to the opposites?
Vicki = Jeff Zucker??? WTF!
The Event has a rabid fanbase? Haha. The hell it doesn’t. I’m sure the cast will be going out for pilot season just like Flash Forward’s cast did last spring.
You are my favorite new person today. Lol.
Who watches TV on a Friday night? Besides senior citizens and lowbrow Fox News fans?
Lowenbrau fans?
Nbc had a good semi-scripted pilot that larry charles did….it would have been a good fit for frIday night. Dumbasses couldn’t see beyond their noses.
ABC is smart for trying something different like news magazines or news specials but I think scripted programming could do well, just maybe not the standard fare.
I think original movies/mini-series could do well there or an anthology series or maybe someone brings back the TGIF Family sit-coms.
Or just move shows like Fringe there; ones that have a loyal audience and that could fare well with lower expectations of Friday night. Maybe go with Fringe at 8 and a sci-fi anthology series and label the night Sci-Friday or something.
Fringe? Sci-Fi? Do you remember how Sarah Connor and Dollhouse failed on Friday?
Established series on a Friday? That just leads to the disaster that CSI: NY is experiencing right now… It’s losing its audience.
Sci-Fi can work on Friday. X-Files launched on Friday nights. It got about a 7 rating but was given time to grow. Dollhouse just wasn’t that good and it and Sarah Connor struggled (like Fringe will) because they were serialized shows. Getting people to tune in on Friday is hard enough; forcing them to watch every episode in order to follow the show just makes things harder.
It also doesn’t help that Fringe is following Kitchen Nightmares so there’s almost zero chance that it keeps the viewers from that show.
The CSI: NY move worked perfectly IMO. Yes, the show dipped a bit (obviously, since there just aren’t as many viewers on Friday night) but they still get over 10 million viewers a week and its presence on Friday helped Blue Bloods get established. Meanwhile, CBS was able to move their new hit Mentalist into a key Thursday spot and solidify their dominance on that night.
Vicki, you have no vested interest in NBC? Then why are you spewing out information that just plain isn’t true. What you say about Chase, The Event, and Outsourced is simply not factual. Have you even been looking at the diminished ratings? And if School Pride tested “off the charts” as you say, then it must have tested that way with the same five people who are watching it every week. I don’t think you’re Zucker, but you obviously work at NBC… Until Comcast gets rid of you, too.
What do people with 3 kids under 10 watch on fri nite oooo they go to a restaurant and annoy everyone?????
Zap2it has a much more positive spin on these numbers. Seems to me CBS never worries too much about the demo and focuses more on overall viewers, no?
Hey, c’mon, ALL the shows are scripted, it’s just that some are scripted BEFORE and others are scripted AFTER they’re shot.
Perfectly said.
How can you say that scripted fare is dead when cbs came in first with viewers — is 18-49 all we care about nowadays? CBS was also the last network to give up on Saturdays as well — is it just not worth programming on Saturdays anymore?
Isn’t ABC trying to bring back the TGIF lineup with that new Tim Allen show?
They also have that Kelly Ripa show in the works that would fit well on Fridays. Paul Lee has said he hasn’t ruled out bringing back TGIF.
Paul Lee has said he wants to do this, but I am skeptical as to whether or not he can really follow-through with this. Specifically because let’s examine Happy Endings & Mr. Sunshine. Neither show really fits in the TGIF mode (at least in the classic sense).
He could move the Middle to Friday’s, but I’m not sure that makes sense either because that show is doing quite good in the 8PM spot. Better With You is an awful show (and it has nothing to do with being a multi-cam). Just not funny.
IMO, I believe that multi-cams would have to be the shows going to Friday’s if only because they are much cheaper to produce. ABC has one multi-cam that sucks. Not sure you can launch a Friday night with all new sitcoms (they did it with Wednesday, but Friday is a different beast).
I’d like to see them add an hour to Friday instead and an hour to Tuesday.
I don’t know anyone that wouldn’t enjoy a variety comedy music show; entertainment !!!!
No dramas and dreariness sic of it pathetic bad news and criminals endlessly day after day.
Why wait until 11:30 pm sat snl just to get a mild laff and music.
A1849 is an outdated methodology. Two CBS drama generated more than 10 million viewers on a FRIDAY night and the focus is on a ridiculous 1.6 demo rating for ABC? Something is not right about this.
And no, I don’t work for CBS. I just say screw the demo and focus on actual viewership. That’s where TV’s future is. Clearly the younger half of A1849 is not watching TV in the same manner as they used to.
Advertisers shouldn’t be wasting money trying to corral lost viewers back to TV — especially with the crap they keep throwing at them.
Not only should they bring back TGIF, they should LITERALLY bring back TGIF. Bring back STEVE URKEL! He’s a classic character on the level of Pee Wee Herman and should anchor the night with his own sitcom. Is he really that much more cartoony than the nerds on THE BIG BANG THEORY? No! Give adult Jaleel White his own 8pm Friday sitcom, URKEL, and bring TGIF back to stunning life.
Friday night has been death to scripted one-hour dramas, unless the show is truly exceptional. CBS simply needs to move its CSI:NY franchise back to Wednesday if it wants to see improvement.
Of course, as DVR’s become ubiquitous in every home, programming will be a meaningless exercise.
Good theory, but it doesn’t stand true.
Yes, it is true that more and more people are buying and using DVRs. However, MORE people overall still watch TV when it is regularly scheduled. Another reason for a decrease in viewership is the fact that there are simply more channels out there. I know people with close to 1000 channels, so of course shows have lower ratings than they used to. It can not be directly correlated to DVRs, though, which I think is a mistake that some of the media has picked on.
Also, DVRs will not replace TV in my lifetime (I am 20). People said the same thing about cell phones replacing home phones and look, we still have home phones.
You’re telling me that a sixty year old woman in the middle of nowhere in Texas is going to get a DVR just cause the “cool kids” are doing it? No.