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ABC Family already has what what all cable networks strive to get every summer, one breakout hit, in Switched at Birth, which launched with record-breaking 3.3 million viewers earlier this month. The network’s second new drama, The Nine Lives of Chloe King, couldn’t match that performance, debuting with 2.2 million viewers Tuesday night. That was lower than other recent ABC Family premieres, including Pretty Little Liars and Make It Or Break It, which both opened with 2.5 million viewers. Nine Lives, which aired against the first hour of NBC’s The Voice held onto 59% of the audience of its lead-in, the second-season premiere of Pretty Little Liars (3.7 million), which was up from its series debut, down slightly from its record-setting winter premiere (4.2 million) and on par with its freshman-season finale. Pretty Little Liars was the most-watched series on cable last night.
Over at TNT, the second-season premiere of Memphis Beat drew 3 million viewers, down from 4.3 million for its season debut last summer, which followed the season opener for Hawthorne. This time, Memphis Beat led into the third-season debut of Hawthorne at 10 PM, which posted 2.6 million viewers, down from 3.4 million for its second-season premiere last summer.
At USA Network, in Week 2, Covert Affairs (3.9 million) and White Collar (3.7 million) were both down from their season premieres last week, by 15% and 8%, respectively.
On Comedy Central, the premiere of Jon Benjamin Has a Van (1.2 million) held onto less than half of its Tosh.0 lead-in (2.7 million).
TV Editor Nellie Andreeva - tip her here.
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Watched the premiere episode of Nine Lives. Liked it and would give the next few episodes a shot. The claw effects were terrible and the young cast needs some seasoning, but overall, like the premise, and would watch again.
Switched at Birth really is a pretty good show. Nine Lives really isn’t. The boyfriends/love interests are incredibly annoying. And the lead actress and her friend were painfully shrieky in their “OMG!!!” girltalk moments.
I LOVE Memphis Beat… the problem is I didn’t see any cross-promotion on any other networks about the Season Premiere… only happened to catch it because I already had the VR set to record from last year! You have to promote people! MB is an excellent show!
Same here, didn’t even know it was back checked the DVR and found a suprise…
Nine lives, and chloe are so weak, and drivel..
I gotta admit that Switched at Birth is really terrific, and ABC family has raised the bar with this show.
Jeff
Switched at Birth is fun (second ep was way better than the first), but I thought Nine Lives was the vastly superior show. Possibly too good for the audience it’s trying to serve.
Really? Chloe King was paint by numbers. The plot is almost identical to Teen Wolf.
True about plot, but I thought the main character on Teen Wolf was totally un-interesting while the main character on Nine Lives was really engrossing.
Agree to disagree, I guess…
That’s really funny, actually. I felt exactly the opposite–liked Wolf Teen (and his comic relief best friend), didn’t care about Chloe King (and her comic relief best friend). It says something that we had polar opposite reactions to different executions of the same plot. I’m not sure what, though.
Teenwolf wasn’t a book, The idea for the plot (of Nine Lives) was made in 2004 from a book by Liz Braswell. So the plot can’t be taken from Teenwolf.. speaking that the plot was made in 2004.
IMO, Nine Lives’s main problem is its timeslot. It isn’t up against just The Voice, it’s up against USA’s White Collar, which has a significant fan following among women thanks to the appeal of star Matthew Bomer. When SyFy’s Warehouse 13 and Eureka return in July, whichever one of them lands in that timeslot is going to present even more formidable competition against Chloe.
My recommendation to ABC Family is to either move both Pretty Little Liars and Nine Lives an hour earlier on Tuesdays or to move them to another day of the week. Wednesdays, perhaps — where Nine Lives’s only real competition would be Royal Pains.
Onto reviewing the show:
Sure, the premiere of Nine Lives was a little shaky — especially in the stuntwork for the scene where Chloe practices her powers in a conveniently abandoned industrial area — but c’mon, it’s a pilot!
The typical-for-a-pilot unsure editing aside, I liked it a *LOT.* Skyler Samuels is compelling as the title character, with Amy Pietz doing a swell job as a more grounded Lorelai Gilmore to Samuels’s waaaay-better-than-Alexis-Bledel Rory.
Chloe’s best friend is played waaaaay too caffeinated, but that seems to me to be a problem of the showrunner not quite having found that character’s voice yet because the actress seems to me to be playing the character as written. She appears to me to be able to play anything in the YA and SFF genres that they could throw at her, so I’m expecting her character to become more grounded as the season progresses.
One thing I liked — A LOT — about the script is that, like Chloe walking across the back of the park bench in the opening scene, it easily walks a difficult balance between typical superhero-origin infodump and characterization. We get scenes that clearly illustrate Chloe’s powers (Even though the editing of said scenes is hampered by rough and choppy editing of the stuntwork, that’s not the script’s fault.) and their drawbacks and we get scenes that clearly explain the characters’ relationships, friends and family alike. To me, the show felt like the first appearance of Spider-Man without all the “Oh, if only I hadn’t caused Uncle Ben’s death” angst Xanax-ing it down.
I second this. Rob J you are correct. Secondly though Graduations are this week. Next week kiddies will be able to stay up past 9pm to watch some TV. 9pm a tad late to watch this. Hope abc fam has the nuts to flip flop 9 Lives and PLL.
I wish they’d cancel both, and bring back Middleman.
Chloe King was awful it deserved those lack luster ratings. It’s gonna fall next week.
Memphis Beat is a great show, but I agree they aren’t advertising for it correctly. The season premier was different than last year’s Memphis Beat (in a good way) yet, TNT keeps showing clips from last year. They’ve got a new showrunner who seems to have really shaped things up over there. The show looked amazing, and the story was great. Hopefully TNT will start adverting for this new and improved season 2 and quit showing us grainy shots of a 200lbs Jason Lee.
I like Chloe and thought the lead girl very appealing. Best friend may have been a bit juiced up but like her, as well. Mother was flat, uninteresting and a little annoying and somewhat creepy. I saw an episode of Aliens in America and she played a mom to a teenage boy and she got jealous of her son’s acting partner and muscled into the lead in the school play OPPOSITE her son and there was this sexual vibe coming out of her towards her son that was so disturbing i had to turn it off. I will never forget that. There are so many really pretty older women out there. Is it too late to recast?
Sometimes the numbers lie. Not here.
Nine Lives was bad, derivative, uninteresting, even annoying at times.
And Hawthorne CONTINUES to be one of the very worst shows on TV. (Why did I even bother to TiVo it?) Terrible acting. And the music is horrendous! (The music in the first season was really good. What happened?)
Switched at Birth was a very pleasant surprise. It is truly a GREAT show!
Hawthorne and the music? good point they used the 9 yr old kids horrible song “Whip my hair back and forth” why is Sony subjecting humanity to this god awful show???
Is is so SILLY and it makes woman look like they cannot handle a job
Marc Anthony needs to gain some weight
I was watching PLL premiere and planned to try out Chloe King. But then there was an ad for White Collar, which was on at the same time, and I changed the channel. Why advertise shows on other networks if they want people to stay on their channel? I might watch it on Hulu.
@Del: Don’t blame ABC Family for those ads for USA shows — it’s ridiculous to do so because those commercials were almost certainly time that USA bought from your local cable/satellite system and NOT time that USA bought from ABC Family. These blocks of commercial time are purchased from the cable/sat company to air across a spread of many, perhaps dozens, of different channels as in, USA buys x number of plays of the commercial to air across y number of channels in the z range of timeslots (anytime, just primetime). Except in unusual cases (and this isn’t one), ad buyers don’t get to pick what networks their commercials air on — they air wherever the channel has agreed to let the cable/sat company air them, usually a wide range of channels. USA obviously likes to buy a LOT of ad time from the local companies.
If you watch Covert Affairs you are part of the problem.
I love listening to adults criticize teen shows. It’s like when Siskel and Ebert gave the Rugrats movie “Two thumbs down”. My teenage daughters loved Chloe and laugh every single time they see the Switched At Birth ads. Says something there I think.
Nine Lives is one of the weaker “teen with super powers shows”. I know I shouldn’t judge it after the first episode but I felt like I was watching “I Am Number Four” the Tv series.
HAWTHORNE- how painful was that episode? OMG
the child birth scene was “painful” to watch.
Who wrote this? i heard they had new writers.
Is this a favor show to keep an actress and her hubby happy?
and i thought season 1 was the a joke this even trumps the first season
Not surprised that “Memphis Beat” is down – what did they do to this show? It was so quirky and original last season. Now? It’s like every other procedural. Not even a good one. If it’s true that they got a new showrunner to “shape it up,” it didn’t work – they pretty much killed everything that made this show a joy to watch last year.
How much Longer with HAWTHORNE be on the air?
Who is approving these scripts?
WHAT A MESS and waste of shelf space
I heard JADA actually used her kids music in the show
JADA stop grabbing you are luck SONY lets you play with that toy
which is B O R I N G