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In its second airing, NBC’s midseason drama Awake (1.6/4 in adults 18-49, 4.3 million viewers) was down 20% from its modest premiere last week. The midseason drama faced an original The Mentalist in the 10 PM hour vs. a repeat last week, but its lead-in was actually bigger. Both The Office (2.6/7) and Up All Night (1.7/4) were up a tenth in the demo from last week. Earlier in the night, 30 Rock (1.4/4) was flat, while Parks And Recreation (1.9/5) was up 12%.
CBS’ The Big Bang Theory (5.1/5, 15.2 million) appears headed for another demo victory over Fox’s American Idol (4.8/14, 17 million), though the official call will have to wait until the finals are released this afternoon as CBS was preempted for college basketball games in 3% of the country and the network’s ratings may be adjusted down. Big Bang was down a tenth from the fast national for its last original two weeks ago, while the hourlong Idol was down 11% from the two-hour edition last Thursday. The Finder (2.3/6) was up 15% from two weeks ago in its final airing on Thursday. With a stronger lead-in at 8:30 PM — a Big Bang rerun vs. Rob – CBS’ Person Of Interest (3.4/9) now runs 10% ahead of its last original for a series high. Mentalist (2.8/8) was up 8%. ABC aired repeats.
TV Editor Nellie Andreeva - tip her here.
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Awake has a huge buzz online. Wait till the dvr numbers come in. There’s a whole generation watching and talking about this that would never consider watching an actual live broadcast. Sucks for the people selling advertising but it’s the new reality. Or is it?
It doesn’t suck for people selling advertising at all. They just discount the Live+3 ratings by the number of people skipping ads and ignore the Live+7 (that’s too long to matter).
Skipping ads just means the stuff you like gets cancelled and the stuff that people who don’t know how to use a DVR like gets renewed. Anyone wondering why American broadcast television is so stupid, there’s your answer.
Love this show. Watch it online or on my dvr. Don’t the networks understand how their target demo watches tv? They get paid millions to know. I’ll tell them for free. Online and on dvr.
Get it together NBC.
If you don’t watch the ads they could care less that you watch it. If they can’t sell the ad space they lose money on the production. If you like a show watch it live, or don’t complain when it gets canceled.
There is zero buzz online for this show. Stop trying to save a disaster.
This is an amazing show, I can understand if someone of the folks don’t like it. TO each his own. I simply love it. I would like to see how it all ends. In todays world, its not about entertainment but rather its about ratings and selling adv. space.
@watch it live?
Its not like NBC can track millions on consumers watching a show Live. They have a rating system like all the Tv networks, based on sampling, thats how they approximate ratings.
@the show is not smart enough?
I think you are having trouble comprehending the show so to speak. Americans are being dumbed down! too bad! I guess only comedy and sex and sells on American TV.
Why is it when a show that combines great talent with exceptional writing comes on it gets axed after one season. And we’re left with airhead t.v.!
It shows how dumb America is for not wanting to watch this intelligent show.
Tell ya the truth, it’s a lot less intelligent than I hoped. I was hoping for something more original and maybe philosophical. Instead, I got yet another cop show with sci fi window dressing. There’s been enough of that garbage, how about some sci fi that doesn’t have anything to do with cops and isn’t being shoehorned into the beyond-tired police procedural format?
I won’t miss this show when it’s cancelled. It’s not nearly smart enough for me.
This is one of the most pretentious things I’ve read in while. Congrats bro.
I agree with you. Leave the procedurals to the denture-wearing CBS demographic.
Cancel it, ABC.
Oops. NBC, of course.
Funny you should say that. After watching the first episode, I spoke to a friend and said almost the exact opposite: “I wish this show was as smart as it wants to be.”
I thought it was a snoozer. And most of the characters a bore.
I agree on it being a new reality but one that is completely irrelevant. Without the advertisers, shows won’t exist. With the respectful exception of anything on the CW and Fringe, shows with huge DVR ratings vanish anyway.Though for Awake that might not matter, it’s a smart drama show that’s after a comedy block, on NBC. It’s probably doomed.
Somewhere along the line what the creators of the show call ‘High concept’ turns into ‘I do not get it’ or ‘I cannot follow it’ and when that happens the audience starts to drop off. I think that is going to happen with Awake.
Compare to Person of Interest. An interesting concept that you have to understand and that is explained in brief at the beginning of every show – then it gets into the meat of the show and the show has solid characters, action, a good arc. Not surprised it hit another high. Last nights episode was the best so far.
Sure, that works for CBS and probably means Awake isn’t long for this world.
But let’s not pretend that Person of Interest is actually a good show. God dammit, in the two episodes of Awake, Howard and Kyle have already destroyed an entire season of PoI. The show was meant for cable and probably not NBC, but what are you going to do now?
Please– Awake is solid but it hardly ‘destroys’ POI. They’re both good.
Au contraire. PoI is a GREAT show.
Agreed, Nisha! PERSON OF INTEREST exemplifies the kind of one-hour episodic narrative no longer in fashion these days (except on those tedius forensic procedurals). In fact it is mostly looked upon with contempt. To whit: POI is primarily interested in telling good, old fashioned, self-contained stories.
And you summed it up quite nicely. Within the first minute or so, a new viewer knows the tone, the premise, and the characters, and the next 59 are all about telling him a great story.
Why this form of traditional narrative (particularly in the “non-procedural” realm) is falling by the wayside is beyond me. But that’s where it’s heading.
It may be time for the entertainment industry to work with Nielsen on INCREASING the number of Nielsen homes. Right now the number is approximately 5,000, in a population of 300 million. That is a very small sample size, no matter the research that went into selection. Kudos on the effort that goes into making sure the sampling is representative but the sample will have to be tripled at the least if we want a more accurate sense of how well these new shows are doing.
1) It’s statistics, it’s a fine sample.
2) It still means there’s a margin of error that the general public doesn’t see.
3) I agree, but we’re still going to be complaining about Nielsen in twenty years because no one is going to take the risk to change it. At least not until someone (Nielsen, probably) allows for demographic data to be collected from online viewing.
or we can just do away with the entire nielson thing altogether. it’s a broken system that is severely outdated. hell, i don’t get why it isn’t possible to just have cable boxes report what’s on them. it’s a 100% accurate number that doesn’t rely on any gimmicks in its counting.
People with cable boxes aren’t representative of the US population as a whole. Are you really comfortable shutting out a disproportionate number of poor and minority viewers?
All the bitching about the Nielsens is usually just people who can’t grasp statistics. Even if you ditched the Nielsens, you’d just end up with another system that people would bitch about when they don’t like what it’s saying.
I caught the last 10 minutes of this show last night, purely by accident. It was so compelling I went immediately to OnDemand and watched the first episode. Great show, very glad to see Jason Isaacs every week, I’m hooked!
I’m still trying to figure out the scene from the Pilot when Cherry Jones has him read from the constitution and asks him how he can do that. Wha? You gave him pages and he read from them.
Also, i like all of the casting except for the wife. She is not only too young looking, but also just annoying and the weakest link as an actor. I would rather see him end up with his son’s tennis coach. She is much more likeable.
I do like Issacs a lot.
The therapist was saying that he is not in a dream because there is no way he could recite to himself a random section of the constitution. They spelled it out pretty clearly…
In one side of his life, his son is dead. In the other, it’s his wife. They will never get more than a handful of people to tune into that every week. Please… stop drinking the Kyle Killen Kool Aid. He doesn’t write what people want to watch.
Bingo, baby!
Two worlds of grief, with no moving on? Kill me now (not my wife and/or son).
As soon as Mad Men starts up again, I’m dropping Awake.
Ha! You say “Kill me now” — but you intend to go on watching it until MAD MEN starts?
WTF???
20% is just the beginning. Last night’s Awake started a ridiculous seen-it-before conspiracy subplot that will kill the show. Always nice to hear from the agents here, but I’m bailing out as of episode 2.
I liked Laura Innes on ER a lot, but shoehorning her into every NBC show is becoming tiresome.
From the few comments above, apparently the reason(s) AWAKE dropped 20% in its second airing were:
1.) Americans are too stupid;
2.) Mis-scheduled;
3.) DVR cannibalism;
4.) Neilsen system suddenly broken.
Huh.
“Suddenly” broken? No, it’s been broken countless times, every time it spits out numbers that doom somebody’s favorite show.
Let’s face it… It’s a mediocre premise.
No, it’s a gorgeous premise. The execution is lackluster.
You have to wonder why NBC would schedule an intelligent adult type drama against The Mentalist.
It just doesn’t make sense to me.
I hope it does well – I have friends that work on it.
I just sampled Awake for the first time last night and i really wanted to like it but i only lasted for 20 mins.
Mush mouth aka Jason Isaacs (that’s suppose to be american? if he were drunk perhaps) not good and even worse is his partner in this Wilmer Valderrama (please kill him off, him falling from a playground jungle gym, goes into a coma and never wakes up.)
When i heard about the story concept it sounded good. The only reason i will watch next week is for BD Wong, Cherry Jones and Steve Harris.
Oh I was also a big fan of Lone Star especially for hottie James Wolk .
It sure looks like Kyle Killen can’t get a hit,at least he’s getting paid.
I love how the best thing Awake fanboys or likely the staff can do is disparage a new show that is a bonafide hit this season and continues to climb in the ratings.
Any new drama at this point automatically signs its death warrant by being on NBC at this point. Except Grimm I guess.
Awake is just another cop procedural with a sci-fi gimmick. There’s nothing truly new, original, or intelligent about it.
Jason Issacs has some mean looking eyes. That’s why I don’t watch this show. He looks like the mean-eyed brother of Jon Hamm.
Everyone’s missing the point about Awake, specifically why it will be canceled soon. The question is not necessarily whether the premise is good; weak or ho-hum premises can be spun into well-oiled plots week in and out (eg, Revenge, Ringer, Smash). The question becomes whether the writing talent is there to do it. Awake has an interesting premise, interesting to the point of gimmicky, yes, but again that’s not the point. The question remains whether the premise can be exploited by the writers. From what week one showed, Awake’s team can not do it. They sold the network on a new, different approach to a procedural, and cast it well with the male lead (though the other roles are just ho-hum) but then just stomped through the two parallel plots in ways we’ve seen before too often. What will kill Awake even faster is the dichotomy between its quirky premise and its plodding plotting.
I’m just certain that NBC wants to forget that this season ever happened with any of their shows, left over from the Zuckerwad-Bromstad regime and just focus on their new fall schedule, where greenbladt’s handprints will be all over the new schedule, once upfronts take place in two months time. And by this article as well, shows The CW is no longer relevant but when were they?
Here’s an idea – build TVs with an option to
Join the Neilsen ratings with a click – ill bet it’s possible and I’d bet you’d have millions of TVs recording every minute of viewing !! You think the ratings are fractured now !!!! They would also be stunningly accurate and end the endless debate over ratings for good !!!
The whole premise is too sad. It doesn’t matter which “reality” you prefer, the show is about death….which could make an interesting movie, but makes for a lousy weekly series. Either the son is dead, or the wife is dead, or (maybe) the dad is the one who is really dead, or (maybe) they are all dead, or (maybe) the dad is in a coma. I don’t want to watch that. TV executives don’t seem to know the difference anymore between a movie-of-the-week, a telenovela, and an ongoing series. Who wants to watch a show that every week is about death?
I find it interesting that no one gets the fact that two people who are supposedly characters in his dream reality are having an independent conversation. This means they are aware of this dual reality and are probably both reporting to higher ups that are in control. Too bad we probably won’t see what happens with this angle
He could also be dreaming this scene as well.
His wife and son have scenes that are independent of him.
This show should have been put on Friday’s after Grimm, that could have went hand-in-hand together. But as usual, instead of seeing an opportunity NBC still has it’s dreams of grandeur in resurrectioning it’s 1990′s Thursday night line up of crap-o-rama!
I LOVE this show, but I do not have time to watch it at 10 since I come home from work at 11 so I watch it the next day on Hulu.
I have seen every episode so far in order. I really like the show a lot and think it’s great. I watched every episode on my iPhone.
People that dont enjoy shows like this, prefer Jersey Shore and 1000 ways to die. Sadly most humans are stupid.
Omg thank you…the show made it pretty obvious as to why the therapist made him do that…smh