CBS Wins Season & Ties Sweep In Demo; ABC Tops Adults … 
Mike Lobell Adds Cast To ‘Eisner,’ Plots … 
Sony Shares Rise On Report That It Will Consider … 
Next-Gen Xbox One Unveiled With Content Including … 
UPDATE: Apple CEO Challenged For Moving “Crown … 
CAA Signs ‘Robocop’ Joel Kinnaman 
Cannes: Fleming Q&A With Steven Soderbergh: … 
ESPN Layoffs Could Reach 400 As Part Of Latest Disney Cuts 
UPDATE: Broadcast Nets Expand Nightly News For Tornado … 
Cannes: Weinstein Co Acquires Keanu-Reese Sci-Fi Pic … 
RATINGS RAT RACE: ‘Dancing With The Stars’ Up … 
Hot Trailer: ‘The Wolverine’ 
Ric Robertson Taking Paid Summer Hiatus From Movie Academy … 
‘The Big C’ Finale Airs On Showtime Tonight 
Obama Scandals Bring MSNBC 7-Year Low While Fox News Rises 
Season Finale Of CBS’ ‘Mike & Molly’ … 
Ang Lee Departs FX Pilot ‘Tyrant’ 
DreamWorks Eyes January For ‘Glimmer’ And Dylan … 
Warner Bros TV & ‘Smallville’ Co-Creators … 
How Many Times Does Seth MacFarlane Have To Say No To The … 
UPFRONTS 2013: TV Spinoffs’ Almost Perfect Year 
Thursday night’s battle of the competition premieres left neither really strutting their stuff. The two-hour 8 PM time slot premiere of Fox’s So You Think You Can Dance(2.4/8) saw a misstep from last year. SYTYCD was down 27% from last year’s season opener. Going toe to toe with SYTYCD in the slot was ABC’s Duets (1.7/5) With American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson, John Legend and Sugarland’s Jennifer Nettles as judges, Duets can lay claim to some serious singing star power. ABC’s new singing competition show was up 8% over SYTYCD in total viewers, though Fox dominated the Adult 18-49 demo by 41%. Duets brought in around 6.7 million total viewers over the two hours to Fox’s approximately 6.2 million. However, Duets was down 29% from last year’s Expedition Impossible premiere but that still made it ABC’s biggest audience in the slot on a post-season Thursday in 4 years.
With the season over and heading into the Memorial Day weekend, it was a night of repeats on NBC that paid off for the finale of Awake (0.9/3) The now canceled police procedural’s season one closer was up 29% from last week’s season low. Over on ABC in the same 9 PM time slot, the third season of Rookie Blue (1.4/4) started off down 13% from last year’s premiere.
In a night of repeats on CBS the 8 PM The Big Bang Theory (2.3/8) repeat drew over 8.2 million viewers. That was followed by 6.2 million watching Rules of Engagement (1.7/6) 7.8 million watching Person of Interest (1.4/4) and just a little more watching The Mentalist (1.5/4).
Fox was tops among Adults 18-49 but CBS won the night in terms of total viewers.
Related: 2011-12 Season Network Ratings; Fox Still On Top But Down, NBC in Third, CW Falls
Deadline's Dominic Patten - tip him here.
Loading ...
Awake was a fine but challenging show. The finale was quite interesting and hinted at even more interesting directions ahead for the Season 2 it never got. Everyone involved with the show should be very proud of those 13 episodes. It was a success in all but ratings.
I enjoyed Duets. It was refreshing to see the judges have to step on stage with the contestants. I feel like on these other shows you have judges who can’t sing judging contestants who would on any given day sing them under the table. Yay for real talent.
I love Kelly Clarkson, but was disappointed by “Duets” last night. The contestants were really lacking in terms of talent or personality. The host (Quduus?) was awful and made it painful to sit through. And the secret voting which ranked the top 8 contestants was pointless.
Duets was horrible. iwont watch again. most if performers were weak, esp just adter idol. too many singing shows..way overload..close to killing genre, esp as few stars emerge. oh and duet doesnt have judges, coaches or nentors–theyre just called ‘superstars’. Bad format too as superstars vote on their competitors so sabotaging ur competition with low score is easy..
SYTYCD needs help. They need to get better judges. Mary Murphy is a nightmare. Nigel is annoying- even if it is his show. Who cares ? The dancers last night were pretty lackluster .Because you can do weird things with your body – it doesn’t mean your a dancer. I don’t think the judges don’t know what a dancer is.
Duets was pretty bad. They can’t sing. And Robin Thicke is the only one with a personality. I won’t watch this again.
Thank God Rookie Blue is back! Love that show.
These musical talent and dancing shows are just getting too over-exposed right now as the networks need to do a better job with coming up with better concepts if they ever expect to get more eyeballs to view their programming on a nightly basis.
R.I.P. Awake. Hope it’s released on DVD. Jason Isaacs should definitely be considered for an Emmy. Say what you will about the ratings, his performance was among the best of this TV season.
With the contestants singing duets, it does take some work to separate them from their famous partner. It is a better format for sitting back and enjoying music than it is for getting into unknown singers competing for a prize.
But the music was enjoyable which made me like the show. If it had a longer season they could have spent more time on the potential contestants, but with only 9 shows there’s only so many minutes.