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Nicki Minaj showed up on time and it was Beatles night on American Idol (3.5/10) on Wednesday. The Top 9 finalists took turns over the two-hour live show with tunes from the Fab Four and a hefty dose of ballads. The night of sad songs saw Idol slip 3% in fast nationals from last week’s 3.6/11, and down 8% from its March 13 finals. If last night is like most Idol live shows, expect to see upward adjustment in the final numbers. The most-watched show of Wednesday night, Idol dipped 3% to 12.7 million viewers from the 13.1 million who tuned in March 13. Fox still won the night in total views and the adults 18-49 demographic.
On CBS’ Survivor: Caramoan (2.5/8), the Fan and Favorite tribes were scrambled to add some new juice to the contest. It wasn’t as dramatic as the meltdown Brandon Hantz had last week, though, and the series slipped 7% from the season high of that March 13 show. With 9.59 million viewers, the one-hour Survivor was the second-most-watched show of the night and the second-highest-rated among adults 18-49 after Idol. CBS’ other shows of the night saw steady rises on their return from three weeks of repeats. A new Criminal Minds (3.0/8) was up 15% from its last original February 27. CSI (2.3/6) had an even stronger return: The procedural was up 21% from its February 27 show to take its 10 PM slot in viewers and the demo.
After mainly repeats last Wednesday, NBC was back with an almost full slate last night. Primetime kicked off with a new Whitney (1.1/4), down 8% from last week’s original. That was followed by an encore Whitney (0.9/3) and a new Law & Order: SVU (1.5/4), which stumbled 6% since its last original three weeks ago. Back for its first original since February 27, Chicago Fire (1.7/5) fell 15% since that show.
ABC had a new The Neighbors (1.4/4) and an original Suburgatory (1.5/4) on last night. The former was even with last week’s show, while the latter was down 12% from its last original two weeks back. Those results equal a series-low tie for Neighbors and a new series low for Suburgatory. The network began the night with an encore of The Middle (1.2/4), with repeats of Modern Family (1.7/5) and Nashville (0.7/2) following.
The CW had a new Arrow (0.9/2), which was down 10% from its last original February 27. A new Supernatural (0.9/2) followed and was even with its last original three weeks ago.
Deadline's Dominic Patten - tip him here.
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Why is “The Neighbors” still on the air?
Why is Suburgatory on the air. The demo rating is about the same as Neighbors and it gets even less total viewers than Neighbors even with the plum Modern Family lead in. What a waste of that time slot on a junk show.
When will networks get it that you can’t sandwich original programming between repeats? It gets way too confusing for the viewer and they give up. Not to mention, you can’t get viewers excited for a show like Nashville (that needs the ratings) then air several repeats. You have their attention with the first original, keep up the stride. This is becoming embarrassing. It’s called Scheduling 101.
would you prefer that the originals air in a different time slot? You do know that they have to spread 22-24 episodes from september to May — so that is scheduling 101. Nashville will be renewed, don’t worry.
I see exactly what you mean but, good shows buck the “scheduling 101 rule.” On Monday March 11th a new Rules of Engagement got a 2.0 rating sandwiched between comedy repeats on CBS. That same night a new The Following got a 2.6 behind a repeat of Bones which only had a 1.2 rating. See the huge disparity? Last week a new Grey’s Anatomy got a 2.6 rating and almost 9 million total viewers sandwiched between Shark Tank and Scandal repeats. Great shows or rather shows that have established the content and the character that big audiences connect with, will do well regardless. There’s a disconnect between The Middle, Modern Family, and those other two shows. Suburgatory and Neighbors will have slightly better averages than ABC’s Friday night sitcoms in the end, but that’s only because they air on Wednesday behind ABC’s two big hitters. Place Malibu Country in the 8pm timeslot Wednesday followed by The Middle, Modern Family, and Last Man Standing as the 9:30 closer to the sitcom block and you’ve got a comedy block that would build to power status within a year. We watched or rather tried to watch Neighbors after The Middle last night, and five minutes later we gave up. The Neighbors is the anticomedy much like Suburgatory and so full of unlikeable people. If you can’t care for the main characters of a comedy, you can’t care about any predicament they find themselves intertwined. Bottomline, both shows are too weird and too full of fluff to ever connect with an audience larger than what The Middle and Modern Family can handover to them.
Like Jake said, ABC has to spread out the airings of these shows between new and rerunned episodes to tie in with the May sweeps period. Regarding Nashville for example, ABC WILL be airing new episodes on the 27th and 3rd of April according to their media guides, but that would leave six more episodes remaining and those have to be spread out between the 10th of April and the season or possible series finale on May 22nd. Don’t get me wrong, I want to see the show renewed but it’s not official as of yet and they need to boost those numbers up in the next month’s time if they want a shot at renewal. I’m 60-40 right now for a renewal for Nashville.
Why did ABC ruin their only other good sitcom (Happy Endings) by moving it around? It was fine after Modern Family
Wow. A show did fine in the most viable half hour on ABC? Lots of shows would do fine after MF. It is a huge comedy that does huge numbers. Most shows would do well after that. Happy Endings got a launching pad after that, and failed to capitalize. The show convinced itself that it was the funniest thing in the history of ever, but it wasn’t.
It is a pretty good show. It needs a great lead in to thrive, but ABC doesn’t have many of those.
Chicago Fire wouldn’t still be around if NBC weren’t tanking so badly. It’s hackneyed. The only suspense during last night’s episode was whether the cardboard characters would catch fire.
Granted,Idol may have been the most-watched show of the night,but,the days of it being the ratings monster it once was appear to be coming to an end. I’ll take the 3% drop. I truly cannot wait for this over-hyped,over-exposed,over-rated,glorified,& long in the tooth program to finally die a horrible musically themed death! Idol makes me sick! Honestly,with a few notable exceptions(Kelly Clarkson,etc.etc.), most Idol “performers” would be laughed out of local karaoke bars. People can get mad at me if they so choose,but,that’s how I feel. Peace!
“The Neighbors” is great. you have to pay attention. i wished more nelson people watched. they can save some money n replace jami gertz and the daughter.
Not only do they have to spread out 22 or 24 episodes they also need time to film that many. As it is each episode only gets 8 days to film a 42 minute show which is brutal compared to movie production times. After that they need to go through editing, voiceovers etc. There are shows airing right now that still have 3 to 4 episodes to produce before the season finales mid to late May. The other alternative, which some networks use, is to put shows on a 12 week hiatus and hope their viewers return. I prefer seeing at least some originals in Jan. and Feb.
What are you talking about? That’s why they get a running start filming before the season kicks off.
And it is ridiculous how they try to spread too few episodes over the tv season by constantly sticking in repeats and sandwiching originals between repeats and the configurations change without rhyme or reason week to week. They need to revert back to proper season lengths and scheduling or expect their viewership to keep diminishing down to nil. Can’t have it both ways.
They need to revert back to proper season lengths and scheduling
Okay tv now it’s your turn, what are YOU talking about?
The networks are NEVER going back to scheduling original scripted shows that cover most of an entire season. EVER. When there were three main nets they could afford to do that but in a multichannel universe they just don’t have money. Especially for the genre-serialize shows which should really be thirteen episodes per season.
Anyway within a generation most tv is gonna end up online where schedules won’t matter at all.
CSI ripped off BONES 517 high school reunion epi and added an awful talking corpse. OTOH, L&O:SVU totally knocked it out of the park with a brilliant episode that, among other things, exposed Nick for the hypocrite he is. Good character work and very suspenseful.
NEIGHBORS delivered another smart episode even though I’m not sure if Larry Bird’s sexism is consistent with what we’ve seen from him so far. And though I love the show (and especially Jami Gertz), I’m still a bit upset about a previous episode in which Dick was labeled “feminine” and “girlfriend” simply because he displayed some HUMAN behavior and interest in things that are deemed inappropriate for boys(wtf?!). That narrow minded gender crap may be popular in these conformist times, but it’s still crap.
THE AMERICANS totally rocked like it does every week. Such a cool series. ARROW was also very good. BUT what on earth is up with all the girls falling head over heels for jerks and giving them second chances even though they did nothing to earn them? Oh wait, in this case it’s rich guilt. The jerk is poor which of course excuses bad and even criminal behavior. The jerks do have a heart of gold and perhaps the girls are psychic and just sense that. Hey, they are supersmart!
Millions of viewers complain about repeats. Instead of taking their complaints seriously, we get to read circular reasoning responses. Dear customer, we can’t satisfy you, because what you want doesn’t work with our production process which is written in stone. And you’re a dummy for assuming that we’d actually try and make changes. It’s not us, it’s you. If you want to be a satisfied customer, simply adjust your expectations according to our schedule, silly.
This whole episode scheduling thing has gotten way past the point of being ridiculous. New episode/repeat/new episode/repeat-wtf! The saddest part is the broadcast networks don’t appear to give a d*mn because they do this to tv viewers year after year after year.If anything-it’s getting worse. Sometimes,they’ll throw 1 or 2 new episodes during a particular month just to keep us on a leash wanting more as if we are their little dogs & must accept whatever they toss at us whenever they toss it out. Don’t these idiots understand that these practices are costing them viewers & destroying new shows that WERE doing well before a hiatus? Someone must come up with a new model for a tv season & episode scheduling. I have a few suggestions. Film more episodes as was done in the past. Have shorter seasons. Stop trying to spread out 22-24 episodes(on average) over a long(September to May-again on average) television season. Also,something I have noticed being a Castle fan. When Castle’s current season premiered, they aired like five or six new episodes in a row.Maybe,just maybe if they wouldn’t put ALL those new episodes together at the beginning of the season-perhaps they’d have more new episodes for the rest of the season later on•••just a thought. Look,I’m not saying I have all the answers,but,I’m sure you(my fellow readers) also have some strong feelings regarding this absolutely absurd method broadcast networks have of scheduling episodes in what seem to be ever increasingly dumb ways.
Is there noone on the broadcast networks who can properly schedule tv episodes-huh?
Suburgatory ROCKS!!!! ABC better not get any ideas about cancelling it. It’s a GREAT, GREAT SHOW!!! Neighbors and the Middle, SUCK!!!!
But the networks do need to get with it and be more consistent in their programming. Nashville has been off the air for a MONTH!!!!
Don’t the execs KNOW we Live in an ADD society???? Only 1% of us are paying close enough attention to the musical chairs they play with new shows and reruns. Shesh!!
As long as American Idol continues their downward trend, I am a happy guy and after next week, say goodbye to Whitney once and for all as I can’t even believe the CW scores that bad of a number for a primetime show on their network than what that program did last night and all of their other horrible comedies on NBC combined.
Back in the old days, the networks sometimes had shared-slot programming, in which two shows would alternate each week in the same time slot. Each series would produce about 20 episodes, giving the networks 39 weeks of fresh shows each year, while each had more time to produce an episode. CHEYENNE alternated with SUGARFOOT, JACK BENNY did so with BACHELOR FATHER, and so on. The networks could do worse than to revive this strategy, because nothing else seems to be working.
@cadavra,I agree with you. Maybe going back & forth like that between 2 different programs on a weekly basis would be an improvement.At this point ANYTHING would be an improvement.