Thanks for the heads up on the ER and Supernatural finales.

When it comes to making the most money possible, I’d say they’re doing the right thing when it comes to Grey’s overrun.

Personally, I wish the networks would cut it out with all of the overrun stuff – especially since in the Grey’s case, I’d rather have a couple more minutes of LOST if I had my choice.

Both shows ran a bit past 10pm.

For the 9-10pm hour, CSI won with a 10.66 vs. Grey’s 10.65.

However, for the 10-11 overrun Grey’s had a 13.52 and CSI a 9.51. The overrun doesn’t count for the timeslot points for TVBS though.

The overrun did boost Grey’s overall to 10.74 HH rating while CSI had a 10.64, that’s how it could make the top 5 without winning its timeslot.

Though it pains me to say it, because I usually choose CSI over Grey’s Anatomy for my line-up (though I don’t watch either – ever) and this past week it appeared to be a good strategy, it couldn’t have won the 9 o’clock time slot for that week (the one summarized on the 29th in your post) if Grey’s Anatomy was the final top 5 (since the two shows share a timeslot). It appears that it was very close according to the ratings link (Grey’s won by .1 rating point), but for those players who look back at your rankings blogs to help choose their shows, it might be confusing to have CSI as the winner for the 9 o’clock time slot on Thrusday, but Grey’s as the top 5 winner. (It was for me anyway, hence my research – though in the end I’ll likely stick with CSI again, it just won’t be as confident a pick as it was before I found CSI did not win its slot for that time period).

The trick is to take those shows that go on hiatus out of your lineup on Sunday and then go back in and rebuy them on Mon/Tues and then sell them again on Wed/Thurs/Fri to get the added value. Then you replace them by the Sunday. It costs a million per transaction and it’s a little more work, but that’s what the leaders have been doing since the get go (and me since December).

p.s. I’ve gone from 2500th place to 380th during that stretch.

While CSI had more viewers per household, Grey’s had more households and so it ranked higher.

However, this week, both Oprah and Biggest Loser were left in active status with bogus “next air dates” so that you could buy them on Monday and Tuesday to get the price increase without hanging on to them.

Eli Stone, Amnesia, Just For Laughs, Here Come the Newlyweds, New Amsterdam and a few others that have ended are still listed and active with a bogus “next air date”. That’s been a major issue with the game that they don’t seem to be able to resolve.

Oprah and Biggest Loser may still reset their prices upwards on Wednesday morning, even though they are finished for the year. I don’t know, the rules confuse me at times as well.

I’m going to remove both of them from the post entirely since I’m not sure any longer.