Pushing Daisies Got a Wednesday night off. Private Practice with a 6.4/10 (household rating/share) and Dirty Sexy Money (4.7/8) performed pretty much as expected in the early metered market numbers. The New Adventures of Old Christine (4.4/7) and Gary Unmarried (4.2/5) were also noticeably down from the last time they aired on a normal schedule. No Daylight Saving Time boost for them – two weeks ago Christine had a 5.0/8 and Gary a 5.1/8 in the early metered markets.
Normally I wouldn’t have much to say about any of it because the early metered market numbers are typically fairly useless other than getting an idea of which way the wind is blowing. But for struggling Life, which had its first Wednesday at 9pm appearance, the wind is blowing at category five hurricane strength, and I don’t mean that in a good way. It got a 3.7/7 (and worse, it apparently went down in the second half hour where it had only a 3.4/6).
Of course Criminal Minds dominated with a 9.5/15. But a House rerun got a 4.7/7. Knight Rider seems to have lost its early season mojo. Ok, perhaps it never had any, but it used to get into the 4.x range and do well among men. Standard Time doesn’t seem to be Knight Rider’s friend either – not with a 3.3/5. At 10pm, Law & Order’s season premiere (nineteenth season, and showing its age?) nailed a 5.8/10 vs. the 7.8/13 CSI: NY got.
It’s too bad about Life, I really enjoy the show. Perhaps the DVR numbers will be really good and some other network will want to pick it up. Just kidding. Other networks don’t want poor performing properties and my guess is Life costs too much to give it a shot on the NBC owned USA Network where a 3.7 would be very good.
We’ll post the viewer and age demographic data when we see it. In the meanwhile you can view Marc Berman’s full early metered market report.
Metered Market Overnight Ratings: This is normally the first available ratings information, and is based on the electronic measurement service that Nielsen provides in 56 of the nation’s largest markets. In each market a sample of homes is selected to represent that individual market. Often, networks or syndicators provide metered market information as an early indicator of a program’s performance. In aggregate, the 56 metered markets represent 79,890,610 homes, or 70% of all U.S. TV households. Preliminary metered market data are available as early as 8:00AM (ET). Final metered market information, reflecting line-up changes, pre-emptions and runovers, are normally available by 3:30PM (ET).
Berman says that “Law & Order” fell 39% in comparison with its 2-hour season 18 opener which aired in January. There was little competition at the time because of the strike, but that’s nevertheless quite a significant decrease. NBC must be very unhappy with last night’s figures. Their revamped crime Wednesday is a flop.
Let’s hope Law & Order is finally removed from our schedules, clearing the way for The Simpsons forever holding the record for a primetime series with the same characters.
LIFE support? Oh, I get it! Hahahahhahahhahahahhahaa!
Maybe Ned from Pushing Daisies can touch LIFE and bring it back from the dead? But then another show would drop dead if it he didnt kill it again right away – Id pick Knight Rider – cant stand the new version, put THE HOFF back in the real KITT (not the current lame imitation).
Speaking of which when are they bringing back Air Wolf (Is Jan Michael Vincent out of rehab yet? Hes 64, but with a little makeup… and Ernest Borgnine isnt dead yet either, at 91 hes a tough old bird – I heard he pleasures himself to keep his heart beating – The Soup clip was hilarious) and the A Team (3 of the 4 guys arent dead yet, get Leslie Nielsen to replace George Peppard).
I have a question about the Nielsen ratings, do they pull any information from cable companies? What I mean is a lot of cable companies require you to have cable boxes and I am assuming with the new digital cable boxes they can track what you watch or DVR if you have one(or am I wrong on this?). What I really
want to know is unless Neilson contacts you to be one of their viewers they dont count anything else so it really does not matter what I watch or friends watch. Unless you are a Neilson viewer, what everyone else watches does not
count for anything in the ratings.
NBC is really going down the tubes. No wonder so many say NBC stands for “Nothing But Crap”. Maybe they could make a sitcome starring crotchety Keith Olbermann and Al Franken as 2 guys in a domestic partnership, then hillarity ensues as they discover Bill O’Reilly just moved in next door. With Will and Grace off the air, it might work.
So sad to hear about Life. It looks like I’ll be losing Life, Pushing Daisies & Eli Stone by January and Terminator by May.
Kathy,
I wouldn’t guess on anything NBC does. Come on, Knight Rider got a full season with those numbers and more people watched Life.
Like I said before, Life should have never moved from 10pm Wednesdays. It’s now in its 4th timeslot–can anybody find this show? It would make better sense for L&O to be the lead in for Life.
Anyway, if NBC cancels it, whatever, they can keep their other low-rated crap. Even Ben Silverman said Kath & Kim sucked, but because of it’s barely marginal numbers, they’ll keep it, and hope that the show gets better because the actors deserved it!
Steeeve Nielsen is a panel based system and from a statistical point of view even though you, your friends (and me) aren’t Nielsen families, our viewing is reprsented by others on the panel.
but yes, either via its people meter technology (used for all the numbers above) it can (and does) measure cable channel viewing and can and does measure DVR viewing.
On your screen for next year (possibly):
NBC–”The Partridge Family” (as a single cam)
FOX–”Absolutely Fabulous”
CBS–”Hawaii Five-0″ and “The Streets of San Francisco”.
Hummmm. Have I heard of these shows before?
You know what they say, what is old becomes new again.
Oh, man… that’s a sad number to see. And I was feeling so hopeful. I don’t want this show to be gone. I know it’s not as fantastic as it was in the first season but it’s still my favorite show. I kind of thought that airing night after the elections was kind of dubious. But now I also agree with Andrea, Law and Order should have been the lead-in to Life and not the other way around.
Good, now Life can be death.
Maybe NBC should really consider the reality show “MILF Island.” For those of you who watch 30 Rock, you will get that.
When I first heard LIFE was moving to Wed, I applauded the move. It wasn’t until last night I realized it was being moved to the same time slot as Criminal Minds, a perennial top-ten show. Is NBC frickin’ nuts? Put it in the late slot, and see how it does.
Mmm no, NBC should cancel Life. Three time slots, three failures.
Gee, Wednesday night appears wide open. What well written and well acted scifi drama might be a good fit for a certain network????? *cough* TSCC…
It’s not surprising that Knight Rider cratered. There are only so many times you can watch the stupid car turn into an SUV and see the actress prance around in bikinis and cheerleader outfits before even the 18-35 male set gets bored. The Hoff had the personality to pull Knight Rider off.
I love Life. Hope it doesn’t get canceled.
Outlander, just to clarify…you’re blaming the cratering on the story, writing and acting being absolutely atrocious, right? Because while I’m no expert I do feel I can say with some amount of certainty that in the history of television I don’t think actresses prancing around in bikinis have ever been the cause of poor ratings.
Life is one of my top 3 shows. I got into it on Hulu but now watch in real-time. I hope others find it.
Yeah I watch Life on Hulu only. My favorite show, bar none. I don’t have a TV, so I hope that NBC is tracking people like me too, who watch it on their website and Hulu.
The great thing about Hulu is that I was able to watch every back episode for this show on there to get caught up. Now I’m hooked and of course they’ll probably cancel it. It should be a cable show I guess because it’s kind of a quirky show that doesn’t have the mass sex appeal and that nonsense that they want on the nets.