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Thursday’s Numbers

By fred | April 25, 2008

So, how did the biggest night of television go down ? Well, pretty much as you could have had expected it to, actually. That is to say, while CBS won the night in total viewers, ABC was the winner on the 18-49 demo. More important is to note that the strike might have had an impact of television’s habits, because one thing that can be said pretty much every time since the strike, is how there are less viewers watching TV…

At 8.00 CBS took the lead with Survivor and 13 million viewers, while Ugly Betty was back with 8.5 million of them, which isn’t so good. The show usually does better, and had more than a million more viewers one year ago at the same time. My Name Is Earl lost some viewers, but of course the competition was tougher this week. Coming in at 8.30 was the relocated Scrubs, and with 5.3 million viewers and a 2.4 on the demo, that’s not good. Last week at 9.30, the show had 2 million more viewers and a 3.7 on the demo.

Of course, the competition and the slot weren’t the same. For reference though 30 Rock performed better in that slot, although just like Tina Fey’s sitcom, Scrubs still managed to do better on the demo than its lead-in.

At 9.00 it was the usual match with the usual results : CSI had more viewers but Grey’s Anatomy performed better on the demo. But with 16.7 million and 16.0 million respectively, both shows lost quite a lot of viewers. Not so long ago, I mean before the strike, both shows used to have around 20 million viewers each, just like they did one year ago.

Meanwhile The Office lost viewers, obviously, with 7.6 million viewers and a 3.9 on the demo, leading into the relocated 30 Rock. And… it’s bad, it’s really bad in fact. With only 5.5 million viewers and 2.8 on the demon, the show did a lot worse than both (a) it used to do one hour earlier, and (b) Scrubs used to do on that slot.

On The CW it was bad as well : only 2.3 million viewers and a low 1.0 on the demo for the return of Supernatural. But then again, the episode was so bad those might actually be good numbers, given how it sucked - which probably had fans pretty pissed off, considering how long we’d been waiting for it.

Finally at 10.00, it seems that many people did watch Lost live. Of course, this episode had a little something of a season premiere, so that might have helped. (Also, it was freaking awesome!!) Either way, while Without A Trace had 1.2 million more viewers, Lost won the demo pretty nicely (4.8 vs 3.3), and with 12.3 million viewers that was both better than the last episode, and a pretty good retention from Grey’s Anatomy. Probably one of the best in a very long time, so ABC might be pleased with their new lineup for Thursday nights.

Oh yeah, and E.R. tanked.

All numbers of the night below :

Posted in Numbers/Ratings
Shows: 30 Rock, CSI, E.R., Grey's Anatomy, Lost, My Name Is Earl, Scrubs, Smallville, Supernatural, The Office, Ugly Betty, Without A Trace