Thursday’s Numbers
By fred | June 13, 2008
Another Thursday night with a couple of shows on, so let’s have a look at the numbers. Overall ABC was the winner of the night, both in total viewers and on the demo, thanks to the NBA Finals. Earlier in the evening, ABC aired Jimmy Kimmel Live at 8.00 followed by NBA Countdown at 8.30, but because part of the 8.00 hour included the NBA Finals in the Central Time Zones, numbers are even more subject to change.
Never mind that, what we were interested in was actually the all in the 10pm slot, facing the NBA Finals were CBS’ Swingtown and NBC’s Fear Itself. Now I’m sure that just as last week, people will be quick to call Swingtown the winner and Fear Itself the looser, because the former had over 2 million more viewers than the later.
But I’ll have another look at this once again, because I feel this is unfair. Swingtown’s lead-in (rerun of CSI) performed the same as it did last week, and Swingtown went down from 8.6 million to 7.3 million viewers, loosing 1.3 million of them. Meanwhile on NBC, Fear Itself’s lead-in (Last Comic Standing) was down by 800 000 viewers to 4.1 million, and the show was growing even more than a week ago from its lead-in (by 800 000 viewers) up to 4.9 million viewers, thus loosing only 300 000 viewers over last week.
With such results, I think Fear Itself seems to hold on better than Swingtown. Now while it’s a complete mystery to me why NBC decided to open the series with such a weak episode as they did (since being an anthology there’s no actual order), the fact that this week got better will hopefully help the show, which doesn’t seem to do that bad to me. Its only problem might be that, while having a larger audience overall, its lead-in always performs better on the demo.
All numbers of the night below :
| Thursday, June 12th | ||
| Show | Network | Viewers (18-49) |
| 8.00 | ||
| Million Dollar Password | CBS | 9.5 M (2.0) |
| NBA Countdown [8.30] | ABC | 8.2 M (3.2) |
| Jimmy Kimmel Live | ABC | 7.8 M (2.9) |
| Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader? | Fox | 6.1 M (1.8) |
| Last Comic Standing [8.30-10.00] | NBC | 4.1 M (1.7) |
| My Name Is Earl (R) | NBC | 3.5 M (1.1) |
| Smallville (R) | The CW | 1.9 M (0.8) |
| 9.00 | ||
| CSI (R) | CBS | 9.4 M (2.2) |
| NBA Finals: Lakers vs. Celtics | ABC | 9.2 M (3.8) |
| So You Think You Can Dance? | Fox | 7.9 M (2.8) |
| Last Comic Standing [8.30-10.00] | NBC | 4.1 M (1.7) |
| Supernatural (R) | The CW | 1.7 M (0.7) |
| 10.00 | ||
| NBA Finals: Lakers vs. Celtics | ABC | 10.6 M (4.4) |
| Swingtown | CBS | 7.3 M (2.3) |
| Fear Itself | NBC | 4.9 M (1.5) |
| Global | Adults 18-49 | ||
| ABC | 9.3 M | ABC | 3.7 |
| CBS | 8.7 M | Fox | 2.3 |
| Fox | 7.0 M | CBS | 2.2 |
| NBC | 4.2 M | NBC | 1.5 |
| The CW | 1.8 M | The CW | 0.7 |
Note that ABC numbers are subject to significant adjustment, and here’s a half-hour breakdown for the night :
8.00 - 7.8 M - 2.9
8.30 - 8.2 M - 3.2
9.00 - 8.8 M - 3.5
9.30 - 9.7 M - 4.0
10.00 - 10.6 M - 4.4
10.30 - 10.7 M - 4.4
Posted in Numbers/Ratings
Shows: Fear Itself, Swingtown
