The Sked: Wednesday Week Four

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Pretty much a train wreck on network TV last night.  CBS stumbled to a first place victory in the preliminary fast nationals with a 2.7 rating in prime time.  ABC plunged from a 3.3 last week to a 2.6 this week (mainly due to the collapse of Nashville in week two and an okay opening for Suburgatory at 9:30, although way under the 9:30 Modern Family original last week).  FOX really took it on the chin with some really bad luck and some strange stand by programming.  But NBC finished in fourth reliably on Wednesday, setting a new low for the night this season.

Chaos reigned on FOX last night when the dreaded Rain Delay hit the 4 pm NLCS game in St Louis.  When prime time started at 8 pm ET / 7 CT it was still raining at Busch Stadium and FOX aired some baseball studio coverage recapping what had been played so far and announcing the final two and half innings would start “sometime later tonight.”  In the fast nationals, FOX received a 1.6 rating at 8:00 and 1.9 at 8:30.  But sometime before 9:00 pm FOX decided to air The X Factor episode scheduled to have started at 8 pm.  (So some of that 1.9 rating at 8:30 includes X Factor.)  By 9:00-9:30 FOX worked its way up to a credible 2.6 rating (way below the 3.5 for X the last two weeks but not bad given the late start time).  Sometime before 10 pm however, MLB told FOX the game would resume at 10:05 (clearly earlier than previous guidance from MLB or else why would FOX have started a two-hour X Factor?)  So around 9:45, X Factor suddenly stops and a repeat Mindy Project rolled for a few minutes before it was pulled to go back to St Louis for the resumption of the game.  That confusing 9:30 half hour, which actually featured three separate telecasts scored a 2.3 rating.  By 10:00 pm, when the game resumed and concluded very quickly FOX plunged to a very Postseason 2012-like 1.6 rating in the half hour.

We really have to wait for the official nationals to sort out this bizarre night.  Live sports programming is the savior of network TV, the last reliably high live rating.  Except when it’s Major League Baseball.

The partially aired X Factor will repeat in its entirety Tuesday 8-10 pm, replacing the brittle comedies.

ABC finally aired its Wednesday schedule intact last night.  Suburgatory premiered a little below our ShowbuzzDaily fall forecast and below the pace set by Happy Endings last year (not exactly a news flash — another broadcast network time period down year to year).  But the really bad news for ABC came at 10  pm, when the well-reviewed Nashville warbled to a 2.0 rating in its second week, way below last year’s pace for Revenge and now below our fall forecast.

The embarrassingly bad Animal Practice sunk to a 1.0 rating, matching the track of last year’s Free Agents.   Chicago Fire declined to a 1.5, exactly where we forecast the full fourth quarter rating would be.  It actually could edge a little lower in coming weeks, maybe down to a 1.4.

CBS had a night very similar to last week — not horrible but below where we thought they would be, especially 8-10 pm.