Did moving The Good Wife and Revenge away from one another for a night help both shows?
CBS: The afternoon NFL overrun pushed the night’s schedule by an entire hour in most of the country, kicking The Mentalist out of primetime. The effect was interesting, not because of the giant push football gave 60 MINUTES (up 2.2 ratings points to 3.5, not unusual when CBS has the late game), or for the 0.2 gain (to 2.0) that THE AMAZING RACE had afterward, but for the effect at 10PM. Even though the number of available TV viewers usually goes down in primetime’s last hour, and by then the football halo effect was done, THE GOOD WIFE rose 0.2 to tie its season high 1.6. (That was up 0.3 from what Mentalist did at 10PM last week.) One might pin some of that to the growing buzz about the excellence of the show’s season, but the change in competition helped ABC as well.
ABC: The hyped “Ariel” episode of ONCE UPON A TIME crept up 0.1 to 2.3, but then REVENGE zoomed up 0.3 to 1.7. BETRAYAL, facing Good Wife, managed to climb 0.1 to a still-DOA 1.0. (It’s sort of hilarious, by the way, that Betrayal flashes its “Adult Subject Matter” card before every episode, but it’s about one-tenth as sexy as The Good Wife has been in several episodes this season.)
FOX: This was the first time after several baseball weeks that FOX aired its animation line-up, and the results were mostly stable. THE SIMPSONS was down half a point to 2.5, but that reflects CBS having the afternoon NFL game. After that, BOB’S BURGERS was down 0.1 to 1.8, FAMILY GUY was even at 2.5, and AMERICAN DAD slipped 0.2 to 1.9.
NBC: One might have expected SUNDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL ratings to jump after having to face the World Series last week, but the Indianapolis/Houston game didn’t seem to spark tremendous interest, and although as usual NBC won the night with the highest-rated show (pending The Walking Dead results), we project that final numbers will have it at 6.7, up a relatively minimal 0.4.
The big scheduling event tonight will be CBS’s premiere of “the new” MIKE & MOLLY at 9PM, which it sorely hopes will boost the already-backordered MOM. In addition, SLEEPY HOLLOW will look for some Fringe fans to show up for John Noble’s guest appearance.
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