UPDATE: THE OLYMPICS excluded the 8PM half-hour (no commercials) and by that means was able to adjust up to 5.0 for the rest of primetime.
TUESDAY CABLE: TEEN MOM (MTV) led the night with 1.4, up 0.1 from last week. BEING MARY JANE (BET) was likewise up 0.1 to 1.3, tied for 2d place with TOSH.0 (Comedy). THE HAVES AND HAVE NOTS (OWN), however, lost 0.1 to 0.9. On ABCFamily, PRETTY LITTLE LIARS gained 0.1 to 1.0, while TWISTED (which was back to being dull after a relatively busy season premiere) stayed at 0.5. COUGAR TOWN (TBS) climbed 0.1 to 0.7. Syfy is doing better with unscripted programming than scripted these days, scoring 0.9 with FACE OFF.
Last night wasn’t good news for anyone.
NBC: See Mitch Metcalf’s Skedball post for detailed analysis and charts of the WINTER OLYMPICS ratings. Last night’s 4.8 was the 4th time in 5 nights that Sochi dipped below a 5 rating, and as the Games head into their home stretch, 2014 is half a point behind 2006 and a full point behind 2010. Tonight’s parallel evening in Turin gave those games its 2d-lowest rating, so Sochi may make up some ground tonight, but it’s going to be difficult for this year’s games to avoid historic lows overall (even as costs are at historic highs). In late night, THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JIMMY FALLON tumbled as expected from the hype of its premiere, down 1.5 in 18-49s (to 2.3) and down 1.8 in total households (to 5.3). These numbers were still much higher than the late-night competition, but comparisons with Leno and Conan O’Brien premiere weeks are somewhat specious (they didn’t have the Olympics boosting them), and we’re weeks away from knowing where Fallon really stands.
FOX: Last week, AMERICAN IDOL narrowly avoided falling below a 3 rating when afternoon adjustment raised Thursday’s edition to that number. That’s not likely with last night’s rating for the season’s first live episode, which is at a preliminary 2.7. Here’s a horrifying statistic for FOX: 4 years ago, Idol beat the Olympics with an 8.9 rating.
ABC: Not that it matters, but the last episode of KILLER WOMEN was also its series low at 0.6. Before that, reruns were highlighted by 0.8 for AGENTS OF SHIELD.
CBS: Reruns, led by 1.4 for NCIS LA.
CW: A rerun of the STAR-CROSSED pilot at least got sampled, with an 0.3 that was just slightly lower than its original run on Monday, and steady with the VAMPIRE DIARIES rerun that preceded it.
It’s not clear why CBS is airing a new CSI tonight after 2 hours of reruns, but it is. FOX continues with its week of fresh AMERICAN IDOL episodes, and ABC cleans house with the final episode of SUPER FUN NIGHT.
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