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A generally lousy week for network TV continues.
ABC: Despite its crossover with PRIVATE PRACTICE, GREY’S ANATOMY (which was admittedly facing American Idol this week) swooned to a season low 3.1, down almost 25% from last week. Free of Idol, Practice saw more benefit from the crossover at 10PM, with a 2.6 that was toward the high end of this season’s numbers. At 8PM, WIPEOUT also had a season low with a 1.5.
NBC: With Idol airing against both hours of the network’s original programming for the night, this wasn’t going to be pretty–and it wasn’t. The only show that didn’t at least match a season low was 30 ROCK, which avoided that mark by 0.1 because this week it didn’t have an erroneous program description to knock it off DVR listings. It appears that THE OFFICE‘s 2.2 tied its all-time lowest rating, back in its disastrous initial season in 2005. UP ALL NIGHT, with a 1.5, tied its series low from when it aired on Wednesdays. The night wound up with a gruesome 0.7 from a rerun of GRIMM.
CBS: The news was a little better at The Eye. BIG BANG THEORY continued to win its half-hour versus Idol, albeit down 0.6 from last week. ROB held very steady, down only 0.1. PERSON OF INTEREST and THE MENTALIST, with a higher level of competition from Idol and Private Practice, respectively, were each down, but only to the mid-level of their season averages.
FOX: Here, too, the network malaise was being felt, even with the nightly win: Idol hit a season low 5.0, down 0.8 from last week (and for bragging purposes, below this week’s number for The Voice). That’s down more than a third from last year at this time.
CW: In comparison with all the drops and lows on the other networks, CW looked like a champ last night: both VAMPIRE DIARIES and SECRET CIRCLE were dead even with last week. Diaries was only 0.1 below 30 Rock in head-to-head competition, and its rating was easily better than the Grimm rerun later that night.
Tonight CBS launches its revamped Friday line-up, with UNDERCOVER BOSS in at 8PM and A GIFTED MAN shifting to 9PM. NBC preempts its 8-10PM schedule for the NAACP IMAGE AWARDS, and ABC airs a special 2-hour 20/20 tribute to Whitney Houston.
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