Smash = Moose Murders.
NBC: Despite enormous, and well-publicized, behind the scenes changes, and weeks of intensive, expensive marketing, NBC couldn’t convince viewers to give SMASH another chance, and the Season 2 premiere had, by far, the show’s lowest rating ever with an awful 1.1. (And as Mitch Metcalf noted earlier this morning, even that number is worse than it looks, because viewership declined through the course of the broadcast to a 1.0 in the final half-hour.) With the successively terrible debuts of 1600 Penn, Deception, Do No Harm and now Smash, NBC may well be having the worst midseason in the history of network television–and it’s unlikely that the network’s fortunes will change before the return of The Voice in late March. NBC’s ride on the Betty White train is also nearing its final station, as its 8PM 2ND ANNUAL 90TH BIRTHDAY SPECIAL was in 4th place for the hour with 1.5 (although even that looked good compared to Smash).
ABC: As it turned out, the effort was probably unnecessary, but ABC counterprogrammed Smash with a special 2-hour THE BACHELOR whose 2.6 (up 0.2 from the Monday episode) was somewhat higher than the numbers for the usual Tuesday line-up. At 8PM, THE TASTE was up 0.2 to 1.8.
FOX: An hour of RAISING HOPE was down a tick to 1.6/1.5. NEW GIRL, which did a fine job of navigating its first “post-kiss” episode, was also down slightly to 2.5, but THE MINDY PROJECT, with one of its sharpest episodes of an uneven season, was up 0.2 to 1.9. Both the latter shows, of course, had to face the stronger than usual competition from ABC in their hour.
CBS: As usual, slow and steady won the Tuesday night race, although it wasn’t a stellar night for the network. NCIS was down 0.1 to 3.7, NCIS LA was even at 3.1, and VEGAS fell 0.3 to 1.6 despite the dead air on NBC.
CW: HART OF DIXIE climbed a bit to 0.6, then the final hour of EMILY OWENS MD was steady at 0.4.
Everything is new on all the networks tonight, except that CBS is plugging the last 8PM hole before next week’s return of Survivor with a rerun of Person of Interest. NBC, which could use some good news, has been particularly promoting tonight’s SVU, featuring Mike Tyson as a guest star.
About the Author
