So much for the monkey.
NBC: ANIMAL PRACTICE lurched into the regular season with an awful 1.4 start, the lowest rated show in primetime (other than on CW) last night. GUYS WITH KIDS did marginally better at 1.6, but that was still deeply in 4th place for its timeslot. (Incidentally, in other NBC bad sitcom ratings news, when final numbers came in for Tuesday night, New Girl climbed from a tie with Go On to a narrow win.) The 2-hour SVU premiere was at 2.1, 4th place at 9PM but boosted to 2d place at 10PM thanks to weak competition on ABC.
ABC: A 1-hour THE MIDDLE premiere scored a 2.8, down an OK 0.3 from last season’s start. Similarly, MODERN FAMILY was the highest-rated show of the night with 5.5, down 0.6 from last season. THE NEIGHBORS had a decent sampling with 3.3, but that was down 40% from its lead-in, and the lead-in was far higher than the show will have in its regular 8:30PM slot. The network didn’t compete at 10PM, airing a REVENGE recap hour because it didn’t want to debut NASHVILLE and then have to preempt it next week for the Presidential Debate.
CBS: SURVIVOR and CSI both held fairly well. Survivor was down a bit from last week, but was just 0.3 off FOX’s pace for the hour, while CSI comfortably won at 10PM (again, facing atypical competition on both of the other networks). CRIMINAL MINDS fell heavily from last season’s premiere (a full rating point), but its 3.1 was consistent with the numbers the show was doing last Spring.
FOX: THE X FACTOR won its first hour and was in 2d place at 9PM, but its 3.3 average over the 2 hours wasn’t anywhere near the 4s the show was doing last season.
CW: Still out of the game, with an 0.4 for a fresh episode of OH SIT.
Premiere week continues tonight, with CBS and ABC joining the fun (NBC and FOX premiered their line-ups 1-2 weeks ago). CBS introduces 2 1/2 MEN to the Thursday schedule and launches the modern Sherlock Holmes tale ELEMENTARY, and ABC throws LAST RESORT to the 8PM wolves, then sees how much gas is in the Shonda Rhimes tanks of GREY’S ANATOMY and SCANDAL.
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