TV ratings: 'Survivor' and 'The Office' lead premiere-heavy Thursday

*Queue Rena complaining that The Office is mentioned in the headline.*

*Queue the logical pointing out that talking/bitching/moaning/complaining about Rena gives her more press than Rena speaking for herself ever has or will.*

Duh.

As for the article, the full season starts next week, so this was not quite an accurate picture of what the true ratings will likely be. I would imagine that CSI and Grey's Anatomy will continue to trounce NBC's comedy block (except for the essentially-meaningless "18-49" demo that the lesser networks love to pounce on), although there may be signs of new life if Community does well in the coming weeks. I'm actually rooting for that show to succeed because I enjoyed the premiere episode rather a lot.

Fringe has, unfortunately, gone back to the traditional format of 42 minutes of plot and the rest of commercials, which is disappointing. Still, maybe with the shorter time, the stories will a lot tighter than they tended to be last season.

We'll see how things go next week when everybody is back with new episodes.

So summarizing it all when it comes to new season episodes: Bones is still holding onto its usual numbers in its new time slot. Survivor took a bit of a hit. SNL Thursday lacked the punch of last season, while Parks & Recreation shows no real sign of ever becoming a breakout hit on any level. Vampire Diaries dropped from its premiere, but still looks strong in CW terms. The Office and Supernatural both registered the same numbers they normally got last season. The news isn’t that good for Fringe with a one-third loss, and its kick-off episode was less than satisfying at that. Finally, Leno appears to be settling down more into the kind of numbers he’s expected to get as he’s now lost half the households from Monday’s 11 rating to last night’s 5.5 – let’s hope the slide continues unabated.

Oh, and I forgot Community, which seemed to do okay after The Office, better than 30 Rock has. Wouldn't surprise me that if it holds up, NBC might keep it at 9:30 and move 30 Rock to 8:00 when it returns in October.

Even I, a loyal Bones fan taped Survivor last night. I want to meet all the contestants, before they start casting them off. "Bones" was very good and all the actors are "superb". Got to stick with the lady and the hunk.

Even I, a loyal Bones fan taped Survivor last night. I want to meet all the contestants, before they start casting them off. "Bones" was very good and all the actors are "superb". Got to stick with the lady and the hunk.

Even I, a loyal Bones fan taped Survivor last night. I want to meet all the contestants, before they start casting them off. "Bones" was very good and all the actors are "superb". Got to stick with the lady and the hunk.

Thanks for thinking of me John. :)

Indeed, why would the #6 show be mentioned in the headline other than to please the NBC PR people?

I can understand not singling out Leno's lowest rating so far as with a daily show, it's hard to draw conclusions based on a single outing given no trend has emerged yet besides an expected overall drop that was well covered a few days ago, but singling out The Office as a great performer when it was beaten by five other shows, including two re-runs and one on its network is just baffling (if not for the headline writer's desire to please the now-departed Ben Silverman! ;)

AaronR, LOL :) You're right that drawing conclusions based on a single outing when the season hasn't even started is difficult and prone to errors.

I'll still notice that Parks and Recreation still seems DOA (why it was renewed is still strange to me), that CVampire Diaries has lost a fair chunk of its premiere audience and is likely to keep losing viewers as the season really starts and that Fringe and The Office continue to be editorial darlings that don't get 10 million viewers, while Bones solid performance continues to be almost entirely ignored by newspapers.

EDell, great analysis. :)

I forgot Community which indeed did retain a lot of The Office's lead-in. Of course, as I have said many times, even though a lot of journalists treat The Office as if it had 20 million viewers, it really only has 8, and NBC sorely needs a true breakout hit (ie. something that will tickle the 20 million mark) and looks like its Thursday will continue to be in the over-hyped and under-performing category this year (that is unless Community picks it up from there).

You know why I couldn't finish watching Community and dumped it off of my DVR? Aside from the fact that it was only mildly amusing, NBC left a "Jay Leno Show" bug up during the whole thing, and I can't stand those unless it's on a show I'm barely paying attention to (like a rerun on TBS).