TV Ratings: CBS' crime lords it over Wednesday; Adults on the rise on FOX, ABC

Modern family was at 9 not 8 dumb dumb

What a lousy writer this Hahn is. Go back to S Korea or wherever

Here are the facts, will be back later for more details:

A very tight night with CBS winning with adults 18-49 over FOX and ABC by a very narrow margin. FOX ruled the night with adults 18-34, and CBS had the most viewers overall.

It was a good night for the comedies with Old Christine, The Middle, Gary Unmarried and Modern Family all improved versus their season averages. Only Cougar Town, with a 2.8 rating with adults 18-49 was down from its prior average. Criminal Minds and CSI: NY were also up a bit from season averages on CBS.

Glee’s fall finale tied with last week’s season high with a 3.6/9 rating/share with adults 18-49 and was Glee’s highest-rated episode ever with teens. Though So You Think You Can Dance’s numbers weren’t as good as Glee’s, SYTYCD’s performance with Women 18-34 (3.4/10) was second on the night only to Glee’s 5.4. A distant second to be sure, but ahead of everything else on the night in that demo.

At 10pm CSI: NY edged out the Barbara Walters Special on the “100 Most Fascinating People of 2009″. The special was down 26 percent with adults 18-49 from last year’s airing on 12/4/08.

Though we’re no longer posting the individual show data for Univision, the blurb this morning from Univision PR was headlined “Univision has Mercy on NBC,” En Nombre del Amor beat both of CBS’ comedies and Mercy with adults 18-34 in the 8pm hour, and Sortilegio bested Law & Order: SVU with adults 18-34.

Just two words....GO GLEE!!!!

Big surprise there, woof, big surprise.

For some reason our local ABC station decided to run a local special instead of Modern Family and Cougartown. Guess I'll have to watch them off the net.

Waxine the old cougar watched Cogar Town. She is one nasty old gal.

@Hanh: Once again, you are putting way too much weight behind the 18-49 spin.

As you must know, 18-49 does not bring in more revenue than other demographic groups. Ad revenue is correlated to overall audience, not 18-49.

@All: I tried to watch Modern Family yesterday and it was literally unwatchable to me. The camerawork was the same kind of shakycam nonsense that ruined many other shows.

Was that an exception or is that show always that poorly made?

@ABC Marketing Department: Stop calling Cougartown a "smash hit". It's not even a hit. Modern Family, for all its creative failings, at least is staying afloat at a mediocre level (imagine how high it's be rated if it was actually well-made!) thanks to loads of PR investment, Cougartown on the other hand is sinking fast.

When you call a failure a "smash hit", you lose all credibility in the future when you have to launch new shows.

Actually, this is a good lesson for all networks as calling everything a "hit" is an endemic problem that exacerbates the networks' difficulties in launching new shows.

Look at CW and its inability to launch anything to decent numbers thanks in part to its ridiculous hyping of Gossip Girl as the show "everyone is buzzing about"...

Speaking of Gossip Girl, amusement and sadness compete at yet another under-a-million viewers showing for a Gossip Girl repeat. :(

At NBC, Mercy managed to dip under the low-rated CBS comedies. It makes you wonder what FOX and ABC are waiting for to try and take over this timeslot with better programming...

@Jason: the "reason" is that the self-proclaimed "smash hits" that ABC has programmed are not gathering good ratings.

Of course, I forgot to mention Glee which is still meandering to mediocre ratings while FOX still tries to hype it as a "hit". Look for it to come back for a second low-rated season to try and justify Kevin Reilly's poor picks.

@Alex: No one watches Glee, it is not a hit. I am tired of all the Street Teamers claiming Glee is a hit.