This week didn't bring us any new cancellations on television but it did let us get to know the fall series a bit more. Some are consistently strong while others established themselves as weak contenders, and according to the ratings, this includes one of my personal favorites, Dollhouse.
The ratings giant for the week was CBS's NCIS. The Tuesday drama was the single highest watched show for the week, bringing in an impressive 20.45 million viewers. Elsewhere in the ratings, Glee continued it's rise by increasing its viewers from the week before, bringing in a respectable 7.3 million viewers. While that was weak among other shows of the Wednesday 9 PM hour, the other Wednesday night shows all saw fewer viewers, with Glee being the one exception. Dollhouse cooled off substantially from last week, with only 2.1 million viewers tuning in. This marks the new lowest the show has ever faced, beating the previous record of… last week’s show. On Thursday, FlashForward lost roughly 15% of its viewers to bring in only 10.8 viewers.
The big news is GE's negotiation with Comcast to purchase NBC-Universal, says The Wrap. The NBC network is facing decreased ratings, sinking hits, the seemingly terrible decision to give Jay Leno 5 hours a week during prime time, and a domino effect that is taking lower NBC ratings and translating them to absolute devastation for NBC's local affiliates. The NBC network has been producing stale programming for years and has been bleeding viewers. A new sale might be the beginning of a new long-term vision for NBC that is quite clearly lacking.
But NBC found a small glimmer of hope for the future in winning a bidding war for J. J. Abrams' new spy thriller. Variety reports that while there are few details available about the project, we know it will be written by Abrams and Josh Reims, who also worked on Felicity. Abrams, who is the Executive Producer of current and past network hits like Lost, Alias, and Fringe, could possibly bring a needed spark to the dragging NBC ratings.
Supernatural tackled a unique scenario: an apocalyptic world where Sarah Palin is the president of the United States, everyone is being wiped out by a horrific virus, and angels are falling left and right. What does this mean? It means that to at least one show, Sarah Palin is a sign of the apocalypse. Maybe they are on to something.
A general television trend is finding that reality television shows are waning in their popularity. While this isn't to say that these shows aren't still generating high ratings, they haven't enjoyed the same consistently massive victories they held in years past. Some fall shows, like ABC's Dancing with the Stars, is still popular, but continues to get weaker. This same thing was seen last spring with Fox's ratings giant American Idol. While some of this can be attributed to stronger scripted television, much of it could also be the result of audience saturation with reality shows. Audience has been giving more of their time and DVR space to scripted dramas and comedies and if this trend continues, hopefully we will see a decrease in the reality programming on network television. I'm sure some shows like NBC's The Biggest Loser, and of course Idol, will be around for a long time. What we don't need are multiple reality shows taking up several hours a week.
Earlier this week, David Letterman announced during his show that he had been the victim of an extortion attempt. Someone had asked for $2 million dollars in exchange for silence regarding affairs Letterman had with members of his staff. In the days since this event, a couple of other alleged Letterman affairs have emerged. Will this turn viewers off? Doubtful. Letterman's ratings spiked 22% over his yearly average on the night of his affair.
In other talk show news, Newark Mayor Cory Booker has jokingly banned Conan O'Brien, first from Newark Airport and then from the entire state of New Jersey. This is a result of Conan's repeated (but arguably justifiable) attacks on New Jersey for being far inferior to New York. This ban likely would have been more useful if two conditions had been met: 1. Conan still lived in New York and would be frequently flying into Newark or 2. Conan didn't already show disdain toward Jersey. No big loss, right? At least it's nice to see that the Mayor of a major city can make light of criticism while making it clear that he can take a joke.
