New Season Ratings Report

Network Ratings Update

We're at the end of the first week of the new season with somewhat surprising results from the new crop of genre shows. Here's a quick rundown using numbers reported on The Futon Critic.

Monday - NBC's lineup of three back to back genre shows fared relatively well. The second season debut of Heroes had ratings comparable to the season average for the show and about 10% above the show's debut last year.

Both Chuck and Journyman debuted with OK numbers, although compared to year ago ratings of previous time slot holders, they were both down. NBC may be willing to give both shows a chance to be found or at least see where the ratings level out to in the next couple of weeks. Last year, Studio 60 debuted strong but dropped quickly and nothing else NBC aired after Heroes was a success.

Tuesday - The CW's debut of Reaper did slightly better than Veronica Mars season opener last year in the time slot, especially in the male demographics.

Wednesday - In probably the biggest surprise so far, the debut of The Bionic Woman drew very good ratings for NBC, handily beating the year ago ratings and giving NBC its best ratings in the time slot since The West Wing in 1999. This was up against the debut of the highly promoted spinoff of Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice. Bionic Woman didn't have the top overall ratings, but did beat Private Practice in the adult 18-49 demos.

Thursday - Smallville's return was 13% lower than last season's debut. It may pick up a bit this week with the episode fully introducing Kara Zor-El.

Friday - Moonlight debuted with ratings pretty much on par with Ghost Whisperer and Numb3rs, providing a pretty good link between the two shows. However, both Ghost Whisperer and Numb3rs were down close to 20% in total ratings and the adult demos from a year ago.

The other thing to keep in mind is that DVR penetration has gotten higher since a year ago, so once live + 7 day ratings are added in, the overall ratings will likely improve. If anything, none of the new genere shows had debuted with weak ratings which would get them pulled right away (ala Nashville on FOX).

Still to come for its series debut is Pushing Daisies on ABC this coming Wednesday, which will likely benefit from lots of promotion during Dancing With the Stars. The CW's third season of Supernatural returns on Thursday.

SciFi Notes

SciFi Channel has renewed Eureka and Destination: Truth for new seasons, both of which will air next summer.

The Battlestar Galactica minisodes from Razor will start airing next week during Flash Gordon. These feature a young Bill Adama during the first cylon war and preview the Razor TV movie debuting on SciFi on November 24th.

SciFi also reported that the return of Ghost Hunters on Wednesday drew its biggest numbers ever at a 1.44 rating and over 2 million viewers, doing very well against new shows on cable and the networks (even beating The CW's Gossip Girl in the adult demographics). It will be interesting to see how Stargate Atlantis fares in its return without SG-1 as a lead-in and low ratings for Flash Gordon.

Lee