What the heck were you watching last week? More than likely, it wasn’t network television. Faced with the coming holiday shenanigans of their viewers, all of the broadcast networks threw in the towel. In fact, there were only three new hours of scripted television last week. Even worse, all three of those hours could be categorized as the burning off of shows that will be canceled. The lone bright spots on the ratings terrain came from the reality wrap-ups of Survivor and The Sing-Off.
ABC - There wasn’t much to the week, with the only new programming being Find My Family (4.85m/1.2), Scrubs (3.43m/1.3), and Better Off Ted (2.77m/1). Ted continues to boggle me. I think it’s a good show. Unfortunately, it would appear that the vast majority of viewers strongly disagree. I suppose there is still the syndication argument for Scrubs, but Ted doesn’t even have that life raft to hold on to. If you like the show, enjoy it while you can.
NBC - Things started strong with Sunday Night Football (18.19m/6.5) and The Sing-Off (7.28m/2.3) on Monday. Considering how steady the numbers were for The Sing-Off, I would expect we’ll be seeing another round of the singing competition. And that was it for the week from 8 to 10. Leno had some small success on Monday (5.81m/1.6) following The Sing-Off, as he did beat a Castle (4.41m/1) repeat. Unfortunately, he was no match for a CSI: Miami (8.63m/2.4) repeat. The pattern continued for Leno on Tuesday (5.18m/1.5) as he fell short of a repeat of The Good Wife (9.13m/1.7). Even a pair of Cougar Town repeats (3.51m/1.2 avg), moved to the 10PM hour, were able to best Leno in the demo on Wednesday (4.59m/1.1).
CBS - The Survivor finale (13.97m/4.4) and reunion (11.68m/3.8) ensured that we’ll be watching the show for seasons to come. It also represented all of the new programming from CBS for the week. Although, it is worth noting that the CBS shows continue to repeat better than most everything on the other networks. Along with the previously mentioned Miami and Good Wife repeats, NCIS (15.39m/2.9) had a great repeat week.
FOX - After taking the first five days of the week off, FOX dropped four big lumps of coal in everyone’s stocking on Christmas, in the form of four episodes of Til Death (2.52m/.7 avg.). For those of you playing along with the home game, that was still better than the two hour Dollhouse (2.1m/.7) block from the week before.
And that will do it for a pretty boring week where ratings were concerned since the CW took the entire week off. Just one more of these weeks to go and we can get back to much more interesting numbers.
Clacked by Brett Love 
on Dec 28, 2009 @ 10:14 EST5EDT
It’s not that the majority of viewers think Better Off Ted is a bad show, it’s that the show is barely advertised (in an effective manner). No one knows when it airs, potential viewers have no idea what the show is about (the title gives nothing away, the early promos did not clarify much more, and the simplistic show description I vaguely recall did not make the show particularly enticing)– in fact I only got into the show because of their Veridian Dynamics Sacrifice commercial, “When Presidents Talk”, and I was happily hooked ever since. Plenty of people have commented that the show should join the Wednesday comedy line up, and I, like them, do not understand why ABC didn’t move it there after Hank was cancelled. As much as I love Modern Family and enjoy its repeats, I would much rather prefer Better Off Ted be shown where it could get the proper chance to gain viewers as it rightly deserves.
Tasha, I agree with everything you said. Since ABC seems to be unable to effectively advertise the show I’ve done what I can, and what all viewers of BOT should do: I’m telling everyone I know, both online and in person. I’ve given some DVD copies of episodes I had PVR’ed to several friends and they all reacted the same way, and it was in 2 parts: 1) They had never, ever heard of the show & 2) They all LOVED it to death!
I just hope ABC keeps it around and moves it to the comedy block where it will get the attention it deserves. I don’t understand why ABC couldn’t just try it for a couple of weeks. It would likely be the spark that sets Ted afire!
Oh well, one can hope. :-)
I think ABC wanted “Better Off Ted” as a companion to “After-Scrubs”. Now that they’ve killed it, I’m sure they’re happy. Reruns in the “Hank” slot made much more sense, right?
“Better Off Ted” was great. I can’t believe how badly under-promoted and ill-served it’s been by ABC, especially considering the lavish attention given to “Modern Family”, which is only about half as good as everyone raves.
I think Modern Family is horrible.
I think it’s time we start a “Move Ted to Wednesday” campaign with ABC! Instead of filling “Hank”‘s vacated time slot with another program, they’re filling it with an hour of “The Middle”?!?! I love “The Middle” but why burn off new episodes like that? Put “Ted” on Wednesday and just burn off the “Scrubs” episodes in the 9 – 10 PM hour on Tuesday!