The Good_Wife

Winners and Losers From The Last 7 Days

WINNERS

THE GOOD WIFE: It’s been on the bubble for the last few months but following a series of critical raves and plenty of coverage, The Good Wife finally showed signs of becoming a bona fide hit.

Tuesday night’s episode pulled in 12.38 million viewers and a 2.4 18-49 share, up 20% for the show’s highest demo share in over 6 months. I’m personally not a huge Good Wife fan but I like it a lot more than most of the other dreary CBS offerings. Plus even though I don’t watch the show regularly I couldn’t help but hear all about the big Kalinda storyline. Kudos to the show’s writers.

So will the good news for The Good Wife continue? There’s still two episodes left to go this season so I wouldn’t be surprised to see a couple more upticks in the weeks to come…

THE BORGIAS: I’m still not sure quite what I make of the show yet, but when it comes to the ratings there’s no denying that The Borgias is a nice little hit for Showtime.

Sunday night’s episode scored 824,000 viewers (and a 0.3 18-49 share). That’s well up from the 500,000 Nurse Jackie is averaging this season and almost triple the 300,000 The United States Of Tara pulls in.

Sure The Borgias is still down on the 1.06 million who tuned in for the premiere but week after week the Jeremy Irons’ starrer has been rebuilding its audience. No wonder Showtime ordered a second season so quickly…

GAME OF THRONES: Another show I’m not sure about yet (I’ll be posting on this very topic soon), but Game Of Thrones is definitely a hit for HBO.

So far the show has scored 2.22 million for the premiere, 2.20 for episode 2 and 2.44 million for last week’s installment, a nice bit of growth and a sure sign for HBO that the ratings are stable – and likely to increase over time.

Sure Game Of Thrones isn’t pulling in True Blood style figures – yet (the vampire saga manages around 5 million viewers) but the ratings are still above the network average.

Now if I could just keep track of who is who in the darn thing!

LOSERS

MINUTE TO WIN IT: NBC really wants their 60 second game show to become a hit but no matter how they try it just isn’t happening.

Wednesday’s 8pm episode pulled in just 3.42 million viewers and a 1.0 18-49 share. That’s about half a REPEAT of The Voice managed last week and pretty much the lowest rated network show of the night (aside from The CW of course which has a whole heap of trouble of its own!).

The only reason Minute is still on the air is that it’s cheap and honestly NBC doesn’t have much else to show at the moment. Still given their strong Fall lineup and several promising new shows don’t expect Minute To Win It to hang around much longer.

wipeout

WIPEOUT: Wow, what the heck happened to Wipeout?

Once a reliable performer for ABC the crazy physical competition show is now a bit of a damp squib for the network. Thursday night’s opening installment (wait, does this show ever go away?) scored just 4.79 million viewers and a 1.4 18-49 share, down 26% in the demo to a series low.

Okay so Wipeout is cheap to make, but that’s not much help when it’s delivering such a bad lead in for Grey’s Anatomy – no wonder the veteran medical drama was down two tenths to a 3.5 18-49 rating (though a still sturdy 10.11 million viewers). ABC isn’t going to cancel Wipeout – yet – but maybe it would be best to keep the show for the low rated summer months?

FRESHMAN COMEDIES: Let’s play a game of ‘How low can you go?’ because there’s really no other way of describing the truly terrible figures some of this season’s new comedies are delivering.

There’s ABC’s HAPPY ENDINGS, yet another Friends rip off that’s steadily bringing down the network’s Wednesday night comedy block. This week ABC aired two episodes of the show for two lots of bad ratings! The 10pm episode pulled in 3.88 million and a 1.7 18-49 share while the 10.30pm showing fared even worse – 3.26 million and a 1.4 demo share. I already know how this show is going to end – and trust me, it isn’t going to be happy!

Then there’s TRAFFIC LIGHT, Fox’s mid-season mess that’s been stinking up the Tuesday night schedule for a while now. This week the comedy pulled in just 2.86 million and a 1.1 18-49 share. How on earth is this series still on the air alongside such strong performers as American Idol, Bones and Glee?

And finally we’ve NBC and the disaster that is their Thursday night line-up. I know The Office, 30 Rock and Parks And Recreation are critical hits and do well in the demos, but none are ratings smashes – as even the network would admit. Worst of the bunch is OUTSOURCED, the culture clash comedy that rounds out the night at 10.30pm and this week pulled in a lousy 3.14 million viewers and a 1.5 youth share. Unfortunately for NBC the night also started on a low note with Community managing just 3.49 million and the same demo number. Hmm, maybe these shows should be airing on Comedy Central instead? Just a thought…