‘How To Get Away With Murder’ Ends Fall Run On High Ratings Note, ‘Reign’ Hits Low
UPDATE PM: The finals are in, and many shows underwent ratings adjustments. ABC, which didn’t have football
preemptions and saw few of its stations carry President Obama’s speech, did not get any corrections. How To Get Away With Murder‘s 3.1 Live+same day adults 18-49 rating was a six-week high. ABC won all Thursdays of November sweep for the first time in at least 23 years.
As expected, the football-inflated NBC numbers underwent the biggest adjustments, up to three tenths. Here are the final numbers: The Biggest Loser (1.0, down -17% from last week), Bad Judge (0.9, even with last week), A to Z (0.7, up +17%) and Parenthood (1.3, up 33%).
CBS’ The Big Bang Theory (4.1) was the only show last night to get upward adjustment. It was down 9% from last week. Adjusted down, Mom (2.5) was off by a tenth week-to-week while matching its best Big Bang retention.The rest of the numbers stayed unchanged: Two and a Half Men (2.3, up 10%), The McCarthys (1.4, flat, tied for series low), and Elementary (1.0, also even and tied for a Live+same day low).
The CW’s Reign (0.3) was adjusted down a tenth to hit a new series low. Also shedding a tenth was Fox’s Gracepoint (0.7, tying a series low).
PREVIOUS AM: Fast national ratings already are impacted regularly by local NFL pre-emptions. Add to that coverage of President Obama’s immigration speech by local stations, and you get a set of highly unreliable fast nationals.
Because a number of Fox affiliates carried Obama’s address at 8 PM ET, the network’s primetime slid by 17 minutes in 36% of the country, with another 3% of the U.S. joining the network’s programming in progress after the speech, bringing the total portion of the country impacted to 39%. The stats were similar for NBC, which saw about 39.8% the U.S. in the East Coast time zone join The Biggest Loser in progress after cutting out for the speech. NBC also had a football pre-emptions in Kansas City.
CBS does not have hard data yet but will likely end up with a similar number, with virtually all of its local stations said to have opted for sliding primetime by 17-18 minutes. And the network’s San Francisco-Oakland station carried a football game. The impact appears the smallest for ABC, which saw the start of its primetime shift in Boston as well as several smaller markers.
All that said, there is little solid ratings info to go by until the final ratings are released later today. ABC is expected to win the night in adults 18-49, to log four Thursday wins of the November Sweep in the demo for the first time in at least 23 years.
Currently ABC’s fall finales are running at 2.4 (even with last week) for Grey’s Anatomy, 3.1 (down a tenth from last week) for Scandal and 3.1 (up 7% from last week) for How To Get Away With Murder, which revealed Sam’s killer. There should not be major adjustments in the finals aside from a likely rise for Scandal, whose fast nationals are probably the most skewed.
No need to even talk about NBC’s primetime, whose Biggest Loser was substantially impacted by Obama’s speech as well as the start of the NFL game. The rest of the network’s shows are currently running up +33%-+50% from last week but that is football inflation that will go away in the finals when I will report the numbers.
Ditto for CBS which aired four half-hour shows whose fast nationals are greatly affected by a 17-min shift. Expect The Big Bang Theory’s current 4.0 rating to go up significantly.
Fox’s drama lineup showed very little ratings fluctuation given the circumstances, with Bones (1.3) and Gracepoint (0.8) currently running on par with last week. The CW’s The Vampire Diaries (0.8) was up a tenth and Reign (0.4) was even.
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