‘Blue Bloods’ Ratings Hit High, ‘SNL 40’ Encore Gives NBC Big Lift, ‘Shark Tank’ Rises As ABC Wins Night In Demo

The last Friday of February sweep was good for the Tom Selleck-led cop family drama, good for Undercover Boss’ Season 6 finale, good for ABC and a very good indication of the staying power of SNL 40.  

While everyone else had originals on last night, NBC filled its entire primetime with an encore of the live February 15 comedy superstar packed special and proceeded to score its best non-sports Friday results among adults 18-49 since the premieres of Grimm and the now cancelled Dracula on October 25, 2013. That 1.5/5 was also a 50% rise from what the network drew overall last week and put NBC in second place among the demo, up from third on February 13 and several weeks previous. Overall, ABC was tops among the key demo for the fourth time this sweep with a 1.6/5 while CBS won total viewership with 10.02 million watching. Stat of the day: that’s the first time ABC has had four Friday February sweep wins since 1995.

While ABC had demo victory, CBS had viewership and that was in no small part thanks to the 11.62 million who watched Blue Bloods (1.5/5) last night. Not only was the drama the most watched show of the night and up from last week’s 11.46 million, but it had a 15% 18-49 rise over last week, which had been even with the week before that. In fact, last night’s demo result was a Season 5 high for the series. The night started off well for CBS with the Season 6 finale of Undercover Boss (1.3/2) not only up 8% from last week but also up 8% from its Season 5 ender of March 14 last year. At 9 PM, it was certainly surf’s up on Hawaii Five-O (1.4/5) as the series rode a 17% lift from last week’s fall.

No such a great ride over on Fox with World’s Funniest Fails (0.8/2) and Glee (0.6/2) both even with their February 13 shows, which in the freshman former’s case means matching a low. It was fall on The CW too with Hart Of Dixie (0.4/2) down 20% from its last original of February 6.

For Friday night demo winner ABC, the big fish of the night was Shark Tank (2.2/7), which was the highest-rated show of the night and up 22% from last week’s dip to tie a season high. Among viewers, the entrepreneur reality show had 8.4 million watching – that’s the second best total audience Shark Tank has had in six seasons. Actually there might be a whale of a sort in the ABC ocean last night too as lead-out 20/20 (1.6/5) leaped 33% from its February 13 show. Starting the night off, comedies Last Man Standing (1.3/5) and Cristela (0.9/3) were even and down 10% from last week respectively.