Fox woke up to some encouraging American Idol ratings news this morning — the reality hit drew a 9.2 rating/24 in adults 18-49 last night, down only 5% from last Wednesday’s premiere for the highest ever Week 2 vs. Week 1 retention. (Last year’s comparable drop was 14%). There is an asterisk – this year’s Episode 3…

CBS and NBC had the 8-10 PM time period pretty much all to themselves last night, with ABC and Fox largely out of contention. Fox aired the inaugural American Country Awards, which flopped with a 1.5/4 rating among adults 18-49 and 6 million viewers overall.  For comparison, the 44th Annual Country Music Association Aw…

NBC has reduced the order to freshman procedural Chase by 4 episodes, from full-season 22 to 18. Chase, from Warner Bros. TV and Bruckheimer TV, was the lowest-rated NBC series to snag a full-season pickup last month but many believed it didn’t get a fair shake by going against Hawaii Five-O on Mondays this fall with…

This is a throwback to the dog days of summer: CBS’ all-rerun Monday lineup dominated the original competition last night. The network’s comedy reruns – Two And A Half Men (3.0/8), How I Met Your Mother (2.7/8), Rules Of Engagement (2.4/6) and Mike & Molly (2.3/6) – ranked as the 4 highest-rated programs on the…

UPDATE 2PM: The final Nielsen ratings for last night are in, and the Bristol Palin-fueled Dancing with the Stars (23.7 million, 4.9/13 in adults 18-49) posted the strongest results for a Dancing performance finale in six seasons, since the fifth cycle’s Monday finale in November 2007. (Dancing airs two cycles every…

NBC is making changes on Monday in midseason and they can’t come soon enough as the network had another dismal ratings performance  last night, with none of its series crossing the 2 demo rating mark. Chuck (1.8/5, 5.5 million) came the closest, down 10% from its last original 2 weeks ago (it was preempted for Matt…

With its entertainment lineup largely underperforming this fall, NBC is making wholesale changes for midseason with moves on every night, including a rarely-seen on broadcast TV 10-11 PM comedy block for an all-comedy Thursday. Additionally, the network  has given one of those Thursday comedies, 30 Rock, an early…

Fox and NBC’s Monday dramas returned after preemptions to different results. There was no good news for NBC as freshmen The Event (1.7/4) and Chase (1.2/3) were down 15% and 8%, respectively, from their last originals 2 weeks ago. Both hit all-time lows. The Event didn’t get much help from Matt Lauer’s interview with…

The big Monday Night Football game between the Dallas Cowboys and the New York Giants on ESPN had an impact on the broadcast networks last night, with male-skewing shows down across the board, including series lows for recently renewed freshmen The Event, Chase and Hawaii Five-0, while female-friendly fare did just…

It was UMS’ pickup day at NBC yesterday when the studio’s freshman series The Event, Law & Order: Los Angeles and Outsourced all received back-nine orders. Today is Warner Bros TV’s turn. As expected, the studio and NBC closed deals for full-season orders to freshman drama Chase and fan favorite Chuck, now in its…

All remaining freshman series on NBC got some good news today. Three, The Event, Law & Order: Los Angeles and Outsourced, have been picked up for the rest of the season with back-nine orders. A similar pickup for Chase is said to be pending, while I hear Undercovers is close to receiving an order for additional…

Was NBC onto something after all with its Jay Leno primetime experiment? Because for the current fourth week of the season, NBC’s new Monday-Thursday 10 PM lineup is poised for the first time to fall below the rating levels of the ill-fated Jay Leno Show for the same week a year ago. Based on Live+same day ratings for…