Despite facing repeat competition from CBS and benefitting from a strong lead-in from “House,” “24” suffered a ratings drop from the Monday portion of last week’s season premiere.
The show averaged 10.7 million viewers and a 3.3 adults 18-49 rating, dipping slightly from last week’s showing (which featured CBS’ comedies in first-run) and turning away a sizable portion of “House”‘s 14.2 million viewers (with a 5.2 rating in adults 18-49).
Premiere dips were not exclusive to FOX, however. The CW’s “Life UneXpected” dropped from last week’s passable showing to just a 1.0 with 2.1 million viewers. “One Tree Hill” led in with 2.2 million and a 1.1.
Elsewhere, ABC’s “Castle” made yet another case to return next season, as it rose to a series-high 3.1 rating with 10.5 million viewers. Lead-in “The Bachelor” posted a 3.9 with 11.5 million.
As for NBC, it operated as if CBS had programmed–“Chuck” averaged 6.9 million viewers with a 2.5, “Heroes” posted a terrible 1.9 rating with 4.3 million and “The Jay Leno Show” was poor with a 1.2 and 4.3 million viewers.
Life Unexpected is one of the better shows on the air this year. Castle is good but doesn’t have any surprises(rehash of Moonlighting). I hope they keep this young show going and let it mature.
Life Disrespected
“It’s like Juno meets the Gilmore Girl’s”
Let’s see, Juno, a film about a potty-mouthed teen, with clueless parents, who get’s knocked up and can’t wait to hand the responsibilty off to somebody else.
And The Gilmore Girls, a show about a clueles (so-called) mother, who wants to be her daughter’s friend, instead of accepting her parental role.
Oh great, so now we will have another show celebrating parental irresponsibility.
I agree with “Jstn” in the sense that I couldn’t stand either Gilmore Girls or Juno (although probably not for the same reasons).
I thought the CW using those two titles to promote Life, Unexpected was a huge mistake, and it clearly cost them ratings. I can’t think of a movie or TV show I hate more than both of those two, bleh! That said, however, Life, Unexpected is actually a REALLY good show. Probably TOO good for likes of the CW, which has a history of dumping higher quality, more costly shows (Reaper, anyone?) in favor of ridiculous junk that appeals to the lowest common denominator of the viewing audience, i.e. Melrose Place, Gossip Girl. And surprisingly, the show addresses (and attacks) bad parenting choices rather than glorify or promote them as Juno and Gilmore Girls did, Jstn. The lead characters made mistakes, but the show is about “righting” past wrongs, it’s a good message.
On NBC, I think Chuck is similar to Life, Unexpected in that it is a pretty good show which unfortunately ended up on a pretty bad network- a network which has no idea what to do with it and doesn’t realize how good what they have on their hands actually is. (But c’mon, any network that would cancel a show like Southland to keep Jay Leno are idiots anyway…) I hope the numbers pick up for Life, Unexpected. The show is not without problems, but it’s far better than most of the TV fare being offered currently.
For me, 24 and Human Target are the only watchable shows on Fox.