Fast national data with demographic ratings and total viewers will not be available until later Friday, but the first wave of Thursday ratings news looks phenomenal for “The Big Bang Theory” and acceptable for two new comedies.
“Big Bang” scored a timeslot-leading 9.2/15 in the overnights (meant to be equivalent to household ratings, not 18-49 demo ratings), marking an improvement even from last year’s premiere (a Monday bow after veteran “Two and a Half Men”). CBS’ decision to move “Survivor” to Wednesday at 8PM and “Big Bang” to Thursday at 8PM seems to have worked; the network is so far stronger in both timeslots than it was last year.
Lead-out “$#*! My Dad Says” opened to a 7.7/12 rating as the “Big Bang” lead-out. While it is never good for a series premiere to demonstrate double-digit declines from its lead-in, the rating is still impressive, and CBS would be excited if the show remained at this level going forward.
Both comedies dominated NBC’s counterpart offerings of “Community” (3.6/6) and “30 Rock” (4.3/7), but the news obviously could have been far worse for NBC, which has not recently had competition for its 8PM Thursday comedies.
NBC’s “The Office” followed with a 5.6/9; lead-out “Outsourced” was solid enough with a 5.0/8, but it will all come down to how well it holds in the coming weeks.
ABC’s “My Generation” was the weakest of the new shows, posting a mere 3.9/6 at 8PM. Headline Planet called the premiere “laughably bad” in its review, and with so much similar press circulating plus an uninspiring marketing campaign, viewers simply did not appear willing to get on board.