Prime-Time Metered Market Monday Ratings:

CBS Wins; ABC and Fox Also Deliver 

TV Trivia Time:

Welcome Back, Lost

Prime-Time Metered Market Monday Ratings:

CBS Wins; ABC and Fox Also Deliver  

              HH
          Rtg/Shr

-Percent Change From the Year-Ago Evening (Monday, February 2, 2009):
Fox: +126, ABC: +41, CW: -15, CBS: -21, NBC: -50
 

The Bachelor: On the Wings of Love (ABC), How I Met Your Mother (CBS), House (Fox), Two and a Half Men (CBS), The Big Bang Theory (CBS), CSI: Miami (CBS)

-Yesterday’s Losers (excluding repeats):

One Tree Hill (CW), Heroes (NBC), Life Unexpected (CW), The Jay Leno Show (NBC)

Note: The fast affiliate results for Monday will be posted at PIFeedback by 12 p.m. ET. Go to the website, click on Ratings Box (the first category), then Last Night’s Results, and Monday, February 1, 2010.   

CBS opened the week on a winning overnight note, with a 0.8 rating point advantage over second-place Fox, which will also be on the map among key adults 18-49. Third overall was healthy ABC thanks to the ongoing success The Bachelor, followed by distant NBC and The CW. While I recognize that the target audience for The CW is young females, a mere 1.7 rating/3 share in the overnights for two original dramas are “losing” performances.  

Fox’s rock-solid House kicked-off the night on a winning note, with an 8.6 rating/13 share in the overnights at 8 p.m. That led into veteran 24, with a third-place 6.7/10 at 9 p.m. From what I have heard at the water-cooler, this is one of the better seasons creatively for 24.  

CBS’ already renewed How I Met Your Mother was on the 8 p.m. map, with a third-place 6.6/10 in the overnights (and an expected mid-to-high 3 rating among adults 18-49). But lead-out Accidentally on Purpose, which is heading to Wednesday at 8:30 p.m. out of The New Adventures of Old Christine in March, dipped to a 5.6/ 8 (#3) at 8:30 p.m. Let’s wait and see what the adult 18-49 retention is. Next on CBS was always reliable Two and a Half Men at a dominant 10.8/15 at 9 p.m., followed by laugh-out-loud The Big Bang Theory (10.0/14 at 9:30 p.m.) and veteran CSI: Miami (#1: 9.0/15 at 10 p.m.), which is down but far from out. Emmy voters…are you taking note of Jim Parsons on The Big Bang Theory?

Over at ABC, another two-hour edition of still potent The Bachelor: On the Wings of Love impressed with an average 7.7/11 from 8-10 p.m., and growth in every half-hour as follows:

The Bachelor: On the Wings of Love (ABC)

A repeat of Castle, which is a shoo-in for renewal for 2010-11, capped off the evening for ABC with a second-place 5.5/ 9 at 10 p.m.

With ABC, CBS and Fox all successfully competing, there was little room for NBC’s combination of Chuck (#4: 4.5/ 7), which will never be anything more than a small core favorite, Heroes (#4: 3.3/ 5), which needs to end this season, and clinker The Jay Leno Show, which dipped to an embarrassing 2.8/ 5 at 10 p.m.

Last, and very least, was The CW’s combination of One Tree Hill (#5: 1.8/ 3) and recently introduced Life Unexpected (#5: 1.7/ 2). Compared to year-ago 9 p.m. occupant One Tree Hill (1.9/ 3 on Feb. 2, 2009), Life Unexpected was down by 11 percent.

Source: Nielsen Media Research data

Ratings Box:

What's Hot/What's Not

-Highest Rated Grammys in Six Years:

Based on the fast affiliate results, The 52^nd Annual Grammy Awards on CBS rose to a 14.3 rating/23 share in households, with 25.80 million viewers and as high as a 10.6 rating/24 share among adults 25-54 from 8-11:30 p.m. on Sunday. Comparably, this was The Grammy’s best performance since 2004, with growth over the year-ago telecast (Feb. 8, 2009) of 28 percent in households, 6.75 million viewers and as much as 36 percent among adults 25-54. Final national ratings will be available later today.

-Second Place Finish for Univision on Thursday:

Ignited by the second season-premiere of Mujeres Asesinas (Killer Woman 2), Univision finished Thursday, Jan. 28 as the No. 2 network in prime-time (behind Fox) in adults 18-49 (2.6 million) and adults 18-34 (1.6 million), with a first-place finish among women 18-34 (970,000). Univision also ranked second overall in persons 12-34 (1.8 million) and men 18-34 (593,000). Compared to Telemundo’s competing Victorinos, Mujeres Asesinas delivered more than six times the number of total viewers (4.48 million vs. 702,000) and more than seven times as many adults 18-49 (2.62 million vs. 378,000) and adults 18-34 (1.58 million vs. 235,000).

Source: Nielsen Media Research data

On the Air Tonight:
Prime-Time Programming Options

10:00 p.m. The Good Wife

10:00 p.m. The Jay Leno Show

TV Tidbits:

Notes of Interest

-Behind the Scenes: Oprah’s 25^th Season on OWN:

Oprah has publicly stated she will no longer host a talk show after her long-running syndicated chatfest ends in fall 2011. But OWN, Oprah’s upcoming cable network, will feature a weekly reality series called Behind the Scenes: Oprah’s 25^th Season when it launches in January 2011. 

-Secrets of the Mountain on NBC:

NBC will air a two-hour backdoor pilot on Friday, April 16 called Secrets of the Mountain, a thriller about a single mother (Paige Turco) with three kids who discovers her supposedly dead uncle (Barry Bostwick) is very much alive after inheriting a mountain cabin.

-DWTS Fans, Take Note:
The cast of the upcoming season of Dancing With the Stars, which returns on Monday, March 8, will be unveiled by host Tom Bergeron in interstitials airing throughout the two-hour season finale of The Bachelor: On the Wings of Love on Monday, March 1 at 8 p.m. ET. After all these seasons, how about including a Brady?

-Academy Award Nominations:

No, this is not technically television. But since The Academy Awards do air on ABC (on Sunday, March 7 to be exact), here are the nominations in the key categories for The 82^nd Annual Academy Awards. Avatar and The Hurt Locker lead the race, with nine nominations each. Keep in mind that this year’s telecast will feature 10 nominations in the category of Best Picture, the first time it has done so since 1943. 

The Blind Side

District 9

An Education

The Hurt Locker

Inglourious Basterds

A Serious Man

Up in the Air

LEAD ACTOR

Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart)

George Clooney (Up in the Air)

Colin Firth (A Single Man)

Morgan Freeman (Invictus)

Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker)

LEAD ACTRESS

Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side)

Helen Mirren (The Last Station)

Carey Mulligan (An Education)

Gabourey Sidibe (Precious)

Meryl Streep (Julie & Julia)

Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker)

James Camerson (Avatar)

Lee Daniels (Precious)

Jason Reitman (Up in the Air)

Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds)

SUPPORTING ACTOR

Matt Damon (Invictus)

Woody Harrelson (The Messenger)

Christopher Plummer (The Last Station)

Stanley Tucci (The Lovely Bones)

Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Penelope Cruz (Nine)

Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air)

Maggie Gyllenhaal (Crazy Heart)

Anna Kendrick (Up in the Air)

Mo’Nique (Precious)

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

Ajami (Israel)

El Secreto de Sus Ojos (Argentina)

The Milk of Sorrow (Peru)

Un Prophete (France)

The White Ribbon (Germany)

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM

Fantastic Mr. Fox

The Princess and the Frog

The Secret of Kells

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

An Eductaion (Nick Hornby)

District 9 (Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell)

In the Loop (Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci and Tony Roche)

Precious (Geoffrey Fletcher)

Up in the Air (Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner)

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

The Hurt Locker (Mark Boal)

Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)

The Messenger (Alessandro Camon and Oren Moverman)

A Serious Man (Joel and Ethan Coen)

Up (Bob Peterson, Pete Docter and Tom McCarthy)

TV Trivia Time:

Welcome Back, Lost

In honor of the return of Lost tonight, tell me which one of the following characters was “killed off” first?

The answer to yesterday’s question…

Russell Johnson is best remembered, of course, for his role as the Professor on inane sitcom Gilligan’s Island. But which one of the following actors also tested for the part?

Is: b) Dabney Coleman, who was later featured in short-lived sitcoms Apple Pie (ABC: 1978), Buffalo Bill (NBC: 1983-84), The Slap Maxwell Story (ABC: 1987-88), Drexell’s Class (Fox: 1991-92) and Courting Alex (CBS: 2006); and dramas The Guardian (CBS: 2001-04) and Heartland (TNT: 2007). Coleman also co-starred for one season on ABC’s That Girl. To the folks who answered Carroll O’Connor, the soon-to-be Archie Bunker was considered for the role of the Skipper. 

All together now…

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,
A tale of a fateful trip
That started from this tropic port
Aboard this tiny ship.

The mate was a mighty sailing man,
The skipper brave and sure.
Five passengers set sail that day
For a three hour tour, a three hour tour.

The weather started getting rough,
The tiny ship was tossed,
If not for the courage of the fearless crew
The Minnow would be lost, the Minnow would be lost.

The ship set ground on the shore of this uncharted desert isle
With Gilligan, The Skipper too,
The millionaire and his wife,
The movie star
The professor and Mary Ann,
Here on Gilligan's Isle.

-Current kudos goes to:
Gerry Bixenspan (2x), Barbara Bloomfield, Tom Condosta, Reid Davis, Phyllis Epstein, John Ferlazzo, Maureen Goldman, Brad Hight, Bob Ingersoll, Deb Kainer, Tom Kilgallon, Mark Krause, Rick Locke, Patty Lynch, Jim Moore, Gordon Purcell, Arthur Reinstein, Joe Rubi, Ron Salmon, Maxine Schulman, Ronnie Tallant