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Welcome to The Futon's Ratings Survival Guide, our annual feature which takes each new fall series on the broadcast networks and tells you the numbers it will need to survive for a second season. In general, a show's success isn't so much where it lands on the weekly ratings chart but rather how it performs in two key categories:
1. How much of its lead-in audience it retains. If a show averages 10 million viewers that's a good thing. But if the show that airs before it is averaging 30 million viewers, that's not a good thing. Why? Because 20 of those 30 million viewers decided to turn off that particular channel when the next show came on.
2. How it performs year-to-year in its time period. A new show is usually in its time period because the network thinks it can do better than it did in that slot last year. In other words, do worse than the show that was canceled after three weeks last fall then you too probably are not long for this world.
As you'll see, together these measurements paint a clear picture on how a particular show is doing. So without further ado, let's begin.
THE PLAYBOY CLUB (NBC)
(Mondays at 10:00/9:00c)
With self-starter "Harry's Law" being shipped to Wednesday nights at 9:00/8:00c, NBC is back to the drawing board on Monday nights. Newcomer "The Playboy Club" then is tasked with filling said void, as it hopes to avoid the one-and-done fate of such short-lived fare as "The Cape," "Chase" and "The Event" from this past season. Aiding its cause: the below the radar success of "The Sing-Off," which has provided some of the night's best numbers in the past two years.
Here's how NBC has fared on Monday nights the past two seasons:*
mondays in 2009-2011 | time | viewers (retention) | adults 18-49 (retention) |
The Sing-Off: Season 2 | 8:00 PM | 8.83 (N/A) | 2.93 (N/A) |
Heroes: Season 4 | 8:00 PM | 5.81 (N/A) | 2.43 (N/A) |
The Sing-Off: Season 1 | 8:00 PM | 7.08 (N/A) | 2.30 (N/A) |
Chuck: Season 3 | 8:00 PM | 6.03 (N/A) | 2.17 (N/A) |
Heroes: Season 4 | 9:00 PM | 4.39 (66.62%) | 2.00 (81.63%) |
Law & Order: Season 20 | 10:00 PM | 6.44 (122.67%) | 1.79 (114.01%) |
Harry's Law: Season 1 | 10:00 PM | 9.25 (198.50%) | 1.77 (133.08%) |
The Event | 9:00 PM | 5.49 (114.14%) | 1.74 (110.83%) |
Chuck: Season 4 | 8:00 PM | 5.18 (N/A) | 1.73 (N/A) |
Trauma | 9:00 PM | 5.31 (96.90%) | 1.69 (79.34%) |
Chase | 10:00 PM | 5.52 (78.63%) | 1.60 (69.87%) |
The Jay Leno Show | 10:00 PM | 5.31 (90.92%) | 1.58 (77.07%) |
The Cape | 9:00 PM | 4.89 (86.86%) | 1.39 (77.65%) |
Law & Order: LA | 10:00 PM | 5.50 (125.28%) | 1.27 (111.40%) |
Persons Unknown | 10:00 PM | 3.63 (78.23%) | 1.23 (61.50%) |
Persons Unknown | 8:00 PM | 2.93 (N/A) | 0.85 (N/A) |
* Viewers are in millions, adults 18-49 is the percentage of said viewers in the demographic; all are based on fast national data, using only first-run episodes in its regular time period.
COMING TOMORROW: FOX's "New Girl" & CBS's "Unforgettable."
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