Audience figures for current shows are telling some surprising stories, from a late-night turnaround to some obvious summer losers and winners. Dave has caught Conan, Wipeout is doing surprisingly well, and so is Obama.
The most significant ratings news of late is what's happening in late-night. It's very early, and there's a difference between overall audience figures and the demographic breakdowns -- but since Conan O'Brien took over NBC's The Tonight Show from Jay Leno, the euphoria over his premiere-night ratings has sagged nightly. As have his ratings.
Tuesday's Late Show with David Letterman on CBS, in which Julia Roberts proved a delightfully feisty talk-show guest (she even busted Paul for reading a song list instead of paying attention to her as she spoke to Dave: "Am I on NIGHTLY?"), ended up beating O'Brien in the overall overnight ratings for the first time. Since the Tonight Show switched hosts last week and started with a 7.1 rating, the nightly trajectory has been all downhill: 5.0, 4.3, 3.8, 3.5, 3.1 and, Tuesday night, 2.9, compared to Letterman's 3.4.
O'Brien still claims younger demographics, and it's very, very early in this game. But the if trend projected by those figures makes anyone at NBC anything other than panicked, that person, most likely, is Jay Leno. Meanwhile, at CBS, Hollywood Reporter and The New York Times have reported that Letterman has all but signed an extension deal with CBS. If true, that's good news for him, for CBS, for viewers, AND for Craig Ferguson, who stands to gain from this latest round of late-night plate tectonics as well.
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Another downward-trending bit of ratings news has to do with Harper's Island, which premiered in April and was supposed to be CBS's big, Survivor-meets-Saw summer TV event. After a few outings on Thursday, CBS banished the Island dwellers to Saturday, where audience levels have dwindled ever since. One month ago, an hour of the grisly murders on Harper's Island drew 4.6 million viewers. The most recent installment drew 3.6, a substantial drop. Good news, because Harper's is horrendous.
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Unfortunately, the ratings for ABC's Pushing Daisies have been horrendous, too. Also banished to a Saturday summer slot, the penultimate episode of Daisies drew only 2.3 million viewers, ranking it in 90th place for the week. For one of TV's best and most entertaining shows, that's a sin. But it's the fault of ABC, not the show's creators or stars, because the network scheduled it abominably during and after the writers' strike.
This Saturday is the very last first-run episode of Pushing Daisies. After that, sadly, the show will be... pushing daisies.
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Also, there's ABC's I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!, which has drawn less than half the audience, so far, that ABC did when it ran its own version of the series in six years ago. Viewership went from 6.4 million to 5.5, 4.8, then bounced back to 5.2 Thursday and 5.3 yesterday.
But the bump probably was because Heidi and Spencer were so unbelievably rude and self-absorbed, they were almost perversely intriguing. They're gone now, and the show, which was wretched to begin with, is no better for their absence.
Put it this way: With all their pious and brainless blather about praying to Jesus for guidance, Heidi and Spencer -- and castaway co-star Stephen Baldwin, who baptized Spencer in a nearly stream (honest) -- have done to promote atheism than anyone on TV this side of Bill Maher.
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And, finally, there's this to ponder. ABC's Wipeout, the show with human crash-test dummies (emphasis on both crash and dummies), isn't wiping out in its sophomore season, but last week drew 8.4 million on Wednesday and another 3.7 in a Saturday rerun, for a total of 12.1 million viewers for the week. The Wednesday showing was good enough for a Top 15 finish in the week's ratings.
Meanwhile, NBC's two-part documentary on the Obama White House drew 9.2 million the first night and 9 the second, good enough to land both installments in the week's Top 10. So when America votes for both Obama and Wipeout, what's a network to do?
Answer: Whatever it wants. With that kind of data, a network can justify taking either the high road or the low road. Watch which way they head this fall, and you'll know which networks are more tasteful -- and which are more cynical.
(Any bets on which way NBC lands?)