David Kronke was appointed Mayor of Television after a bloodless coup in 2000. Since then, he has improved infrastructure, championed greater educational opportunities and fought for reforms that have utterly erased corruption and incompetence from the television industry. Since Mr. Kronke has ascended to power, Television is a far better place. “Cavemen:” No. 2 with a bullet (to the skull)
So “Cavemen” had just under 9m viewers in its debut last night, while “Carpoolers” had a hair over 9m, but “Cavemen” tied for No. 1 in the hour in that 18-49 demographic (with “NCIS,” which had seven million more viewers, all of whom must’ve been too old for advertisers to care about) and "Carpoolers" didn't. “Cavemen” did better than “Bones,” “The Singing Bee” and “The Biggest Loser” and, of course, whatever The CW had on at the time. (That would be “Beauty and the Geek,” in what clearly should be its final cycle.)
Ratings guru Marc Berman calls “Cavemen’s” performance disappointing – given the hype, it should’ve done better, he argues – but I think the fact that 9 million ostensibly sentient humans tuned into a broadcast-network situation comedy based on a TV commercial that everyone and their dog was warning them was awful is not merely disappointing, but devastating.
Meanwhile, “House” actually beat the “Dancing with the Stars” results show at 9 p.m.; they were the highest-rated shows of the evening, with 17.28m and 15.73m viewers, respectively.
Of the new shows, CBS’s “Cane” remains in the hunt with 9.7m viewers, though that’s almost 2m fewer than last week. The CW’s “Reaper” remains viable only because it’s one of the network’s few shows that isn’t doing absolutely horribly; it even managed to increase its viewership from “Beauty and the Geek’s” lousy lead-in numbers.
So, after one week, ABC’s doing the best, with the slightest dropoff from last season in the sundry ways the ratings are measured (households, total viewers, viewers aged 18-49, 25-54 and 18-34). NBC’s managed to make its audience both smaller and younger, so that’s considered something of a break-even. CBS has slipped 10-15% from its levels of a year ago, Fox dropped slightly (but then, Fox always starts out abysmally except for “House”) and The CW has flushed itself, losing 14% of its viewers from a year ago and 25% of viewers in the advertiser-friendly demographics. It’s gonna be a long season.