The War of 18-49, How I Met Your Mother

HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER (CBS)

Scheduling history: How I Met Your Mother aired its entire 208-episode run to date in the first hour of Monday night, and the vast majority of that came in the lead-off role. It moved to 8:30 very briefly at the beginning of season two in favor of newbie The Class, then it later returned to 8:30 for a season and a half after newbie The Big Bang Theory came on strong.

See (who saw) how it all began: How I Met Your Mother premiered on 9/19/05 with 10.94 million viewers and a 3.9/10 in the demo.  An OK number, but certainly not on par with the gems of CBS' Monday comedy lineup like Two and a Half Men and Everybody Loves Raymond, which had ended the previous season. It dropped 10% to a 3.5 in week two, then bounced back up to a 3.9 the next week and would stay in the mid to upper 3's for the next couple months.

The best of times: Always love doing the rare posts when the "best of times" doesn't come at the very beginning. And with HIMYM, it was nowhere near the very beginning, as the show essentially plugged along for two and a half years as a bubble show that usually rated in the low to mid 3's. But then, a Britney Spears guest spot happened, and How I Met Your Mother became one of primetime's very few shows to build some genuine momentum in the immediate aftermath of the WGA writer's strike of 2007-08, peaking at a 4.5 with the Britney episode. That momentum continued into the next season. But the show's best days had still not come, as season seven premiered at series high levels (a 4.7 and 5.2 demo for two eps on 9/19/11) and ended up edging out the 2008-09 season as the show's biggest overall. And the final season was arguably HIMYM's biggest triumph of all; it was the show's biggest season in A18-49+, and the one-hour finale on 3/31/14 set another new series high with a 5.4 demo rating.

The worst of times: This was a relatively consistent show in raw numbers across its whole nine-year run, and the vast majority of its episodes have rated between a 3.0 and a 4.0 demo. So the worst of times usually came when the show fell on the low end of that.  The only consistent sub-3.0 run for the show came very late in its first season, bottoming out at a 2.5 demo on 4/24/06 and 5/1/06. And those first two seasons were by far the weakest historical-adjusted seasons. Then in spring 2011, as the whole CBS Monday lineup fell apart in the wake of the premature end to Two and a Half Men's season, HIMYM again dropped as low as a 2.5 on 4/18/11.

Then vs. now: The 2011-12 season saw the sitcom reclaim a large presence near the very top of the primetime charts, and one of that wave's most improbable success stories was the seventh season of How I Met Your Mother, amazingly up 20% to its highest ratings ever. Suddenly, a show that had felt like it might be winding down became a big hit for the first time and ranked as one of the top five scripted shows on TV. Unsurprisingly, CBS found a way to continue the show beyond the eighth season, which many had pegged as its last. It paid off in the ratings in a big way, as the ninth and final campaign in 2013-14 was the strongest final season for a veteran show since Friends left the air ten years earlier.

Adults 18-49 info by season:

Seas	Year	Timeslot	Avg	y2y	Lo	Hi	Results	Grade
1	2005-06	Monday 8:30	3.51		2.5	4.4	detail
2	2006-07	Mon 8:30, Mon 8:00	3.33	-5%	2.8	3.9	detail
3	2007-08	Mon 8:00, Mon 8:30	3.50	+5%	3.1	4.5	detail
4	2008-09	Monday 8:30	4.01	+15%	2.9	4.8	detail
5	2009-10	Monday 8:00	3.53	-12%	2.8	4.0	detail
6	2010-11		3.39	-4%	2.5	3.9	detail	B
7	2011-12		4.06	+20%	3.1	5.2	detail	A
8	2012-13		3.20	-21%	2.6	4.0	detail	C
9	2013-14		3.39	+6%	2.7	5.4	detail	A-

Historical-adjusted ratings by season:

Seas	Year	A18-49+	Label	Now15	y2y	Lo	Hi	Premiere	Finale
1	2005-06	87	marginal	1.46		62	108	96	76
2	2006-07	88	marginal	1.49	+2%	74	104	101	80
3	2007-08	106	solid	1.78	+20%	94	136	100	100
4	2008-09	133	hit	2.24	+26%	96	160	133	123
5	2009-10	125	hit	2.11	-6%	99	142	128	124
6	2010-11	133	hit	2.24	+6%	98	153	142	122
7	2011-12	172	big hit	2.89	+29%	131	220	199	157
8	2012-13	152	big hit	2.56	-11%	123	190	171	161
9	2013-14	180	big hit	3.02	+18%	143	287	196	287
AVERAGE:		131	hit
CAREER:		1176	star

For more on The War of 18-49, my look at the history of primetime TV's veteran shows, see the Index.