CW demo: Breaking down Melissa & Joey premiere, Teen Mom

Some pretty impressive-looking stats were released this afternoon on the Melissa & Joey premiere, like "largest viewership for an ABC Family comedy premiere ever." OK, that one isn't ridiculously impressive, because ABC Family's original comedies have been pretty weak.  But "biggest A18-49 premiere on ABC Family ever" sounds pretty great, right?

Well, here are some more numbers from TravisYanan:

Melissa & Joey (8pm)
- 2.145 million viewers
- 1.3/2 HH
- 1.0/3 A18-49
- 1.5/5 W18-34
- 1.2/5 T12-17

Melissa & Joey (8:30pm)
- 2.184 million viewers
- 1.4/2 HH
- 0.9/3 A18-49
- 1.5/5 W18-34
- 1.3/5 T12-17

Viewers are fine, adults 18-49 is solid, as stated earlier. But I'm not sure either of those matter that much to ABC Family.

So how about W18-34 and T12-17, which together comprise ABC Family's target audience? Well, if you look back at my post on "The CW Demo" from a couple weeks ago, you can see that in W18-34, Melissa & Joey's 1.5 premiere was basically an average episode of Huge, and behind any episode of Secret Life or Pretty Little Liars this season. Huge has a big Secret Life lead-in, but still, Huge's fate remains up in the air. So that 1.5 isn't lock city, and we're still just talking about one airing. M&J could easily get weaker, as many shows do post-premiere. And in teens, M&J is already ABC Family's weakest show airing right now, less than half of most Secret Life episodes and less than a third of the 4.2/16 that the Pretty Little Liars finale got last week.

I'm not proclaiming it dead after one airing by any means, and it may well grow to huge heights, or it may maintain these numbers and stick around forever, such are the mysteries of cable renewals. But so far, it's just one more piece of evidence that The CW Demo isn't all that interested in the sitcom format. Sure seems all the scripted shows that dominate among women 18-34 nowadays are an hour long, from Glee to Grey's to Pretty Little Liars to Secret Life. ABC Family keeps trying to put together comedies absolutely tailor-made to that demo, and none have really worked. Some have failed spectacularly, like the Roommates/Sophie block from awhile back.

Meanwhile, Teen Mom hit a 4.7/14 in W18-34 last night, more than three times the M&J rating. I probably don't run around in the right circles, but it still seems like nobody's talking about this show, and it's quietly become a Jersey Shore-sized beast.