Premiere Week Year-to-Year, The Recap

As I usually do with my year-to-year posts, at the end of each week I take a look at the biggest of the big gainers and losers among adults 18-49. You can click the "sweep summaries" label to see the various forms those have taken in past sweeps. This time, I'm gonna keep doing the top 5 lists that I started doing last season.

Top 5 year-to-year timeslot losers
1. My Generation vs. Flashforward (ABC, Thursday 8-9pm) -60%
2. House/Lone Star vs. House (2hr) (FOX, Monday 8-10pm) -60%
3. The Whole Truth (R) vs. Modern Family (R)/Cougar Town (R) (ABC, Friday 9-10pm) -52%
4. The Whole Truth vs. Eastwick (ABC, Wednesday 10-11pm) -50%
5. Human Target (R) vs. Brothers (FOX, Friday 8-9pm) -45%

Three of these five comparisons are particularly awful because the shows airing in the slots in 2009 were newbies that didn't even get to season 2! The Whole Truth gets that rare distinction of bringing its network down by 50%+ in two different timeslots. And the Fox Monday number is terrible, but Lone Star actually lucks out that I didn't have a breakdown on the House premiere; the show's 1.3 debut was probably down more than 80% from the second half of the massive 2009 House premiere.

Top 5 year-to-year timeslot gainers
1. Undercover Boss vs. Cold Case (CBS, Sunday 10-11pm) +81%
2. Survivor vs. Old Christine/Gary Unmarried (CBS, Wednesday 8-9pm) +78%
3. 30 Rock vs. Parks & Recreation (NBC, Thursday 8:30-9pm) +44%
4. Law & Order: SVU (2hr) vs. Law & Order: SVU/The Jay Leno Show (NBC, Wednesday 9-11pm) +42%
5. Outsourced vs. Community (NBC, Thursday 9:30-10pm) +33%

Anyone probably could've guessed that the Boss would grow big on the badly-rated final season of Cold Case or that Survivor would grow huge on the failed CBS comedies, but the NBC growth is a little more surprising. You might have expected/hoped to see big gains on the year-ago version of The Jay Leno Show (Leno saw lots of play on last November's timeslot losers lists), but NBC's mediocre performance at 10:00 this week coupled with the fact that Leno was still doing OK at this time last year mostly kept that from happening. Check back during November.


Top 5 premiere-vs.-premiere show losers
1. CSI: NY (F9pm vs. W10pm) -50%
2. Community (Th8pm vs. Th9:30pm) -42%
3. House (M8-9pm vs. M8-10pm) -37%
4. The Cleveland Show -37%
5. Medium (F8pm vs. F9pm) -33%

Three of these five shows premiered in tougher situations (especially CSI: NY), and House's premiere last year was the highest-rated scripted episode of the entire season, but Cleveland's drop doesn't have a whole lot of an excuse except for the fact that series premieres are often artificially high.

Top 5 premiere-vs.-premiere show gainers
1. Glee (T8pm vs. W9pm) +60%
2. Law & Order: SVU (W9-11pm vs. W9-10pm) +28%
3. Dancing with the Stars (Mon) +24%
4. Modern Family +21%
5. Castle +17%

Glee and Modern Family aren't shocking entries on the list, as both got some Emmy love and had tons of positive buzz. Perhaps the size of Glee's increase is surprising. Kudos to Dancing with the Stars for finding a much better cast than last fall, and that helped lead-out Castle make the list along with it. SVU, which took huge drops last season, is by far the biggest surprise of the list; does this bode well for this week's premiere of Law & Order: Los Angeles?

All clean comparisons (both the 2009 and 2010 airings were premieres in the same exact timeslot and took place during premiere week)
Dancing with the Stars (Mon) +24%
Modern Family +21%
Castle +17%
Dancing with the Stars (Tue) even
60 Minutes -3%
Brothers & Sisters -3%
The Mentalist -6%
Desperate Housewives -9%
Criminal Minds -9%
The Simpsons -14%
CSI -17%
NCIS -17%
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition -23%
Cougar Town -23%
NCIS: Los Angeles (9pm only) -23%
20/20 -30%
The Cleveland Show -37%

For many more comparisons not seen here, see any of this week's daily posts you may have missed:
Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Sunday