Ratings Five-Spot, WE 11/7/10 - World Series, Elections, Big Bang Theory, Private Practice, The Walking Dead

In my third and (for now) final Five-Spot column of each week, I'll take a look at five interesting ratings stories from this week. Because this comes out on Wednesday, to keep it more current I might end up including Monday of the current week. For now, though, I'll save Conan till next week and look at his entire first week. For more on this whole "Five-Spot" idea, see my intro post from Monday. Here's your Ratings Five-Spot for the week ending November 7, 2010:

The World Series - Did a post early last week about recent World Series ratings, but throwing it in again here to reiterate that it was a very weak one historically speaking. In other bad news for Fox, it was also short, meaning the net had to fill two "if necessary" days. They got low 1's from Hell's Kitchen reruns on Wednesday and below-average outings from original Bones and Fringe on Thursday.

Election coverage - As is the case on the typical evening of cable news, it was all about Fox News on Tuesday night. Not only did they crush the cable competish, but they also had more total viewers than each broadcast net's coverage with about 7 million on average in primetime. CNN was more competitive on this evening than they usually are, though. Fox proper trailed pretty much everybody. Not sure why they even bother when they have the FNC coverage.

The Big Bang Theory - Two hot women appeared on The Big Bang Theory this Thursday; which one deserves more of the credit for the show's ratings spike? It had been south of a 4.5 demo since premiere week, including a 4.2 on 10/28, but on Thursday it jumped up to a 4.7 with the return of Kaley Cuoco from an injury that had sidelined her for a few weeks and the guest-turn from Eliza Dushku. Or was it just a typical ratings fluctuation?

Private Practice - There's no doubt this was no typical ratings fluctuation, as Private Practice soared from a 2.7 demo on 10/28 to a 3.9 demo on Thursday. It reaffirms this is a show that, like fellow serials Grey's Anatomy and Desperate Housewives, can still draw a lot of viewers back with a big-time storyline promoted well. Perhaps a secondary reason: it was the first week this season that the show hasn't had to deal with Jersey Shore, the MTV monster with a similar demo makeup.

The Walking Dead - It's early, but the AMC zombie drama may be that very rare show that redefines its network's ratings expectations. Don't count out the old guard, since Mad Men and Breaking Bad have tons of Emmys, but TWD's huge 2.7 demo debut and 2.5 episode two are both miles ahead of anything those two shows have done (each has a series high of 0.9) and even more miles ahead of fellow newbie Rubicon, which never got higher than 0.3. This network's ceiling is clearly higher than those three made it seem.

More Five-Spots can be found in the Index.