Ratings Five-Spot, WE 1/30/11 - Pawn Stars, Kourtney & Kim, Shameless, The Lost Valentine, Human Target/Lie to Me

Boy, there were a lot of ratings this week, but not many of them really meant anything. Let's try to make five ratings results from this week sound interesting! Here's your Ratings Five-Spot for the week ending January 30, 2011:

Pawn Stars - I mentioned the Pawn Stars a little over a month ago when they matched their series high A18-49 with a 2.5. They've since broken through even that ceiling, with the episodes on 1/24 hitting series high 2.6 and 2.8, and then Monday of the current week they tacked on another couple tenths and posted 2.8 and 3.0. Almost nothing on broadcast can hit a 3.0 at 10:30! The total audience also plowed past 7 million this week for the first time ever. It all signifies that this has become a really big-time show.

Kourtney & Kim Take New York - It appears E! is off and running with yet another Kardashians spin-off, as this show premiered on 1/23 to a 1.6 A18-49 and 3.5 W18-34, then grew in week two to a 1.8 and 4.1. Though the show lost its head-to-head battle with the Real Housewives of Atlanta finale (2.4 A18-49), its current ratings place it ahead of almost all airings of fellow spinoff Kourtney & Khloe Take Miami and pretty comparable to the last season of the mothership, Keeping up with the Kardashians.

Shameless - It hasn't been a good season to date for Showtime's 9pm comedy block, with Episodes hitting a mere 0.1 A18-49 on a couple occasions. But that hasn't held back the William H. Macy drama Shameless, which posted an 0.4 its first three weeks and then grew to a 0.6 last week. Still pretty small ratings all-told, but considering many Showtime shows stick around in the 0.3 to 0.4 arena, this thing may be on the verge of becoming a legit hit by its network's standards.

"The Lost Valentine" - This week's edition of The Betty White Watch looks at her Hallmark Hall of Fame movie, which scored a ho-hum 2.3 A18-49 (very slightly up from the Hallmark HoF movies at this time the last couple years) and 14.64 million viewers, good for the third-highest total of the week behind American Idol x2. Then there's the decline of Hot in Cleveland, which hit a series viewership low (2.3 million) last week and is so far tracking way behind season 1 in 18-49.

Human Target/Lie to Me - One of the only potential game-changers in the broadcast renewal arena this week was the surprising 2.1 demo for Human Target during a special Monday airing, followed by a 2.2 for Lie to Me. I think this evening increases the chances that one of the two will be brought back, but I really doubt both will. (Then again, I really doubted both would last year as well!) The best news for Target is that it has two more chances to impress with post-Idol airings tonight and next Wednesday.

More Five-Spots in the Index.