Ratings Five-Spot, WE 3/6/11 - Charlie Sheen, Raising Hope, Sunday Reality, Army Wives, Breakout Kings

Here's your Ratings Five-Spot for the week ending March 6, 2011:

Charlie Sheen Week - His impact on TV ratings last week was tough to miss. He lifted CNN's Piers Morgan Tonight to its second-highest audience ever, ABC's 20/20 to its best demo in years (3.2), and NBC's Dateline (1.8) to its second-highest average of the season and NBC's best 10:00 showing (2.1) this week. But the highest-rated Charlie Sheen program of the bunch was the repeat of Two and a Half Men (3.3), which was Men's biggest repeat of the season and the second-biggest repeat rating for any show this season.

Raising Hope - The series-high-yet-bad-retention for Raising Hope after Idol on Tuesday sparked another debate about the importance of lead-in retention. I'm not squarely in either camp, but I will note I don't think the results for "special" airings like this one are typically very meaningful anyway. (Especially here since Hope's already renewed.) It just represents an opportunity to get some new audience that may follow it. Didn't hurt, though, that Traffic Light did meaningfully worse with a similar lead-in the next night.

Sunday, Reality Sunday - The glut of reality on Sunday deserves a mention. In the 8:00 three-way battle, the clear winner was Secret Millionaire (3.4 demo, better than any of its 2008 Fox run), while The Amazing Race (2.7) did well considering the competish and Restaurant (1.6) was left behind. At 9:00, The Celebrity Apprentice (2.8) was down 13% year-to-year. Oh yeah, and season six of The Real Housewives of OC (1.1) and Lifetime's Coming Home (1.1) also premiered!

Army Wives - I was pretty sure this week was gonna be far too crowded for Army Wives to get a Five-Spot mention, but then the show went and found 4.228 million viewers and a 1.4 A18-49, both surprisingly ahead of anything the show has done in its last two seasons. It also scored a 2.4 rating in the net's target W25-54 demo. (Though I don't know have enough info about that demo to be able to put it in any context.) It also fueled new reality series Coming Home, which premiered to a quite solid 1.1 A18-49.

Breakout Kings - On the same night that ABC got a big premiere out of Fox reject Secret Millionaire, A&E got a big premiere out of Fox pilot reject Breakout Kings, which scored 2.8 million viewers and a 1.2 A18-49. The show skews much younger out of the gate than did previous A&E effort The Glades (which bowed to over 3.5 million viewers but a lower 0.9 demo in July). Consider this a very good start.

More Five-Spots in the Index.