Demos Year-to-Year, May Sweeps 2011 Week Four Winners/Losers

So ends another session of Demos Year-to-Year. For more on this particular sweep period, see the week one, week two and week three recaps. Those might be more useful than this one for gauging what the real winners and losers of the sweep were, as a lot of stuff doesn't end up airing during the fourth week.

Top 5 year-to-year show losers
1. Grey's Anatomy -33%
2. The Big Bang Theory (Th 8-8:30pm vs. M 9:30-10pm) -32% 
3. Minute to Win It (Su 8-9pm) -29%
4. Primetime: What Would You Do? -28%
5. Dateline Fri -27% 

Grey's Anatomy getting on this list is much more about what Grey's did last year (an enormous spike in its season finale) than a particularly bad result this year, though this year's result wasn't great. Big Bang and Minute and Primetime have all been on the list before, while Dateline had a bad newsmagazine fluctuation.

Top 5 year-to-year show gainers
1. 60 Minutes +45%
2. Kitchen Nightmares (F 8-9pm vs. F 9-10pm) +21%
3. Dancing with the Stars: The Results +18%
4. Dancing with the Stars Mon +18%
5. 20/20 +15%

I can't recall ever having one of these lists with five unscripted shows, but there ya go. The always fluctuation-heavy newsmagazines take two spots, the sensational season of Dancing with the Stars takes two spots and Kitchen Nightmares, which has been flexing muscle on Friday since midseason, rounds it out.

Top 5 year-to-year timeslot losers
1. America's Funniest Home Videos vs. Lost clips (ABC, Sunday 7-8pm) -61%
2. Private Practice vs. Grey's Anatomy (ABC, Thursday 10-11pm) -54%
3. Flashpoint vs. Ghost Whisperer (CBS, Friday 8-9pm) -44%
4. The Billboard Music Awards vs. Lost clips/Lost (ABC, Sunday 8-11pm) -43%
5. Special: Clash of the Commercials vs. CSI: Miami (CBS, Monday 10-11pm) -42%

The big finales for Lost and Grey's last year are really the story here, while one year later CBS can't even muster 60% of what they got from Ghost Whisperer in its last episode ever. CBS' Clash of the Commercials special actually did OK (1.9 demo) but was well behind last year's final Miami Monday episode (3.3).

Top 5 year-to-year timeslot gainers
1. American Idol vs. Bones (Fox, Thursday 8-9pm) +125%2. Bones vs. Fringe (Fox, Thursday 9-10pm) +60%
3. The Voice vs. Parenthood (NBC, Tuesday 10-11pm) +46%
4. 60 Minutes (CBS, Sunday 7-8pm) +45%
5. The Office vs. The Office/30 Rock (NBC, Thursday 8-9pm) +28%

The top three have all been on the list before, but The Voice's year-to-year gains (as well as its raw numbers) have shrunk significantly over the course of this sweep. In week one, it was +100%, and that was including some comparison to The Biggest Loser. 60 Minutes had a big week and The Office benefits not only from its huge parade of guest stars but also from having a one-hour episode against a year-ago 30-minute one.

Here are this week's daily posts:
Thursday | Friday | Sunday | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday

And last year's recap of this week.