Spotted Ratings, Sunday 5/15/11: Survivor Survives Wives

WHAT MATTERS:

• The night was dominated by the finale of Survivor, which took a much bigger penultimate-to-finale spike than usual. It was up 29% week-to-week. It was down just 5% year-to-year with the reunion down just 6% year-to-year, some of the best year-to-year comparisons the show's had all season. What does that mean? It most likely means that any damage that appeared to be inflicted on the show this season can be largely attributed to regularly facing American Idol for the first time. Breaking 3.0 against the Death Star is not to be trivialized, and this rating only validates that it was another very solid season for this franchise, moreso than it might have appeared. (Even though I didn't really like it creatively...)

• The two-hour season finale of Desperate Housewives was up two ticks from last week but down 23% from last year's one-hour finale.

• Despite the added competition, most other stuff was about even week-to-week. This was bad for Celebrity Apprentice, whose result last week was weak partly due to airing in the low-HUT 8:00 hour. This week, it doesn't have that excuse, but it definitely makes sense that the Survivor competition would hurt it most of all. Should have a big finale spike next week.

FULL TABLE:

	A18-49	Share	Last	Lead	LeLa	Comp	CoLa	bcShr	Avg	Rank
America's Funniest Home Videos	1.8	6	+6%	n/a	n/a	4.5	+1%	29	+2%	10/24
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition	2.2	6	+5%	+22%	+6%	7.3	+1%	23	-3%	13/23
Desperate Housewives	3.1	7	+7%	+41%	+5%	9.8	+26%	24	-11%	14/22
60 Minutes	1.7	5	-26%	n/a	n/a	4.6	+20%	27	-27%	19/30
Survivor	4.0	10	+29%	+135%	-45%	6.9	-35%	37	+27%	1/14
Survivor	3.4	8	-15%	-15%	+135%	9.8	+42%	26	+4%	2/15
PGA Tour Golf	1.4	5	n/a	n/a	n/a	4.8	n/a	23	n/a	1/1
Dateline Sun	1.0	3	+25%	-29%	+75%	5.3	+0%	16	-0%	7/16
Minute to Win It	0.9	2	+0%	-10%	+11%	8.6	-33%	9	-36%	19/22
Celebrity Apprentice	2.5	6	+4%	+178%	+13%	10.6	+45%	19	-12%	10/11
The Simpsons (oR)	1.3	4	n/a	n/a	n/a	4.9	n/a	21	n/a	n/a
American Dad!	1.8	5	+13%	+38%	+30%	4.5	-6%	29	-22%	14/18
The Simpsons	2.6	7	+4%	+44%	+13%	7.1	+0%	27	-21%	17/21
Bob's Burgers	2.2	6	+10%	-15%	+4%	7.1	+0%	24	-7%	3/12
Family Guy	3.2	8	-3%	+45%	+10%	9.6	+22%	25	-12%	14/17
The Cleveland Show	2.3	5	+5%	-28%	-3%	9.6	+22%	19	-15%	17/22

VIEWING LEVELS:

Slot	Min HUT	Calc HUT	Max HUT
7-8pm	30.0	32.1	33.6
8-9pm	34.0	38.8	40.8
9-10pm	38.6	41.9	46.7
10-11pm	39.4	42.9	46.0
8-10pm	37.6	40.5	42.6

KEY (much more detail at What? and Why? page)

A18-49 - Percentage of US TV-owning adults 18-49 watching the program.
Share - Percentage of US TV-watching adults 18-49 watching the program.
Last - Percent difference from previous episode.
Lead - Percent difference from lead-in program.
LeLa - Percent difference between lead-in and previous episode's lead-in.
Comp - Total rating of other broadcast programs in the same timeslot. 10:00 programming multiplied by 1.75 to attempt a level playing field.
CoLa - Percent difference between competition and previous episode's competition.
bcShr - Percentage of US national big-5 broadcast TV-watching adults 18-49 watching the program. 10:00 programming multiplied by two-thirds to attempt a level playing field.
Avg - Percent difference from show's previous demo average this season.
Rank - Rank among show's episodes to date this season.

Min HUT/Max HUT - Smallest/largest percentage of TV-owning adults 18-49 that could be watching any TV in the timeslot.
Calc HUT - Estimate of the percentage of TV-owning adults 18-49 watching any TV in the timeslot.

(R) = Regular-night repeat. These are ranked/averaged as if they were separate shows.
(oR) = Other-night repeat. These are not ranked/averaged in any way.

Stats in blue are less accurate due to lack of access to half-hour breakdowns.

Source: TravisYanan

This evening compared to last year 

More Sunday Spotted Ratings.