Spotted Ratings, Friday 8/5/11

Haven't done a Friday post since the regular season ended, so I'll take a little longer look at some of the recent goings-on on Friday.

WHAT MATTERS:

• NBC premiered comedy burnoff Friends with Benefits (0.7 at 8:00, 0.6 at 8:30) to terrible results, not that there was any doubt. The show at least avoided becoming the lowest-rated premiere in big-four history, an honor I believe still belongs to last summer's The Bridge (0.5) on a CBS Saturday night. The show did a little worse than most episodes of Friday Night Lights this summer. (More on that in The War of 18-49 next week.)

• The 8:00 battle has usually come down to CBS' original Flashpoint (1.1) vs. ABC's encores of Shark Tank (1.0). Flashpoint narrowly won on this Friday, but both have averaged a 1.10 this summer (with Flashpoint going lower in encores).

• The race for the evening's top program is usually fought out between newsmagazine tentpoles Dateline (1.2) and 20/20 (1.3). 20/20 narrowly won on this evening, but Dateline has done a little better on average this summer: 1.30 for original Dateline vs. 1.17 for 20/20 entering this evening.

Above based on preliminary adults 18-49 ratings unless otherwise noted.