First Two Weeks, The Secret Circle

THE SECRET CIRCLE (The CW)

WEEK ONE
The premiere of the CW's Secret Circle, a witch-themed drama from the creator of The Vampire Diaries, pulled 3.05 million viewers, a 1.3 A18-49 demo and a 1.9 in the CW's women 18-34 target demo. That was a decent but not great performance. It dropped a bit from the 3.10 million viewers and 1.5 A18-49 of its The Vampire Diaries lead-in, and pre-premiere Thursday was a particularly uncompetitive night.

WEEK TWO
But during the traditional premiere week, one of the weakest timeslots of the pre-premiere week suddenly saw all of the big four networks over a 3.0 demo. The Secret Circle took a big hit in the process, tumbling 31% to a 0.9 demo. Its lead-in also took a hit (The Vampire Diaries averaged a 1.2) but the erosion from that lead-in was steeper. Due to the big change in landscape, the drop was Truly only about 24%, but that's still a lot.

PROGNOSIS
Last year, Nikita and Hellcats both got off to fairly "meh" starts and I felt like of the two, one would probably get renewed, maybe both, and probably not neither. I picked the wrong one. In terms of how many get renewed, I feel about the same way about their Ringer/Secret Circle tandem. I could well be picking the wrong one again this year, but I'm saying The Secret Circle will eke out a second season. There are reasons to favor Ringer; it dropped less percentage-wise in week two and it's actually building from its lead-in. However, I just feel The Secret Circle is a better fit for its network and has a better timeslot situation. Ringer's pretty much going to have to keep on self-starting. All things being equal, maybe the CDub will want to keep the creator of its only real hit happy. It's always tough to really judge the CW's ratings when they're up against all the traditional broadcast premieres, so next week will probably be even more informative about both shows.

"First Two Weeks" is my look at... the first two weeks of a new scripted broadcast show's ratings. I also line all of these numbers up to do an objective analysis in what I call "the system."