Spotted R8ings, Wednesday 9/14/11: Up Till 10:30 At Night

WHAT MATTERS:

• Last night brought our first big-four scripted series premiere of the 2011-12 season, and it was a biggie! NBC comedy Up All Night was surprisingly the night's top program overall, narrowly edging its lead-in the America's Got Talent finale. (It did, however, drop a bit from the last half-hour of Talent and, for whatever this is worth, dropped a lot in the last fifteen minutes.) Though the program is still expected to take a dive when it moves to 8/7c next week, this is a very good start.

• In the headline, I refer to the fact that everything changed for NBC at 10:30. The premiere of Free Agents dropped more than 40% out of Up All Night. A 2.1 could be OK if it holds, but this start certainly doesn't bode well for its own move to 8:30/7:30c next week.

• The aforementioned finale of Got Talent ended a roller coaster of a season for the show down 8% from last year's finale. We'll take a look at the overall year-to-year comparisons in the War of 18-49 later this week.

• CBS also had a big evening with the premiere of Survivor, down a fairly unsettling 15% from last fall's premiere and the franchise's second-lowest premiere ever behind only last spring. The 90-minute finale of Big Brother led out and was even year-to-year, wrapping up an excellent season for the show. (Again, more in the War of 18-49 later this week.)

• The r8ings were not so strong for the series premiere of CW's H8R, although that 0.6 does edge out recent CDub reality premieres like High Society (0.5), Fly Girls (0.4), Plain Jane (0.4) and Shedding for the Wedding (0.5). Probably even more alarming was the continued collapse of America's Next Top Model (0.9). Coming off a terribly-rated season last spring, it looks like things are getting even worse. We'll see if things improve when there's less of a reality logjam starting next week.

• Last and least: as projected last week, the weird week three uptick for Fox's Buried Treasure was rather short-lived as it got crushed under a flood of reality in its finale.

FULL TABLE:

	Viewers	A18-49	Share	Skew	Last	Lead	LeLa	Avg	Rank	TRUE
The Middle (SR)	4.31	1.2	4	37%	-20%	n/a	n/a	+5%	5/24	0.96
The Middle (SR)	4.38	1.3	4	39%	-13%	+8%	+0%	+14%	3/25	1.27
Modern Family (SR)	4.90	1.8	5	48%	+0%	+38%	-35%	+13%	5/27	1.76
Modern Family (SR)	4.65	1.8	5	51%	+0%	+0%	-10%	+13%	5/28	1.61
Nightline Primetime	4.08	1.2	3	39%	-14%	-33%	+0%	-2%	9/13	1.07
Survivor	10.74	3.4	10	42%	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	1/1	3.38
Big Brother Wed	7.78	2.9	8	49%	+0%	-15%	+17%	+4%	3/10	2.56
America's Got Talent Wed	14.37	3.6	10	33%	+20%	n/a	n/a	+16%	4/14	3.53
Up All Night	10.95	3.7	10	44%	n/a	+3%	n/a	n/a	1/1	3.62
Free Agents	6.12	2.1	6	45%	n/a	-43%	n/a	n/a	1/1	1.69
Buried Treasure	2.80	0.8	2	38%	-38%	n/a	n/a	-27%	4/4	0.58
Buried Treasure (R)	3.06	0.9	2	39%	-25%	+13%	-38%	-18%	3/3	0.84
H8R	1.29	0.6	2	61%	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	1/1	0.55
America's Next Top Model	1.96	0.9	2	60%	n/a	+50%	n/a	n/a	1/1	0.87

KEY (with much more detail at the New Daily Spotted Ratings page):

Viewers - The total number of viewers (age 2+, in millions) that watched the program.
A18-49 - Adults 18-49 rating. Percentage of US TV-owning adults 18-49 watching the program.
Share - Adults 18-49 share. Percentage of US TV-watching adults 18-49 watching the program.
Skew - Percentage of the total audience that falls in the 18-49 demo.
Last - A18-49 percent difference from previous episode.
Lead - A18-49 percent difference from lead-in program.
LeLa - A18-49 percent difference between the show's lead-in and its lead-in for the previous episode.
Avg - A18-49 percent difference from the show's average demo for previous original episodes this season.
Rank - The A18-49 rating's rank among the show's episodes that have aired so far this season.
TRUE - True Strength, a metric developed last summer that adjusts the A18-49 rating for overall viewing levels, competition and lead-in.

(R) - Repeat. (For this week, "(oR)" denotes other-night repeat and "(SR)" denotes summer-season repeat.)

More Spotted Ratings in the Index.