Spotted Ratings, Wednesday 9/21/11: The IV Factor

WHAT MATTERS:

• (Headline is a Roman numerals joke, if that's not clear...) The big ratings story coming into the day was supposed to be the premiere of Yet Another Singing Competition. Instead, Fox's The X Factor was surprisingly modest. There's nothing wrong with a 4.4 in a vacuum, but most predictions went much higher, as the show is a mere shadow of American Idol and actually started weaker than NBC's similar The Voice (5.1) last April.

• The actual big ratings story of the day? ABC's Modern Family, which became the third show in the last three days to post a higher rating than any non-Super Bowl scripted airing of the 2010-11 season. Three days after cleaning up at the Emmys, Modern Family exceeded its previous ratings high of 5.1 (on 9/22/10, 10/27/10 and 2/9/11) by 20%.

• Sandwiching Modern on ABC were the rock solid The Middle (which set a new series high) and 10:00 drama Revenge, which lost nearly half of the Modern Fam lead-in but is still ahead of where most expected out of the gate. Next week comes a much smaller lead-in with Happy Endings for Revenge, but it's a cautiously optimistic start.

• As almost everyone expected, NBC's comedies tumbled in their new home. Up All Night was down 35% from its post-Got Talent debut, though a 2.4 would still be an OK number should it hold from here. Free Agents was down by roughly the same percentage. It appears the days are numbered for both Free Agents and the dreadfully-rated Harry's Law on NBC.

• Revenge was the surprise 10/9c winner at least for one night, but what I did get right in the hour was that the CSI/SVU matchup is gonna be a beatdown. The dinosaur CBS procedural CSI easily handled the Christopher Meloni-less premiere of SVU. CSI also Truly eked out a win in the hour, though it was a much closer three-way race in that metric.

• Survivor took a relatively minor hit against all the 8/7c competish, but it was a big premiere for Criminal Minds, up a tick from last year and nearly 3.5 times as strong as its NBC drama competition.

• The CW disaster continues with H8R and America's Next Top Model each down a couple ticks in week two. I'd maintain the latter is the more alarming news for the net.

FULL TABLE:

	Viewers	A18-49	Share	Skew	Last	Lead	LeLa	Avg	Rank	TRUE
The Middle	9.74	3.1	9	41%	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	1/1	3.31
Modern Family	14.53	6.1	15	54%	n/a	+97%	n/a	n/a	1/1	6.62
Revenge	10.02	3.3	9	42%	n/a	-46%	n/a	n/a	1/1	2.89
Survivor	10.46	3.2	9	39%	-6%	n/a	n/a	-6%	2/2	3.43
Criminal Minds	14.14	4.1	10	37%	n/a	+28%	n/a	n/a	1/1	4.26
CSI	12.74	3.2	9	32%	n/a	-22%	n/a	n/a	1/1	3.11
Up All Night	6.05	2.4	7	51%	-35%	n/a	n/a	-35%	2/2	2.49
Free Agents	3.87	1.3	4	43%	-38%	-46%	-35%	-38%	2/2	1.10
Harry's Law	7.53	1.2	3	20%	n/a	-8%	n/a	n/a	1/1	1.19
Law & Order: SVU	7.63	2.4	6	40%	n/a	+100%	n/a	n/a	1/1	2.64
X Factor Wed	12.49	4.4	12	45%	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	1/1	4.71
H8R	1.03	0.4	1	50%	-33%	n/a	n/a	-33%	2/2	0.35
America's Next Top Model	1.60	0.7	2	56%	-22%	+75%	-33%	-22%	2/2	0.75

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.

More Spotted Ratings in the Index.