First Two Weeks, Are You There, Chelsea?

ARE YOU THERE, CHELSEA? (NBC)

WEEK ONE
The premiere of Are You There, Chelsea? pulled in 6.18 million viewers and a 2.3 demo, actually making it the second-strongest of NBC's six comedies that week (and tops in viewers). It also built on its Whitney lead-in by 15%. A 2.3 demo is never anything special for a series premiere, even on NBC, but this is pretty solid by 2.3 standards. The big caveat is that there was relatively little competition; no Survivor, no American Idol, just an original Suburgatory.

WEEK TWO
Chelsea then caught a pretty tough break compared to most shows' week twos; American Idol swooped in. While it was Idol's lowest rated premiere in ten seasons, it still brought a 26% drop for Chelsea, taking it to a 1.7 demo. Whitney also got slammed, losing 20% to a 1.6 demo, but Chelsea's growth on the lead-in is now just 0.1.

PROGNOSIS
Compared to my first two of these in 2012, this one is a little tougher. It's probably going to score zero points in both versions of the "system" linked below, but this show has generally done better than I thought it would. If only NBC had gone with this pairing in the fall like they should've, it wouldn't have had to go up against Idol from the start. Still, NBC certainly can do (and has done) much worse than a 1.7 against American Idol. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if it mostly holds up and NBC keeps it around because they want to be in the multicam business. But I'm going to pick against it. I thought the pilot was terrible. And even against Idol, it's a steep drop, and it got worse relative to the Whitney lead-in. If it had held the 1.8 it had in preliminaries, this would've been even tougher. I will say no season two, but with some hesitation.

"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."