Demos Year-to-Year, May Sweeps 2012 Week Four Winners/Losers

As usual with my year-to-year posts, at the end of each week I take a look at the biggest gainers and losers among adults 18-49. I stick to only original-vs.-original comparisons for these lists.

Top 5 year-to-year show losers
1. Dancing with the Stars Mon -38%
2. Glee -37% 
3. American Idol Tuesday -31%
4. American Idol Wednesday -30%
5. American Idol Thursday -30%

This is not a week of particularly useful comparisons, since so many shows sat out the final week of the season. But this one paints a pretty good picture of some of the biggest falls from grace of the 2011-12 season, especially if you add in #6 (the DWTS finale, -28%) and #7 (Celebrity Apprentice, -27%).

Top Bottom 5 year-to-year show gainers losers
1. Grey's Anatomy +14%
2. Dateline (NBC, F 10-11pm vs. F 9-11pm) +0%
3. Modern Family -2%
4. America's Funniest Home Videos -6%
5. The Middle -9%

Coincidentally, virtually all the shows that made year-to-year gains this sweep (basically the CBS comedies and Shark Tank) didn't have an applicable comparison this week. That left us with the big Grey's finale and then a whole lot of down shows. Modern Family and The Middle were year-to-year gainers for almost all of the season but went slightly down in the last few weeks.

Top 5 year-to-year timeslot losers
1. Awake vs. Parks and Recreation x2 (NBC, Thursday 8-9pm) -68%
2. Community x2 vs. The Office (NBC, Thursday 9-10pm) -67% 
3. Dateline vs. The Voice (NBC, Tuesday 10-11pm) -58%
4. Nikita vs. Supernatural (CW, Friday 8-9pm) -50%
5. Touch vs. Bones (Fox, Thursday 9-10pm) -46%

In week four of sweeps, it's largely about how hard you "try," and NBC was clearly not trying nearly as hard in some of these slots (with no The Office in the final week), while in others...

Top 5 year-to-year timeslot gainers
1. America's Got Talent vs. Minute to Win It (NBC, Monday 8-9pm) +113%
2. Grimm vs. Dateline (NBC, Friday 9-10pm) +68%
3. American Ninja Warrior vs. The Event/Law and Order: Los Angeles (NBC, Monday 9-11pm) +63%
4. Law and Order: SVU vs. Law and Order: Los Angeles (NBC, Wednesday 10-11pm) +54%
5.  House vs. The Chicago Code (Fox, Monday 9-10pm) +49%

...they were trying much harder. Got Talent and a decent start from American Ninja Warrior kept NBC Monday near the very top of this list, and an SVU on the final evening (when they didn't have one last year) also provided a big boost over an extra ep of LOLA.

Here are this premiere week's daily posts, in case you missed any:
Thursday | Friday | Sunday | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday

Previous recaps from the corresponding week: 2010 | 2011