Winter 2013 Best Case/Worst Case, Wednesday

Introductory stuff now at the bottom.

Other Winter 2013 BC/WC: Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Fri/Sat/Sun

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The Basics:

	bc	Rank	y2y	Rank	TPUT	Rank	bc/TPUT	Rank
Wednesday	9.4	3	-6%	5	33.4	4	28%	2

Wednesday has not been as big a problem for broadcast as Tuesday, but nothing has really emerged as a clear success story. (Stay tuned on Chicago Fire, though.) The 8:00 hour is down 8% with The Neighbors well below last year's Suburgatory, NBC's Animal Practice/Whitney well below last year's Up All Night and Survivor and The X Factor each down double digits. (It's that rare slot where the CW actually made a meaningful difference thanks to its breakout hit Arrow.) 9:00 is healthier mostly because Harry's Law is gone, but 10:00 is down 10% with Nashville dropping well below last year's Revenge.

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		American Idol	Slot Average
		Premieres January 16	2.69
		Best Case: Last season was a bit of an "overreaction" by the viewers. Things will straighten out somewhat this year, and the new judges work pretty well. Down just 8% to a 4.90, and it's miraculously the #1 (EDIT: broadcast-only) entertainment show yet again after The Big Bang Theory drops big late in the season. Worst Case: The new judges don't work, and what was once the gold standard in competition reality is now an X Factor-esque trainwrecky mess. Another -32% to 3.60 and squarely below The Voice. Likeliest: I've overestimated the appeal of what I thought were huge names in judging, and I'm pretty sure Idol's new ones aren't huge names in judging. So the drops will continue. I kinda doubt it'll be as steep as last season, but it won't be pretty. I'll say a decline about as big as The X Factor's, -21% to a 4.20.	Slot Orig Avg
			2.84
5.33			Occupants
			The X Factor Wed
y2y	Label
-32%	megahit		2.97	2.92
True2	Sitch
5.33	+0%
2011-12 Slot
Wednesday 8:00

		Survivor	Slot Average
		Premieres February 13	2.55
		Best Case:The last Fans vs. Favorites season (fall 2007) began to slow the show's decline during one of its tougher year-to-year stretches. This one will as well! Down just 5% to a 2.69. Worst Case: This group of so-called "favorites" is derived mostly from the last few years, which have generally been bad seasons. Idol holds up well this year. A typical -15% to 2.41. Likeliest: As someone who just restarted Survivor watching about two years ago, I'm actually happy to be able to recognize most of the returning favorites, and it seems like a decent lineup. Like the last FvF season, the year-to-year trend will slightly improve vs. its -15%ish norm of late. -10% to a 2.55.	Slot Orig Avg
			2.76
2.83			Occupants
			Survivor Fall
y2y	Label
-14%	solid		2.81	2.72
True2	Sitch
3.13	-10%
2011-12 Slot
Wednesday 8:00

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CABLE:

Show	Network	Premieres	Avg	y2y
The Americans	FX	1/30, 10/9c	NEW!
Workaholics	Comedy	1/16, 10/9c	0.89	-21%
Necessary Roughness	USA	1/23, 10/9c	0.71	-42%
Southland	TNT	2/13, 10/9c	0.63	-6%
Hot in Cleveland	TV Land	ongoing	0.30
Happily Divorced	TV Land	ongoing	0.26

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NETWORK TO WATCH
Fox. Idol. The end.

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My extensive Best Case/Worst Case previews from the fall are BACK for the midseason. For the most part, these posts are the same as in the fall. You can refer to the Intro post from last summer to explain most of what you'll see below.

The main difference is that the timeslot info in "The Basics" and in the timeslot portion of each show card now cover the fall 2012 numbers, from September 24 through December 23. (In the Fall Best Case/Worst Case, they covered all of the 2011-12 regular season.) So the slot averages are all across that three-month fall span, and the "Occupants" are things the network aired in the slot this fall.

To avoid covering stuff that's too far down the road, I'm just hitting the January and February premieres here. I tried to figure out how to break these up with a similar number of shows in each post but couldn't really crack it. So I'm just doing one post for each day of the week until Friday, which will cover Friday/Saturday/Sunday.