Spotted Ratings, Wednesday 5/20/15

WHAT MATTERS:

• FINALS UPDATE: Finals upticks for Survivor (2.3) and Modern Family (2.3) kept them tied as the top program on the last day of the season.
  

• On the last day of the 2014-15 regular season, ABC premiered a couple more summer series, the new game show 500 Questions (1.2) at 8/7c and returnee Celebrity Wife Swap (1.0) at 10/9c. For 500 Questions, this is a pretty reasonable start by summer filler standards, though it will be a challenge to hold on well since much of this seven-night run will be positioned around the low-viewed Memorial Day weekend. Wife Swap, meanwhile, was even with the first episode of its 2013-14 run, which aired after Trophy Wife in mid-April (though the show usually did better in the summer with an Extreme Weight Loss lead-in).

• The downside for ABC was that these incompatible surroundings brought down the finales of Modern Family (2.2) and Black-ish (1.6) to a pretty ridiculous degree. This marked the first time Modern ever went below that 2.5 on Thanksgiving Eve in season one, and it wasn't even close.

• CBS wrapped up Survivor (2.2) with no heat for the two-hour finale and a 1.8 for the reunion at 10:00. Opposite Survivor, Fox had a weak two-hour return from summer staple MasterChef (1.2). This was 20% behind the already low 1.5 that began last season on Memorial Day; that 1.5 ended up being the outright lowest point of the season, and it was consistently around 2.0 in the second half of the season. So unless this number was similarly depressed by the Survivor competition, the franchise is setting up for a very ugly year-to-year trend.

• NBC had the only big four dramas with a slightly up The Mysteries of Laura (1.1) and slightly down Law and Order: SVU (1.4) and Chicago PD (1.4). CW's finale of Supernatural (0.7) was even despite a repeat lead-in (0.3).

FULL TABLE:

Info		Show						Timeslot		True
	A18-49	Skew	Last		LeLa	Rank	y2y	TLa	Ty2y
500 Questions	1.2	30%	n/a	n/a	n/a	1/1	n/a	-37%	-41%	1.4
Modern Family	2.3	41%	-15%	-0.4	-0.8	24/24	-38%	-15%	-38%	2.7
Black-ish	1.6	38%	-20%	-0.4	-0.4	24/24	n/a	-20%	+23%	1.6
Celebrity Wife Swap	1.0	39%	n/a	n/a	n/a	1/1	+0%	-17%	+18%	1.3
							ABC:	-24%	-23%
Survivor	2.3	30%	+0%	+0.0	n/a	4/13	-12%	+31%	-11%	2.4
Survivor	1.8	32%	-22%	-0.5	n/a	14/14	-5%	+50%	-8%	1.9
							CBS:	+36%	-10%
The Mysteries of Laura	1.1	20%	+10%	+0.1	n/a	13/22	n/a	+10%	+0%	1.3
Law and Order: SVU	1.4	26%	-13%	-0.2	+0.1	16/23	-13%	-10%	-10%	1.7
Chicago PD	1.4	25%	-13%	-0.2	-0.2	20/23	-13%	-13%	-13%	1.6
							NBC:	-6%	-8%
MasterChef	1.2	45%	n/a	n/a	n/a	1/1	-20%	-26%	-54%	1.4
							Fox:	-26%	-54%
Supernatural (R)	0.3	39%						-70%	+20%	0.4
Supernatural	0.7	51%	+0%	+0.0	-0.7	14/23	-36%	+0%	+40%	0.9
							CW:	-41%	+33%
							Big5:	-11%	-24%

KEY (click to expand)

A18-49 - Adults 18-49 rating. Percentage of US TV-owning adults 18-49 watching the program.
Skew - Percentage of adults 18-49 within the show's total viewership.
Last - A18-49 difference (percent and numerical) from the show's previous episode.
LeLa - A18-49 difference between the show's lead-in and its lead-in for the previous episode.
Rank - The A18-49 rating's rank among the show's episodes so far this season.
y2y - Percent difference between A18-49 and the show's rating a year ago.
TLa - Percent difference between A18-49 and the network's rating in the timeslot one week ago.
Ty2y - Percent difference between A18-49 and the network's rating in the timeslot one year ago.
True - A metric that adjusts the A18-49 rating for overall viewing levels, competition and lead-in. PRELIMINARY CALCULATION. For finals, see SpotVault.

(R) - Repeat.

Much more detail on these numbers at the New Daily Spotted Ratings page.

More Spotted Ratings in the Index.