With The Voice scaling back to one hour last night, things went back to the way they were on Monday before the hot NBC upstart came along — with CBS on top in adults 18-49. With no ABC’s Dancing With The Stars, CBS also won the night in total viewers, the first time the network has done so in both measures this season. CBS’ fast nationals were likely slightly inflated by an NFL pre-emption in Houston, but its margin of victory is large enough to secure the network its first No. 1 finish this fall. All of CBS’ shows are currently running ahead of last week: How I Met Your Mother (3.3/9, up 6%), 2 Broke Girls (4.0/10 at 9 PM, up 14%, and 3.9/9 at 9:30 PM) and Hawaii Five-0 (2.7/7). The network also did well with a repeat of The Big Bang Theory (3.3/8) at 8:30 PM.
NBC’s Voice (3.8/10) didn’t suffer from going down to an hour at 8 PM vs. two hours last week — it fell just a tenth. It provided solid sampling for the network’s new game show Howie Mandel’s Take It All (2.2/5). That was up 47% from the debut of NBC’s game show Who’s Still Standing? (1.5/4) last December, but that show was a self-starter at 8 PM, leading into Fear Factor, while Take It All rode Voice‘s coattails. (Like Who’s Still Standing, Take It All is scheduled to air as a strip this week.) At 10 PM, the Michael Buble Christmas: Home For The Holidays special (1.4/4) was down 48% from last week’s Blake Shelton’s Not So Family Christmas, which immediately followed The Voice co-starring Shelton.
ABC and Fox barely registered last night. ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition logged a 1.3/3 at 8 PM and 1.5/4 at 9 PM. That was actually up 44% and 50% from last week, respectively, but the network was pre-empted in Boston for NFL football, leading to ratings inflation. On Fox, the American Country Music Awards (1.4/4) were down 30% from last year.
As the CW’s Gossip Girl heads into next week’s series finale, the soap posted its most-watched (1.03M) and highest-rated episode of the season. Gossip Girl was up 30% week to week in total viewers, and rose two tenths in adults 18-34 (0.7/2) and adults 18-49 (0.5/1). 90210 was also up 17% week to week in total viewers (1.16M) and up in all key demos.
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