BuzzerBlog

The sweeps period is over with a bit of a whimper rather than a bang to be honest, but I digress.  The Winter Olympics didn’t help the genre much.  Ratings are in for the most recent period and the shows that reaped the most benefits are Jeopardy! and Who Wants to be a Millionaire.  Jeopardy!, the age old quiz show, finished at a 6.3 for the month of February.  It’s down a tiny bit from last week, but overall the show saw year-to-year increase.  It rose a big 9% from February 2009.  Its sister show Wheel of Fortune finished at 7.4, flat from last week.  It did go up 3% year to year, though.  I bring this up because I can’t remember a time that didn’t involve Ken Jennings where the Jeopardy! ratings have been so close to Wheel.  Good for them.

Who Wants to be a Millionaire has had a great season, seeing lots of gains over the past few months.  Last week Millionaire stayed at a flat 2.6.  However, again year to year, the show was up 8%.  I know we’ve speculated on it before, but I have to think last summer’s ABC primetime revival helped a bit.  There’s a lot of people who didn’t know the show still even existed, and having Meredith Viera and Regis Philbin there plugging the show constantly has to have done nothing but help.  It’s my favorite, so I’m pretty happy to see it doing so well.  Auditions for the 11th year of Millionaire will start in April, so keep checking back for info.  Also don’t forget that Dancing With the Stars week is in two weeks.

The rest of the shows, for the most part, weren’t that bad.  Compared to November 2009, since February 2009 ratings weren’t available due to the show not existing, Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? had just a 6% drop to a 1.6.  But compared to last week it was up one-tenth of a point so I’m sure they aren’t too upset.  Family Feud shrank 7% year to year to a 1.4.  But yet again, it’s up a tenth of a point.  Deal or No Deal is by far the largest victim.  Ratings from last year are down an ugly 35% to a 1.1.  It’s pretty obvious why it’s not coming back to syndication.  But will it come back to NBC like rumored?  We’ll see soon.

We’ve gone over it before, but just to recap: NBC’s two hour debut of Minute to Win It underwhelmed a bit with a 2.8/5 at 7:00PM ET but a 4.0/7 at 8:00PM ET.  The Amazing Race beat the show rather easily, especially.  It’s sole benefit right now is that it’s cheap.  Watch out for how much it goes down (or maybe up) due to word of mouth this Sunday, though.  Given the large amount of promotion it had during the Olympics you’d figure it would start out a bit better.  Other network reality shows are updated on the ratings page as well.  Be sure to check it out.

Two things about Minute to Win It, which debuted last night at 7:00PM ET on NBC.  We’ll look at positives and negatives.  One negative is that it was in third place for each half hour.  A quick positive, though, is that it did manage to gain viewers each half hour.  It’s always encouraging when a show doesn’t lose viewers each half.  Next negative: the overall numbers were just not very good.  The 7:00PM hour averaged 4.57 viewers and the 8:00PM hour saw 7.2 million.  It did grow but neither number was very good.  Another positive is the key demo rating.  It maxed out in 2nd place and a 2.6 rating (nearly 8 million viewers total).  And the show’s incredibly cheap to do.  If it can stay in this area then it may be safe.  But shows typically drop in the second week, and given this show didn’t have the greatest word of mouth we’ll see.  I partially blame NBC for the poor word of mouth.

Many of you noted that yesterday’s episode didn’t have the whole overblown production of the smoke machines, “Game Agents”, and that stuff.  I saw quite a few people being pretty happy they ditched it.  I’ve got bad news for you.  They are airing these episodes in order.  Yesterday was episode one, and next Sunday is episode two.  The screeners the press was sent, with the stuff everyone’s been complaining about, is episode three which starts on March 21st.  So they decided to hide the (relatively speaking) sane episodes and sent the mental patients to critics.  These first two episodes feel like a different, better show.  Instead they send the press the more psychotic ones which shortly get blasted to pieces by practically everyone.  Wasn’t exactly the smartest move.

Time for some more ratings.  Nothing that big so I’ll keep it brief for a change.  Check out all the results by clicking here for the full listings. Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! are the only shows to increase ratings for the week ending February 28th.  It’s the final week of sweeps also.  It’s very important for each show to bring in those advertising dollars around now.  Wheel went up 3% to a 7.4.  Overall during sweeps, which got a little screwed up because of the Olympics, the show was down just 2%.  Jeopardy! was also up 3% and saw a 6.4 rating.  Jeopardy! actually broke even during sweeps period and appears to be the only show that really has, so good job for it.

Who Wants to be a Millionaire sank 4% to 2.6.  It was down only 4% and only down one-tenth of a ratings point, so good job for them.  Look for another theme week, “Dancing With the Stars Week”, at the end of March.  Family Feud did the next best thing to going up; it froze solid at a 1.3.  Overall during sweeps it was down 6%, but again only down one-tenth of a point so no worries.  Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? also froze at 1.5.  Just like Feud it was down 6% and just one-tenth of a point.  Deal or No Deal didn’t even bother with the ratings during the Olympics period because of so many preemption, and regardless it was probably the best for them.  So all together, given that it was the Olympics, it was a very nice sweeps period for game shows.

Also updated on the ratings page are some network shows like Amazing Race, American Idol, Survivor, and The Marriage Ref.

Yet another day of no real big news, so here are some small news flashes for today.

*First bit of Price is Right news.  ABC passed out some Price ratings in just the key demographics.  This isn’t part of the poor ratings part, in advance.  In the key daytime demographic of women 18-49, Price ranks fourth with a 1.2 rating.  These are from ABC, so take that as you will.  This really shouldn’t shock remotely anyone since game shows skew unbelievably old, so let’s stop the crazy train before it leaves the station.

*Rest of the Price news: Someone from SFGate recently did an article about their experience trying to become a contestant on The Price is Right.  It’s an interesting read about what it’s like, and you can get it by clicking here.  FYI, some old writers of Conan O’Brien’s late night shows recently went to a taping also, and one got on stage.  No idea for the air date yet, so be on the lookout.  Finally, Price has been doing some interesting “Model Minute” videos on their site.  One of them from Manuela is below.

*BBC’s Pointless, a pretty fun quiz show asking people to think of answers no one else has, came back today.  We had some stuff about the first season here.  A few format changes came in, courtesy of Bother’s Bar.  In the second round you now pick things to answer from a list as opposed to randomly.  Not quite sure I get the logic behind that.  An updated head-to-head round has a few easier questions and if no one reaches the maximum point level it’s a best of five.  A few graphic changes went in also.  We’ll get some video of it as soon as we can.

*Finally, our ratings sources gave us some info on GSN’s new show Instant Recall.  In short, it bombed miserably apparently.  The debut scored a 0.1 rating.  I really don’t know what to say.  It shouldn’t be that hard to get a good game show in there.  This is yet another big failure.  Will they please just bring back Lingo?  It’s cheap, dependable, and really popular to this day.  Why are they so embarrassed of it?  All of this is just getting sad.

It’s time for a ratings report for the week ending February 21st.  It’s still sweeps period at this time, so all the shows are needing a boost.  The Olympics definitely hurt most, though.  By the way, as always, be sure to visit our often updated ratings page. We’ve got all the syndicated shows in there with ratings backed up, as well as percentages they gained or lost.  We’ll add more game shows once results get in.  But for now, in terms of syndicated game shows, Who Wants to be a Millionaire was, comparatively, the king this report.

Millionaire was the only show to not lose any viewers at all, which is nice.  It stuck at a 2.7 rating, where it’s been sitting comfortably for the better part of five weeks now.  With how people’s viewing habits are just keeping your viewers is good enough.  But, again, Millionaire is the only game show to gain viewers year-to-date.  These past few weeks where Millionaire has been at the 2.7 rating have been pretty uneventful, with most people struggling to get close to the $25,000 prize level let alone huge money.  These past two weeks, with the Real Housewives week plus this week’s Million Dollar Movie Week, have picked up the money some so we’ll see how that goes.  Not to mention next Monday we have a returning contestant who may be my favorite Millionaire player in years: Susan Filer.  We’ll have more on her later this week.

Like I said before, the rest of the shows were down.  Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! only lost 3% each, to a 7.2 and a 6.3, respectively.  Is it just me or are these two shows suddenly a lot closer than ever before?  Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? had its first pretty large down week that I can remember on record.  It sank 12% to a still decent 1.5.  Family Feud lost 13% and hit 1.3.  Deal or No Deal had some decent news this time.  They didn’t even bother tracking the ratings during that week so there’s no record of it going down!  How fortunate.

In network shows, The Marriage Ref, a very loose pseudo-game show, (which is remarkably unfunny, given that it’s Jerry Seinfeld’s show), debuted to an impressive 8.7/15.  But note it followed the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics so we’ll see how it does in week two.  The Amazing Race continues to do well, getting over ten million viewers with a 5.2/9 rating.  I’m going to start adding ratings for some shows I consider to basically be game shows, like Amazing Race and Survivor and that stuff, so check out the ratings page constantly for updates.

The sooner GSN can get rid of both Carnie Wilson’s reality show and the hidden camera game show Hidden Agenda, the better, quite frankly.  New ratings for the network’s big new original push and updated direction are in and they are rough.  These results are from the week of February 15th.  Remember, we previously posted debut week ratings which weren’t good to begin with.  They’ve gone a lot lower, and it’s very alarming for Hidden Agenda.

Hidden Agenda’s first-run episode on Thursday, February 18th, sunk to a rather staggering low of 67,000 viewers.  This wasn’t a rerun, this was a brand new episode in primetime.  The only thing to rank below it that day was…Hidden Agenda’s rerun at 11:00PM ET.  I was thinking it was potentially the poor lead-in from Carnie Wilson originally, but the show is just not clicking with people.  The show’s not that bad, it’s just nothing to write home about either.  I would be a bit alarmed about their new big push Instant Recall, which is a very similar show, if it wasn’t for Wink Martindale hosting.  They’ve been pushing Wink to the front of the press for this show, and that’ll trap in some classic fans, so it’s looking a bit more positive.

Carnie Wilson’s reality show is doing a bit better, but for all the promotion and fuss made over it, it’s still not that great.  New episode ratings, on Thursday February 18th, had 177,000 viewers watching.  Just by itself it’s not that great but when you factor in its partner show, Hidden Agenda, it’s passable.  Where it gets ugly comes from the marathon they did of it on Sunday, February 21st, in which they apparently decide to give it no press except to the people that watch the network that apparently don’t watch the show.  The first episode got 114,000 viewers and rapidly sunk each hour all the way down to 61,000 viewers.  Not a good sign.  They’ve got a few dating shows in the pipeline, two or three reality shows also, but next to no actual studio based game shows.  I’d be reconsidering.

But you have to hand it to Deal or No Deal, despite massive rerun everywhere and viewer burnout from new episodes, it’s still at the top of the network and basically the only thing keeping it floating.

A new ratings report came in yesterday.  As the headline says, all you can think is, “Poor Deal or No Deal,” whenever you see the ratings these days.  No matter what the other shows do, even if everything else increases, Deal cannot seem to get any momentum whatsoever.  It’s almost like the viewers know it’s canceled and aren’t bothering to stick around anymore.  It had a not-so-nice drop for the week ending February 14th.  It went down 8% to a 1.1 rating.  It just can’t do anything no matter what they throw out there.  It went down 8% last ratings report also, so we’re down 16% during the sweeps period.  Not too good.

I really do like Deal or No Deal, so it’s a bit distressing to see it go out with a huge whimper like this.  Again, I do like it, I just don’t like what the American version became.  Apparently many who aren’t familiar with the international versions got equally as sick of it.  It started out on NBC as a nice, suspenseful, dark show.  Watch the repeats on GSN.  It’s a totally different show back then than it is today.  Deal can be summarized most easily today by a constant, never ending half hour of top-of-the-lungs screaming.  It’s become a circus.  Watching the show’s progress, it seems like the success of the show got out of the staff’s hands and they lost control of it somewhere along the line.  They held it back fine for the first few years, when it was most popular.  But again, somewhere along the way the brake lines were cut and it hit a brick wall.

As I said before, though, the other game shows did well.  Wheel of Fortune, always the top dog, slid barely enough to note.  It’s only down 1% to a 7.4.  Jeopardy! is doing nicely, up by 2% to a season high 6.4.  Millionaire is getting a new breath of life this season and went up 4% to a 2.7.  Those changes, plus the ABC season this past summer, seem to be working.  Speaking of that, anyone else shocked we haven’t heard about another primetime season of Millionaire since the last one did well for the summer?  Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? continues to impress, staying flat at a 1.7.  Family Feud had the nicest increase; up 7% to 1.5.

Quick ratings update for you all, per a press release sent by CBS.  The Price is Right and it’s new companion Let’s Make A Deal seem to be doing incredibly well right now.  Both are posting double-digit gains compared to a year ago.  While that’s good for Price, it’s even better for Let’s Make A Deal which hasn’t been officially renewed yet, but it’s looking likely.  First, though, is Price.  The Drew Carey hosted game, currently in its 38th season, is up 12% from last year; from around 4.5 million viewers to five.  In the important demographics, Price is up 15% in women 25-54 and up 18% in adults 25-54.  Fantastic news for the show which came off a rocky season last year.  The show’s been improving and it just keeps getting better.

Let’s Make A Deal is a place for some celebration, though.  Remember, it replaced the canceled soap opera Guiding Light.  It’s definitely cheaper, and the ratings have gone up considerably.  Deal, hosted by Wayne Brady, has increased by 12% from last year.  That’s a gain of around 300,000 viewers to a 2.42 million viewership.  Even better is the increase of 20% in women 18-49.  Again, couple that with the show being cheaper and I’ll be a bit amazed if it doesn’t get picked up for a new season.  This success is probably why we’re seeing so many game shows up for grabs for the As The World Turns slot.  If this new one works out, more networks may jump ship as well.

We’ve got ratings for the week ending February 2nd coming up.  First, though, we got reports of ratings for the premiere of High Stakes Poker.  Given how popular the show has been in the past, the ratings are shockingly low.  We’ve got reports that the show sixth season debut only got a .2 rating.  It’s very down, by that show’s standards.  I wonder what happened.  Has interest just died down?  I’ve been hearing from a few people that there really was practically little attention given or huge support, showcasing what is probably the channel’s most valuable show (and rightly so).  The show always does well in the key male demographics, something no other show on that network can do, so that has to help a bit but this is a bit troubling.  High Stakes Poker is pretty important to that network and it’s been reported that it’s one of the only shows advertisers actively flock to.  Let’s see if they can pull any tricks out of their sleeve and help the show survive.

The rest of the game shows we’ve got ratings for, in syndication, didn’t do that well for the week ending February 2nd.  This includes the first two days of the important February sweeps period, so we’ll see what it looks like better next week.  The shows pull out all the stops for sweeps.  Wheel of Fortune just slipped back a tiny bit; down 1% to a 7.5.  Wheel will be doing a special Sandals Resort Week starting February 22nd so check that out.  Jeopardy! dropped a tiny bit more.  It lost 2% and got a 6.3.  Who Wants to be a Millionaire is still hanging in strongly, down 4% to 2.6.  Millionaire will have a special “Real Housewives of Millionaire” week during sweeps, starting February 22nd.  The “You’re In the Hot Seat” game is still going on which seems to be popular as well.  Not during sweeps for some reason but starting March 1st will be the annual “Million Dollar Movie Week” which historically gives out giant money each season, so it’s not to be missed.

Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? continues to do great.  It went back 6% to a 1.7.  They really don’t have the option for a sweeps stunt since they seem to have exhausted all of their episodes before December somehow.  Family Feud was the only show which didn’t lose any viewers.  It stayed flat at a 1.4.  Again, I don’t see any sweeps stunts coming up for that.  Deal or No Deal continues drifting into the grave, losing the most viewers.  It’s down 8% to a 1.2.

Sorry about no updates yesterday.  I had a small situation to take care of.

Time for another ratings update, which you can get more coverage of by clicking here.  The headliner this week is surely Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader, which was recently renewed for a second season.  The show went up 6% to a nice 1.8 rating.  One thing to note with this is that this isn’t solely the syndication rating.  This is factoring in other things, like the MyNetwork airing (which became a programming syndicator this season).  When the show first came out the original episodes in syndication-only got around a 1.0 or less.  But the show’s success has been because of a fantastic marketing plan by Twentieth.  I originally scoffed and said airing the show on MyNetwork and CMT would be overkill, but it’s brought in a lot of money and kept the show around.  Not to mention it is genuinely a fun format.  If they can keep up this momentum and actually build anticipation for a second season, which Deal or No Deal chose not to do, this show may run for some time to come.

Let’s look at ratings from one year ago (week ending February 1st), and we’ll do that for the rest of the post.  We’ll start with the canceled Deal or No Deal which chose just to speed to the grave this season for some reason. Deal or No Deal was at a 2.0 then, so that’s a loss of 35% from a year ago.  It did the worst of the game shows from the year-ago vantage point.  I’d argue it’s an age thing, but the reruns on cable do well so it can’t be the main factor.  It probably doesn’t help that you can’t tell a rerun from years ago to a new episode.  Again, it’s part of the whole “speeding to the grave” thing.

Who Wants to be a Millionaire saw a season low 2.4 rating, but believe it or not we’re up to a 2.7.  It’s been in this general range the entire time.  I’ll have to check more but I think the show may be up from a year ago, all averaged together.  It’s the only show to be either level or up from last year regularly.  The show went through a massive transformation the past year, and as much as I love the show it frankly got pretty cheap with the prizes given away in recent times, but people are still flocking to it.  As a huge fan of the show that’s a big relief.  The “You’re In the Hot Seat” home game seems to be bringing some extra eyes in.  Look out in the next few weeks for “Real Housewives of Millionaire” week which will apparently have some tie-in with the Bravo reality series.  In March will be Million Dollar Movie week, and that week tends to give away the most money out of any season.  Last season there were three $250,000 winners right in that area, so don’t miss it if you miss seeing the six figure sums thrown around.

Family Feud last year at this time was at a 1.5, and this season it’s at a 1.4.  Only a loss of around 6% or so, which in the grand scheme of things is fine.  There’s always a core group of fans who get terrified when shows make changes from their holy/sainted original formats, but Feud needed it when they brought back Bullseye and a new car for winning five games.  The fans accepted it clearly, it has to be saving a bit of money overall, and the ratings haven’t been suffering this season at all really.  It’s been in that 1.5 area most of the time.  We’ll see what happens once established host John O’Hurley leaves and is replaced by Steve Harvey.  If nothing else I’m guessing Steve works for cheaper than John, and I do think Steve will do fantastic so the cheaper they can make it the longer we’ll see it stick around.

Finally, the two reliable shows.  Wheel of Fortune is down a bit, just 5%, from an 8.0 last year to a 7.6 this past week.  Jeopardy! was only down 3%, from last year’s 6.6 to last week’s 6.4.  The longevity and stability of these two shows is amazing.

Just a small site update.  You know the Contestant and Ratings pages which were never updated for some reason and horrendously broken.  Fixed them finally!  We’ll be making more tweaks to them as time goes on but they actually lead to new content which is updated regularly, that’s readable, and stuff that you can actually use.  Sorry for the delays in those.  I think after five years I’m starting to understand how to run this website

I’ve got a relatively delayed ratings report, but I’ve got it now and I made an effort so give me an A for effort at least.  These are for the most recent reports, the week ending January 17th.  It wasn’t a good week for any game show except Jeopardy!, which doesn’t happen too often.  The quizzer actually rose by 2% to a 6.3.  It puts it pretty close to Wheel of Fortune which is always nice to see.  As far as I’ve been reading they’ve had some exciting relatively-big-money games with some long running contestant streaks so that doesn’t hurt.  It’s one of the shows that truly has no end in sight.  This thing could go on forever.

The other one that could go on forever is Wheel of Fortune.  It was down 8% this week but still ruled over everything else, with a 7.0  rating.  The budget definitely took a small dive this season from what I’ve seen, but luckily people really don’t care.  Just an aside while I’m on the topic since I don’t get the chance to talk about the show much: is that set barren or is it just me?  There’s like nothing on it.  Anyway, other ratings were down just as much.  Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader shrunk 11% to a 1.6 rating.  As we figured a while ago and what’s finally been reported, the current only-syndicated rating, whatever it may be, is not strong enough to get a second season.  However, the reruns on CMT and MyNetwork have made the show very profitable, and it’s why we’ll see it coming back.  It was a genius move which they could be commended for.  It’s companion show Don’t Forget The Lyrics! debuting in September, follows the same model.

Who Wants to be a Millionaire went down by 11% as well, to a 2.5 rating.  The removal of Phone A Friend which has made it remarkably hard to even get to the $25,000 milestone hasn’t affected ratings whatsoever which is nice.  Family Feud lost 7% and got 1.4.  Deal or No Deal, which is nearly officially canceled, fell by 8% to a 1.2.  They fixed the show in the first season and had a chance to knock it out of the park in season two, but for some reason decided to let the aged format rest.  It benefits GSN who is bound to pick that show up instantly.  They need it insanely badly.

SECOND EDIT: After the break we have the comparisons for Hidden Agenda, like promised.  It’s more brutal than Carnie Wilson.  It’s downright ugly.

Edit: Fixed dates

Thanks to the great people at PIFeedback, we’ve got a comparison between Carnie Wilson: Unstapled in each of its time slots and the show that was there on the week of January 4th, the last published. If you follow us on Facebook or Twitter you saw that Carnie Wilson debuted to a .3 rating. We had messed up ratings we previously published, and we apologize. The .3 was correct, but we just wanted verification before we publish again. Aren’t you glad GSN replaced so many other shows, including completely axing some classics for all of you out there that like those older shows, for this? Unstapled dropped in every single time slot. Some slots it was in the hundreds of thousands lost.  We’ll have a comparison for Hidden Agenda soon.

Look, I’m not trying to be an ass to GSN or Carnie.  I like Carnie.  I like some people there and I’m guessing there’s one or two left there that can tolerate me.   But every single person, critic or fan, repeatedly warned you about these shows, how they did in the past, and why they would not work.  And we were right.  I didn’t figure we would be this right, but we were right. I heard from the same sources at the same place that gave me these ratings that the numbers tumbled in week two. What’s going to happen after that? I’d be reconsidering Life At Stake and the Bunco show. Your viewers have spoken.  You do well in the game show department.  That’s a clear fact.  Catch 21 and Newlywed Game are fun and popular.  Even the shows that were on the failed Big Saturday Night were really good, but just got messed up because of the programming.  You can expand the brand to other games.  We saw that during the rebranding a few years back.  Solitary will be looking for a new home soon.  The Poker and Blackjack shows were successes.  This is not the way, though.  History has shown that whenever we try to distance ourselves from the genre, we end up crawling back to it, clinging on to whatever viewers we can.

Carnie Wilson: Unstapled Wednesday 1:00AM 80,000
Jeopardy! Wednesday 1:00AM 188,000 Viewers Lost 108,000

Carnie Wilson: Unstapled Wednesday 10:00PM 183,000
1 VS 100 Wednesday 10:00PM 556,000 Viewers Lost 373,000

Carnie Wilson: Unstapled Saturday 10:30PM 203,000
1 VS 100 Saturday 10:30PM 445,000 Viewers Lost 242,000

Carnie Wilson: Unstapled Tuesday 10:30PM 195,000
1 VS 100 Tuesday 10:30PM 385,000 Viewers Lost 190,000

Carnie Wilson: Unstapled Friday 11:00AM 73,000
Catch 21 Friday 11:00AM 108,000 Viewers Lost 35,000

Carnie Wilson: Unstapled Thursday 11:00PM 142,000
Deal or no Deal Thursday 11:00PM 368,000 Viewers Lost 226,000

Carnie Wilson: Unstapled Sunday 11:30AM 79,000
Catch 21 Sunday 11:30AM 283,000 Viewers Lost 204,000

Carnie Wilson: Unstapled Tuesday 12:00AM 165,000
Millionaire Tuesday 12:00AM 316,000 Viewers Lost 151,000

Carnie Wilson: Unstapled Saturday 12:30PM 96,000
1 VS 100 Saturday 12:30PM 353,000 Viewers Lost 257,000

Carnie Wilson: Unstapled Saturday 2:00AM 103,000
Deal or no Deal Saturday 2:00AM 219,000 Viewers Lost 116,000

Carnie Wilson: Unstapled Wednesday 2:00PM 47,000
$100,000 Pyramid Wednesday 2:00PM 262,000 Viewers Lost 215,000

Carnie Wilson: Unstapled Thursday 3:00PM 116,000
Lingo Thursday 3:00PM 268,000 Viewers Lost 152,000

Carnie Wilson: Unstapled Friday 3:30PM 211,000
Lingo Friday 3:30PM 385,000 Viewers Lost 174,000

Carnie Wilson: Unstapled Sunday 4:00PM 186,000
Newlywed Game Sunday 4:00PM 499,000 Viewers Lost 313,000

Carnie Wilson: Unstapled Tuesday 4:00PM 136,000
Family Feud Tuesday 4:00PM 363,000 Viewers Lost 227,000

Carnie Wilson: Unstapled Sunday 4:30PM 189,000
Catch 21 Sunday 4:30PM 379,000 Viewers Lost 190,000

Carnie Wilson: Unstapled Saturday 5:00PM 180,000
Millionaire Saturday 5:00PM 337,000 Viewers Lost 157,000

Carnie Wilson: Unstapled Thursday 8:00PM 361,000
Family Feud Thursday 8:00PM 449,000 Viewers Lost 88,000

Carnie Wilson: Unstapled Friday 8:30PM 270,000
Family Feud Friday 8:30PM 505,000 Viewers Lost 235,000

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We’re getting close to one of my favorite times of the year: NATPE.  It’s where we get to hear about all the new shows coming out to syndication; whether they be new, returning, or proposed.  The conference is taping place next week and we’ve got our first new renewal announced.  Twentieth Television’s daily syndicated version of Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader has been renewed for a second season, according to Broadcasting Cable.  All Tribune, Fox, and Local TV stations have picked up the hit quiz show, so if you saw it this season you probably will be seeing new episodes in September.  That’s good, because correct me if I’m wrong, but haven’t they run all the episodes already, because it’s airing on around three different networks?

Meanwhile, the show we’ve said for months that is iffy, Deal or No Deal, looks to be on its last legs and is confirmed to be on the bubble as of now.  The show hasn’t been rating well this season, in last place in game shows weekly, and the budget cuts this season haven’t helped.  The ratings situation for each is interesting.

Both air on MyNetwork which has become a “programming service” and we were told that the national syndicated ratings would merge with MyNetwork’s ratings.  Solely in national syndication neither has done spectacularly well, though Fifth Grader has been higher.  What’s saved Fifth Grader, then?  It’s ratings on MyNetwork have averaged to be great – far better than Deal.  Fifth Grader averages 2.6 million viewers while Deal is at around a million less.  Couple that revenue with the extra revenue from its airings on CMT which have done well and it was a shoe-in for renewal.  Deal hasn’t done nearly as well and the syndicated version doesn’t have as much revenue from MyNetwork so it’s questionable at best.

It’s a bit of a shame if Deal goes since the syndicated edition is easily better than the NBC one, but it’s just become boring and predictable at this point.  Fifth Grader, meanwhile, has improved so much from the primetime version I can’t begin to describe it.  I’m actually enjoying watching it on my own free will if I’m around, which never happened for the Fox edition.  Mark Burnett and crew really turned the show around into something fun.  Continued success to it.

As for the rest of syndication, nothing else looks to be on its way out so we may just be losing one show and that’s it.  Of course we may gain one in CBS daytime and beyond, so you never know.  In the most recent ratings Wheel of Fortune was at 7.0, Jeopardy! at 5.8, Millionaire at 2.6, and Family Feud at 1.4 so those seem to be safe.

Our genre has been doing extremely well the past few weeks in the ratings.  Two shows the week ending December 13th, the two to watch the most this season in reality, hit season highs.  First is Who Wants to be a Millionaire which gained a great 13% to a 2.7.  It shows how much I know about predicting this stuff.  I mean looking at ratings and you almost wonder why a lot of shows bother with big money Sweeps stunts, since middle of December ratings did better than that big period.  Always glad to see Millionaire do well.

The other nice gain was Family Feud, up 8% to a 1.4.  Again, it’s a season high.  I blather on and on with praises on Family Feud, so I’ll skip that and just say I get such a smile when I see the show do better or just as well than other bigger money shows.  I don’t see how we won’t be seeing it for an amazing 12th season.  If they do and you live in the LA area I can’t recommend seeing Feud in person.  It’s a great experience.  See Millionaire in person as well, if you have the chance.  You won’t be at a more exciting taping, and Meredith is great.  Deal or No Deal also gained a fantastic 8% to a 1.3.  We’ll see if it’s enough for another season.

Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy continue to chug away with gains each.  Both gained 3%, with Wheel at 7.5 and Jeopardy at 6.3.  Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader froze at a 1.6.  Finally, in what can liberally defined as network news, MyNetwork is actually doing pretty decently now.  If you’re not aware they air Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? and Deal or No Deal on Tuesdays.  The shows have helped the network increase by 75% on that night.  With that sort of growth you’d have to figure they’d think about doing more game shows in the future.

Time for a ratings update from the first week of December.  I wasn’t a fan of the primetime edition of Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader because, well, it was a complete ripoff of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, but I understand why it has its fans.  It’s why I was a bit excited to see the current daytime edition since they have a relatively unique game now that isn’t falling into the trappings of a million dollar game show, which a comedic quiz game like Fifth Grader felt bizarre under.  It’s why I’m actually happy to see the show continue to do really well.  It grew again; up 7% to a 1.6.  It’s not at the levels that Deal or No Deal hit but it’s far exceeding my expectations and it’s against much tougher competition.  I’m really rooting for Fifth Grader to continue its success and stick around.  It’s really shocked me in a positive way.

I think we’re seeing the effect that Regis and especially the Tournament of Ten had on Millionaire, as it shrinks just a bit to a 2.4 rating, which should still be comfortable enough for them.  They will be rerunning the Tournament for the next two weeks, and after that Phone A Friend disappears.  I don’t know what barometer we’ll have to see if that affects anything at all.  I almost feel silly saying removing it will affect the show’s ratings in any way but I’ve never gotten more messages about the show, nor have I seen Millionaire attract as much attention on Twitter, than about, “Why was Phone A Friend removed.”

Sweeps really don’t seem to affect Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy! whatsoever.  They were at a 7.3 and a 6.2, up double-digits from the last week of Sweeps.  Go figure.  Just for shiggles and comparison, NBC’s The Jay Leno Show can only attract a 3.6 rating, usually at most.  Family Feud and Deal or No Deal stayed the same yet again.  Perpetually boring Deal (which really just needs something to generate a small amount of excitement) stuck at the lowest of games, a 1.2.  Family Feud is around a 1.3.