Here are the exact viewing figures for each day.  The stats include the ratings position for the week compared to all the other shows on the network, the time slot, the number of viewers, and then we throw in the average for the day, the percentage lost from last week, and what percentage of its lead-in Dancing With the Stars lost.

Friday, January 27th
176: 6:00PM to 8:00PM : 150,000 viewers
062: 8:00PM to 10:00PM : 264,000 viewers
119: 10:00PM to 11:00PM : 211,000 viewers
163: 11:00PM to 1:00AM : 163,000 viewers
178: 1:00AM to 3:00AM : 149,000 viewers
202 : 3:00AM to 4:00AM : 84,000 viewers
Friday Average: 170,000 viewers (First Friday the show appeared on, replacing Flashback Friday)
Lead In: Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader, 230,000 viewers; Loss of 35%.

Saturday, January 28th
161: 6:00PM to 7:30PM : 167,000
070: 7:30PM to 8:30PM : 254,000
086: 8:30PM to 10:00PM : 240,000
105: 10:00PM to 11:00PM : 228,000
142: 11:00PM to 12:30AM : 187,000
162: 12:30AM to 1:30AM : 166,000
195: 1:30AM to 3:00AM : 99,000
198: 3:00AM to 4:00AM : 88,000
Saturday Average: 179,000 viewers; Down 26% from previous Saturday’s debut weekend
Lead In: The Newlywed Game, 315,000 viewers; Loss of 47%

Sunday, January 29th
199: 1:00PM to 2:30PM : 85,000
204 : 2:30PM to 3:30PM : 76,000
187: 3:30PM to 5:00PM : 122,000
169: 5:00PM to 6:00PM : 156,000
Sunday Average: 110,000 viewers; Down 37% from previous Sunday’s debut weekend
Lead In; 1 VS 100, 218,000 viewers; Loss of 60%

So it’s pretty clear it’s not going well at all. I’d have to imagine we’d see some pretty drastic cutbacks since the show has no positive outlook, but we’ll see. I don’t think anyone expected it to do out-of-this-world numbers, but I don’t think anyone expected numbers this bad.

Let’s start with the positives, though.  With the meteoric rise of Family Feud, Who Wants to be a Millionaire has accidentally been pushed to the side for a bit.  However, they had some great news for the week ending January 22nd.  The long running syndicated quiz show hosted by Meredith Vieira hit a new season high of 2.7.  It’s been doing very well the past few weeks and it’s good to see some numbers close to where the show used to be.  It’s been a little frozen over the past few months.  Fun fact: we’re almost approaching ten years without a $1,000,000 winner (through actual game play).  It would be really nice to even just see a million dollar question.  We haven’t had one of those in about four years.  I can’t think of a better way to celebrate the 11th season then to, you know, prove what the title of the show actually means.

Speaking of Family Feud, this past week it froze at 3.2 which, again, is unbelievably good.  Remember: next season the show will switch to HD.  Steve Harvey’s talk show is taping in Chicago so could we be seeing another location change?  The top two as always are Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! with 7.7 and 6.4, respectively.

Broadcast ratings weren’t anything to scream about, but not that terrible either.  The series finale of NBC’s Who’s Still Standing? scored a fourth place 1.7/5 in the key demographic and a fourth place viewing total of 6.48 million viewers.  An unbelievable number of things were wrong with the show so I’m frankly amazed it managed to basically stay at the same exact place week in and week out.  I appreciate the effort at trying to make a fast paced quiz show, but the Minute to Win It-ization of the format made it practically unwatchable.

In England, the viewing figures for ITV’s quiz show The Exit List are depressingly low.  Last night’s very tense episode, which saw a team bail out with £17,000 after believing they could not escape the Memory Maze with £115,000, only scored 1.8 million viewers.  This is a show that really should be far, far more popular than it is and I’m not quite sure why numbers are dipping even lower than High Stakes.  Frankly, as I’m watching, I’m not even sure why this isn’t airing on the weekends like planned.  It’s got it all and I’ve yet to see a show that didn’t feature some exciting moment.  Massive shame.

Photo courtesy Valleycrest Productions Ltd

Here’s the rundown of the highly advertised debut episodes for January 21st and January 22nd in order from most watched to least watched, identified by their rankings for the week.

17: Saturday, January 21st; 6PM to 8PM; 325K viewers
32: Saturday, January 21st; 8PM to 10PM; 304K viewers
53: Saturday, January 21st; 10PM to 11PM; 283K viewers
125: Saturday, January 21st; 11PM to 1AM; 213K viewers
147: Saturday, January 21st; 1AM to 3AM; 192K viewers
154: Sunday, January 22nd; 1AM to 3AM; 185K viewers
166: Sunday, January 22nd; 5PM to 6PM; 174K viewers
181: Sunday, January 22nd; 3PM to 5PM; 165K viewers
200: Saturday, January 21st; 3AM to 4AM; 136K viewers

The full day average for Dancing With the Stars on its debut date of January 21st was 242,000 viewers.  Not counting the same-day reruns after that, from 6PM to 11PM, the average was 304,000 viewers.  This tumbled to 174,000 average on Sunday, January 22nd.

Needless to say this can not have gone the way they wanted or expected, and it’s probably the way many of you were hoping.  For the record, as I originally said months ago, I still don’t think it was that horrible of a gamble given that it does fit in their target demographic and, on paper, the acquisition made sense.  It made a lot more sense than The Amazing Race did.  However, as we’ve also repeatedly stated, this stuff never works for them and people watch GSN for, shockingly, game shows.  Who would have thought?

So what now?  I expect to see the unbelievable rerun schedule it’s under right now if it doesn’t perk up in the next cycle of reruns.  Given how it lost over 100,000 viewers from Saturday to Sunday I wouldn’t count on it.  It really probably would behoove them to actually renew things the people are watching like Newlywed Game and Baggage and Catch 21 which, for reasons I still don’t understand, they seem to want to ignore despite it being consistently popular.  The fact that The $100,000 Pyramid is also consistently a top performer for GSN I’d be looking at possibly bringing that back, but there we are.  Victory for game show fans.

The news isn’t good for NBC’s Who’s Still Standing? which week in and week out continues to confuse by changing the rules, starting with different segments without explanation, and just being an editing nightmare.  The newest episode this past Monday saw a third place 6.19 million viewers and a third place 1.6/4 rating in the key demographic.  It’s not looking good for its renewal.  Fear Factor keeps getting damaged by a weak lead-in with a third place 5.53 million viewers.  However, it always does well in the key demographic.  It tied for first with 2.3/5, which makes NBC happy.  NBC recently announced the show seems to be a pretty good utility player for the network in the future, so I imagine we’ll be seeing it for a bit.

You can check out a little of the show below.  What did you think?  For starters the show earns points for style.  In press releases, when it was said it was taking place in a bank vault, I expected it to just be a set looking like one.  I didn’t expect them to actually tape the show in a real bank with a makeshift vault.  Very nice job on that.  Beyond that, though, the show works.  It’s just slightly boring.  It feels far too long.  I feel like they could get it all done much quicker.  The show doesn’t really benefit from being live, either.  Some editing would have done wonders for both the show and host George Lamb.  Beyond that, though, it’s not bad and while it’s not the most impressive show we’ve seen recently it’s got some exciting moments and Saturday’s finale looks to be pretty interesting.

Fear Factor began its second week on the air and suffered from a poor lead-in.  It came to 6.37 million viewers but a pretty strong 2.5/6 demo rating.  It was 2nd place overall but 1st place in the key demographic.  You Deserve It is still on the air and it somehow lost more viewers in its fifth week.  ABC’s quiz show sank to a 2.1/4 rating, down 0.2 from last week.  Its key demographic rating stuck at 0.9/2.  It doesn’t stand much of a shot for renewal.

Syndication had a mixed week ending December 4th.  Wheel of Fortune shrunk to 7.5, but that’s only down 1% so no problem.  Jeopardy! managed to grow 2% to a 6.3.  Family Feud was flat at 3.1.  Who Wants to be a Millionaire trailed the pack at 2.6, which is a 4% increase.

It’s not all good for game shows, though.  ABC’s charity based quiz show You Deserve It inexplicably drop again.  It sank 10% to a new low of 0.9/2 in the key demographic and a 2.3/4 overall.  It’s definitely a goner.  Viewers just aren’t connecting.  Given that this is bombing horribly and ITV’s Holding Out For a Hero did the same, can we put a nail in the coffin of charity-based quiz shows?  They aren’t working no matter if the game works or not.

Syndication perked up for nearly all for the week ending December 4th.  The stand-out as always is Family Feud which grew 19% to a 3.1.  Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! increased to 7.6 and 6.2, respectively.  Millionaire stayed steady at 2.5.  Not bad for anyone in that group.

The rest of the syndicated shows are having a good year as well.  Wheel of Fortune grew 3% year-to-date to a 7.4 rating.  Jeopardy! saw a 7% increase to 6.2.  Who Wants to be a Millionaire, which just ended its viewer incentive program “Club Millionaire” very abruptly, was up 14% from last November to a 2.5.  Good news for all of them this November, so congratulations to all.

Really the only bad news is for ABC’s You Deserve It, which is just not having a good run.  The show clocked in a fourth place 2.5/4 rating overall and barely fourth place 1.0/2 rating in the 18-49 demographic.  It only beat The CW by two tenths of a point.  Total viewers were 3.56 million.  If you’re in that 3.56 million and enjoy watching the show, I’d be saving all the episodes as you can because it won’t be around much longer.  No show will last like this.  I repeat again: good game wrapped in a bad package.

*ABC’s You Deserve It, for all intents and purposes, is dead most likely.  The second episode of ABC’s charity based quiz show scored a 2.8/4 rating and 4.36 million viewers.  It lost half its audience from the previous week.  I know it didn’t have the lead-in of Dancing With the Stars this time and its lead-in this week, Shrek the Halls, wasn’t as strong at 7.66 million viewers, but it still managed to lose 43% of that audience.  It’s likely it’s dead.

So can producers finally get it that people want to see a good game in an equally good package?  People watch game shows for the game.  If you shove it to the side then what’s the point?  It’s why this is failing.  It’s why stuff like Millionaire and Deal or No Deal succeeded.  It’s why stuff like Million Dollar Mind Game manages to retain its audience week in and week out and, at this point, has a better shot of showing up somewhere else with new episodes.  A decent game destroyed by a not-so-good show.

*Bother’s Bar has a set report from The Exit List, ITV’s newest quiz show.  We’ve covered it a bit ago, and what we reported basically sticks.  A team goes into a series of rooms and answers questions for cash.  Each right answer is added to the list of answers you have to rattle off to leave with what you’ve won.  You can click here to read it.  It doesn’t sound bad, but it sounds like it should be a lot more exciting and fun than it is, which is what we figured.  Looking forward to seeing how it turns out on television, though.  We were skeptical of The Cube based on audience reports and it ended up being great.

*We’ve got some release dates for returning favorites.  Wipeout comes back for another winter series starting Thursday, December 8th, at 8:00PM ET, on ABC. New co-host Vanessa Lachey makes her debut.  Then, in February, ABC brings back Shark Tank for a third season.  The new season debuts Friday, February 3, at 8:00PM ET.

Did we miss something?  Let us know.

While that’s not bad by itself remember that it came out of Dancing With the Stars which had 19.6 million viewers and a 3.5/9 demo rating.  That’s a lost of 57% in total viewers and 51% in the demographic.  The show lost about 13% of viewers between the 9:00PM and 9:30PM time slots.  Again, by itself that’s not bad.  When you’re following something like Dancing, that’s not good.  The now-departed Skating With the Stars opened better.  It does make us sit and wonder, realistically, if the shoved-to-the-corner Million Dollar Mind Game, which has gotten nearly unanimous good reviews unlike You Deserve It, could have possibly done any worse.  There’s no Dancing next week so we’ll see how You Deserve It does.

In good news, though, Family Feud continues its meteoric rise to the top.  For the week ending November 13th the Steve Harvey hosted game show scored a 3.2 rating.  Has anyone heard of anything like this ever happening before?  I cannot remember a single time, in a game show, where a change in host and tone made the ratings sky rocket so much.   I don’t remember it happening on any show.  Most of the other syndicated game shows did well, too.  Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! scored season highs of 7.6 and 6.3.  Millionaire was the only odd one in the group, losing 4% to a 2.5.

I’m having trouble finding a higher rating for the show in syndication ever, so this could be a series high unless someone can correct me.  The show has firmly taken the third place slot behind Wheel of Fortune (7.0) and Jeopardy! (5.9).  It now has a comfortable lead above Who Wants to be a Millionaire, which also hit a season high of 2.6.

Here are the figures for October 30th, this time from The Voice of TV.

Los Angeles 0.3/1
Chicago 0.3/1
Dallas-Fort Worth 0.2/0
San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose 0.2/0
Washington, D.C. 0.1/0
Atlanta 0.7/1
Houston 0.3/1
Detroit 0.4/1
Seattle-Tacoma 0.9/2
Phoenix 0.4/1
Tampa-St. Pete 0.5/0
Minnesota-St. Paul 0.7/1
Miami-Ft. Lauderdale 0.5/1
Denver 0.3/1
Cleveland-Akron 1.1/2
Orlando-Daytona Beach 0.4/1
Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto 0.2/0

Compared to the previous ratings, they’re just about even and, really, just about what to expect. Again, be sure to watch Million Dollar Mind Game this Sunday at 4:00PM ET on ABC. A team goes extremely far and could win the million. It’s going to be very intense. Did you miss last week’s episode or want to see what the fuss is about? Here’s the episode, courtesy of the show’s producers. What do you think? Also, be sure to follow the show on Twitter to get more information about what to expect. Spread the word. I’d love to see it continue somewhere.

Here is the list of ratings, showing the rating, audience share, and market.  These are for October 23rd, 2011.

NY: 0.5/1
LA: 0.4/1
CHI: 0.2/0
PHI: 1.0/2
DAL: 0.2/0
SF/OAK: 0.3/1
BOS: 1.0/2
DC: 0.3/1
ATL: 0.8/1
HOU: 0.8/1

And, to be honest, if anyone expected it to do much better they were a bit crazy.  It had little shot from the gate.  It should have given a chance in primetime since even passers-by have given it a good review, but ABC decided not to.  Enjoy it for the next few weeks while you have it at least.  Maybe if it gets a small but loyal following someone else will take a look.  Bingo America, The Rich List, The Moment of Truth, and Hole in the Wall all came back.

*ITV is finally debuting their new game show High Stakes on October 11th, a Tuesday.  It’s a relatively strange day for it which doesn’t send signals of strength our way.  We discussed the show before, and you can read that here.  But, in summary, there’s a grid of numbers.  You step on a number on a row and if you’re right you get cash; wrong and the floor very slowly lowers like an elevator eliminating you from the game.  We’ll be sure to let you see some of it whenever the show debuts.  If you want to.  That remains to be seen.

*The new Ludia game show video game The Price is Right: Decades has a debut date.  The game, which takes you through the various decades of Price, will be released October 18th.  Click here to take a look at screen shots of the XBox 360 version of the game.

*We’re always very happy to see BuzzerBlog readers make it onto game shows, especially ones where they can win a boat load of money.  Chad Mosher, who also blogs occasionally at About.com, plays Millionaire tomorrow and Friday, September 29th and September 30th.  He’s playing on Double Money week so one of his questions could be worth $50,000.  Be sure to check it out.  We’ve got another reader, Dave Ramos, playing in October.  We’ll alert you as to when that happened.  Buzzer has a shocking amount of million dollar readers from various shows.  I’d love to see another.

*Now that the game show season is officially on, we’ll be looking at some of the ratings again.  Most recent figures come from the week ending September 18th.  Who Wants to be a Millionaire and Family Feud both had a fantastic week.  Millionaire grew 4% to a 2.4 but the big winner is Family Feud increasing by 8% to a 2.6 rating.  I’m interested to see how high it can go before the end of the season.  It grew massively last year.  Could it get to a 3.0 rating?  Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! scored a 6.1 and 4.6, respectively.

*Speaking of Family Feud, the show uploaded more bloopers from the new series on their YouTube page.  It helped their ratings skyrocket last season.  We’ll see if it helps this time around.  It always seems to be the innocent, sweet ones that say the outrageous answers you don’t expect.

*We were very interested in the ratings for ABC’s newest competition game show Take The Money and Run.  The good news is that it didn’t do too badly.  It scored 5.14 million viewers in a 1.9/5 rating in the demo.  Good news is that it retained 95% of lead-in Wipeout‘s audience.  It could have been better, but it’ll do for now.  It didn’t have the greatest lead-in possible.  The night’s other game offering, It’s Worth What?, continued to lose viewers.  It sunk to 4.78 million viewers.   By the way, in highlights from syndicated ratings, Family Feud is still on its season high 2.7.

*It was previously announced that Larry Emdur, the host of the former Australian version of The Price is Right, will be joining host Drew Carey on set to host a game.  Some video previews were posted by Seven.  Take a look below.  It gives you a great look at the updated set and new monitor.  Everything looks great.

*A few months ago we exclusively announced Travel was picking up the British game show Scream If You Know the Answer and taping episodes in California.  The network is, very quietly, debuting the series.  Scream starts tonight at 7:00PM ET on Travel.  It’s basically Cash Cab but on a roller coaster.