Ratings for ABC’s supernatural freshman drama 666 Park Avenue managed to avoid dropping this week, but is this stabilizing performance too late to save the show?

Sunday’s 666 delivered 4 million viewers and a 1.3 rating in the adult demo, same as last week, apparently ceasing (for the moment, at least) the show’s recent downward trend. (Last night’s episode was actually titled “Downward Spiral” though, ratings wise, that’s exactly what the show managed to halt). That’s getting firmly beat by CBS’ The Mentalist (10 million, 1.8) at 10 p.m. and, of course, NBC’s football coverage. That 1.3 demo rating makes it tough to see ABC picking up a full season of 666. Then again, Thursday’s Last Resort, which is said to be leaning toward a pickup, only did a hair better last week.

Meanwhile, Once Upon a Time (8.7 million, 2.7) fell 23 percent this week for its Ruby-centered episode, with Revenge (7.5 million, 2.4) down 11 percent too.

Also Sunday: Amazing Race fell 8 percent and The Good Wife was steady. Fox’s animated lineup got pushed by 20 minutes thanks to NFL overrun. From eyeballing the chart, it looks like pretty low modest ratings for its Family Guy 200th episode and special.

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A Friday night reversal. After last week’s strong debuts by ABC comedies Last Man Standing and Malibu Country, this week CBS’ Undercover Boss rose up to overthrow the sitcoms.

Boss had 9 million viewers and a 2.1 adult demo rating, up 33.333333 etc. percent from last week. That not only won 8 p.m. but also came very close to topping ABC’s Shark Tank (6.7 million, 2.1) at 9 p.m. Tank slipped from last week’s series high, which is no surprise since the ABC sitcoms provided a softer lead-in this week, but this is still its second-biggest number ever.

Last Man Standing (7.3 million, 1.6) was down 20 percent and Malibu Country (7.2 million, 1.6) fell 30 percent. Here’s how an optimistic ABC executive would probably look at that: Well, at least they’re doing the same. In other words, at least the ratings aren’t showing some big drop from returning show Last Man Standing to the brand new Reba McEntire comedy. That suggests they make for a good team and that viewers aren’t rejecting Malibu in particular. And they’re still coming in second place in the hour.

Also Friday: CBS’ Blue Bloods ratings improved after last week. NBC’s Grimm slipped a notch. Fox’s Fringe was flat. And Nikta was, unfortunately, unchanged with 890,000 viewers and a 0.3 in the demo.

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Arrow is the real deal.

Ratings for the superhero show just spiked 30 percent for the show’s fifth episode. Arrow delivered 3.7 million viewers and a 1.3 in the adult demo Wednesday night against a full boat of competition on the other broadcast networks. That ties the show’s premiere in 18-49. The rise is well timed — our recap claims this is creatively the show’s best episode since its premiere. Supernatural (3.7 million, 1.0) was up 20 percent.

There were another big mover last night too: NBC’s Chicago Fire (7.1 million, 2.3) jumped 44 percent to a series high thanks to a special lead-in from The Voice. Man, that singing competition sure is handy — Revolution, Go On and now Chicago Fire … it’s like a magic success-making machine. I mean, if you want to quibble, The Voice had a 4.0 rating in its last half hour then things just dropped off a cliff for the firefighter drama. But still, Fire just went from losing this space to tying CSI (10.3 million, 2.3) in the demo for the win.

This shows NBC that Chicago Fire can win its hour under the right circumstances, but it takes a massive lead-in to do it. READ FULL STORY »

While the media has focused on the fight between NBC’s The Voice and Fox’s The X Factor, another performance competition series has been setting records of its own — and not in a good way.

ABC’s Dancing With the Stars tied its all-time ratings low Monday night for a performance episode, down 9 percent from last week. The show delivered 13.4 million viewers and a 2.1 in the adult demo. Gee, that still sounds like a lot of people watching, you think. And you’re right. In fact, Dancing was Monday’s most-watched show. But that’s still a much smaller audience than the veteran series used to deliver and that modest adult demo rating is the real concern. Overall, this is the show’s lowest-rated season.

Maybe it’s the All-Stars format. Maybe fans wanted new faces. But Dancing has been on a steady downward trend in recent years (surely one of the reasons the All-Stars format was attempted in the first place). And as we’ve seen with American Idol and Biggest Loser and other shows, once a reality hit is on the far side of its ratings bell curve, it’s tough to reverse the trend. With these numbers, Dancing isn’t going away anytime soon, but its starting to look mortal.

Dancing led into Castle (10.1 million, 1.9), down 14 percent to tie its all-time low. READ FULL STORY »

There’s been two trends on ABC’s Sunday night lineup the past couple weeks: Once Upon a Time ratings are climbing and 666 Park Avenue is slipping.

Okay, I realize these statistics are less interesting today than whatever Nate Silver is predicting. But TV ratings are our thing, and Sunday night’s election showed ABC’s fairy tale drama continues to run away with the Nielsen electoral votes — on broadcast, at least, on cable you can bet AMC’s The Walking Dead pulled a monster number (those ratings are released separately by Nielsen, because if they were released at the same time that would be really convenient).

Once Upon (10.1 million viewers, 3.5 adults 18-49 rating) went up a tenth from last week. The fairy tale adventure dropped a couple weeks after its premiere, then ratings perked up for the appearance of Captain Hook and have continued to climb ever since. Last night featured a guest appearance by former Lost star Jorge Garcia and represents the show’s best adult demo number since its premiere.

Revenge (7.7 million, 2.6) was down a tick. At 10 p.m., 666 (4.1 million, 1.4) slipped 13 percent — an unlucky number and an unfortunate drop. ABC is on the verge of deciding the fate of 666 along with fellow freshman drama Last Resort. I was torn last week as to how that might go, but now it’s looking more likely that the submarine thriller will get a full season and the supernatural drama will come up short.

CBS’ lineup was pushed by sports, but from eyeballing the numbers everything was within 6 percent of last week.The return of Fox’s comedy block didn’t fare so well, with everything down 16 to 27 percent from four weeks ago.

Image Credit: CBS

Though TV viewership was predictably lower on Wednesday, The X Factor still scared up a win with its live show from 8 to 10 p.m. The installment, though down 9 percent versus the previous week, earned a 2.7 rating/8 share among adults 18-49 and averaged 7.3 million viewers, according to preliminary results. Fox blames the decrease on how it originally planned to air a repeat last night so some systems didn’t adjust their program guides in time. There was also the whole trick or treating thing.

Whatevs: A win is a win.

CBS was tops in viewers (10.8 million), and a veryclose second in 2.5/8 in the key demo (these numbers will likely change later in the day). Survivor: Philippines earned a 2.4/8 and 9.8 million, while Criminal Minds posted a 2.9/8 and a stunning 11.9 million eyeballs. That, my friends, was the most-watched show of the night. (Wish I could say its content was appropriate for Halloween but that drama lures the big numbers every freaking week). CSI posted a 2.3/7 and 10.8 million. READ FULL STORY »

Image Credit: Kent Smith/SHOWTIME

There’s a party over at Showtime! For the first time in the premium network’s history, two of its shows — Dexter and Homeland — each lured more than two million viewers on Sunday.

Dexter’s fifth episode averaged 2.28 million viewers at 9 p.m., its highest-rated episode since the season premiere (2.40 million) and up 5 percent versus the previous week. For the night, the series attracted a total 2.81 million viewers, the biggest total night since the season premiere (2.93 million).

Homeland, in comparison, drew its biggest audience ever of 2.07 million viewers, up 19 percent versus last week. The total night delivered 2.29 million viewers, its highest-rated night of the series.

The perfect storm has given way to perfect ratings for The Weather Channel. The cable net reports that it had the highest reach of any cable network on Sunday, with over 39 million people tuning in for Sandy coverage. Its average audience was just over 1.4 million total viewers, which helped it to achieve the status as the No. 1 non-children’s cable for Sunday.

TWC also outranked the news networks in viewers on Sunday, with its peak quarter hour occurring at 11 a.m., when the networks outpaced all the cable news networks combined. Even the net’s companion website weather.com beat its record of 141 million with nearly 300 million page views. The coverage has turned Meteorologist Jim Cantore into a bit of a rock star: He’ll appear on The Late Show with David Letterman tonight.

Monday’s ratings for TWC will be released later today.

For more:

TWC’s Jim Cantore prepares for 24-hour shift

Despite the NFL and World Series gods clashing on NBC and Fox last night, entertainment shows on ABC and CBS largely held up.

ABC’s Once Upon a Time (9.7 million, 3.4), Revenge (8 million, 2.7) and 666 Park Avenue (4.8 million, 1.6) were within a tenth of a point of their ratings last week. That doesn’t mean much for Once and Revenge, but 666 is under ABC’s microscope right now and its numbers happened to go down a notch. Declining for a Halloween episode is bad form for a horror series. The Terry O’Quinn drama, along with fellow freshman ABC drama Last Resort, are awaiting word on whether they’re going to get full-season orders this week.

CBS had– what? No sports overrun? Nope. We actually get to see the network’s Sunday lineup in their proper time slots for once. Amazing Race (9.4 million, 2.4) was down 8 percent, Good Wife (9.5 million, 1.8) was down 5 percent. But the 100th episode of The Mentalist (10.1 million, 1.8) was up 20 percent. The crime drama was a flashback episode showing Patrick Jane meeting his CBI teammates for the first time.