Programming Buzz from Zenith: Wednesday 10/6/11 – X Factor Fuels Fox Win Again, CBS and ABC Hold Steady

Wednesday 10/6/11 – X Factor Fuels Fox Win Again, CBS and ABC Hold Steady

Up against another night of MLB playoffs and the highly-promoted American Horror Story premiere on FX, sister network FOX easily came away with a first place win among A18-49 Wednesday night, driven by a 90-minute boot camp edition of X Factor (3.27 A18-49 Live Rtg), followed by a special original airing Raising Hope at 9:30pm (1.97). The reality series has leveled off week-to-week, while continuing to post significant growth in the time period from year ago.

CBS barely edged out ABC among A18-49 with its line-up of Survivor (2.12), Criminal Minds (3.13) and CSI (2.59). Viewership remained relatively flat from last week with the exception of CSI, which experienced some erosion, declining 10%.

ABC’s comedies, The Middle (2.19) and Modern Family (3.89) were on par from last week’s A18-49 performance, though both Suburgatory (2.67) and Happy Endings (2.40) were both off 7% from week ago benchmarks. At 10pm, week 3 of Revenge (2.08) fell 9% from its second week, though still greatly improved over last fall’s audience for The Whole Truth (+73%).

Over on NBC, the one positive note came from freshman series, Up All Night at 8pm. The recently picked up comedy (1.49) held steady from last week and was the only NBC program to post any increase over year ago A18-49 ratings. The rest of the line-up, including just cancelled Free Agents (0.90), Harry’s Law (0.98) and Law & Order: SVU (1.80), all under-delivered from year ago by double-digit percentages.

Wednesday nights continued to be difficult for The CW as both H8R (0.34) and American’s Next Top Model (0.60) suffered heavy declines among A18-49.

Not to be ignored, FX premiered its latest original series, American Horror Story, at 10pm, attracting a solid 1.29 A18-49 rating, fueling the network to a cable win across primetime, while also beating out NBC.

Source: Nielsen, based on Live data

posted by Strategic Resources @ Zenithmedia at 5:44 PM

via zenithbuzz.blogspot.com