Smash, Megan Hilty
The Voice hit another high note, leading NBC to a Monday night win, but Smash failed to live up to its title in its second outing.
Smash drew 8.1 million viewers and a 2.8 rating in the adults 18-to-49 demo, dropping 29 and 25 percent, respectively, from its series debut a week ago. The show, however, still ...
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Steven Tyler, Jennifer Lopez and Randy Jackson
Those writing about the inexorably declining ratings of American Idol will have to stand down for at least a day as the amateur talent competition stayed even with last week in the industry-prized 18-to-49 demographic, according to preliminary Nielsen figures.
Now, we'll have to see if the cliff-hanger involving the hopeful who fainted and fell off the stage gooses the ratings for Fox. (By comparison, fair or not, NBC's The Voice grabbed 17.69 million viewers with a 6.6 demo rating Monday night on its first regularly scheduled airing.)
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Downton Abbey
But did Downton Abbey cover the spread? The PBS series finished second to Super Bowl XLVI among TV viewers.
The Emmy-winning program attracted 4 million viewers at 9 o'clock Sunday, outpacing reruns of CBS' CSI Miami (3.13 million), Fox's animated tandem of Family Guy (2.41 million) and American Dad! (2.29 million) and ABC's The Middle (1.76 million) as the broadcast networks virtually forfeited the night. Those were paltry numbers for those shows, while Downton Abbey wasn't off by much (its first three episode averaged 4.3 million and the fourth 4.8 million before Sunday's 4 million).
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Joe Anderson, Paulina Gaitan
ABC's thriller The River debuted to much weaker numbers than several of the network's other drama premieres earlier this season (and a couple of them got canceled). Still, it fared better for the network than any program in its time slot since the autumn ending of Dancing with the Stars.
The season's top show, NCIS, marked its 200th show with another big audience, while also trumping Fox's Glee in the coveted adults-18-to-49 demographic. The CBS ratings stalwart didn't set a series record, however.
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Smash
Smash lived up to its title, winning the final hour of Monday's prime time, and fresh off The Voice's Season 2 debut after the Super Bowl, it posted formidable numbers, making for a huge night for NBC.
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Eli Manning
Did the Super Bowl set a viewership record for a third year in a row? Just barely...
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The Big Bang Theory
The Big Bang Theory just keeps getting bigger and bigger!
The CBS sitcom hit an all-time viewership high Thursday — the first night of February sweeps — with 16.4 million viewers and a 5.4 rating in the adults 18-to-49 demographic. If numbers hold, it would mark Big Bang's second straight win in ...
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Glee
With the networks hunkering down before sweeps, Fox generally benefited from an all-new lineup, as Glee's Michael Jackson tribute episode grabbed the show's biggest audience since the season's start, according to preliminary Nielsen data.
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Real Housewives of Atlanta
Bravo is crowing about The Real Housewives of Atlanta scoring a season high, as well as the second-biggest audience in the franchise's history — 3.95 million viewers — on Sunday night. Season 4 of the series so far is up 14 percent in average viewership too.
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