NBC beats broadcast competition in first night of new season

ESPN tops all broadcast and cable networks with Monday Night Football – and a unbelievable bad call to end the game

The first night of the 2012-13 season got underway Monday night, but someone forgot to tell the viewers.

Looking at the results, a lot of returning programs were down from year-ago time periods, notably Dancing With The Stars and Hawaii Five-O. On the other hand, NBC scored huge year-ago gains with The Voice and Revolution.

Meanwhile, CBS’ new comedy Partners was looking like the next Apple Pie (a 1978 ABC sitcom turkey) and the second week of The Mob Doctor looked DOA, each vying for the seasons’ first cancellation.

All numbers reported are for the adult 18-49 demo, unless noted. Year-ago comparisons are from September 19, 2011, also unless noted.

NBC was the clear winner for the evening (not really used to saying that) with The Voice (4.4 rating/12 share) and Revolution (3.4/9), both up tremendously from last year’s Sing-Off (132%) and Playboy Club (113%), respectively. Revolution however, did drop 17 percent week-to-week, as some viewers (mainly on Twitter) are getting a little antsy about the show.

ABC’s all-star edition of Dancing scored with a 2.5/7, but was down 38 percent from last year. The show still drew 14.1 million viewers, but no doubt The Voice took its toll. Castle closed the evening with a 2.1/6, down 34 percent from last year, and placed a distant second behind Revolution. Castle debuts in syndication this weekend late Sunday night locally on WLS-TV (check local listings for times.)

If you thought ABC had it tough, CBS and Fox had it even worse. Every CBS show was down from a year ago, with the season premiere of Hawaii-Five-O (1.8/5) down a whopping 47 percent from last year and finishing last. Has jumping the shark every week for the past year finally done McGarrett in? Book ’em Danno for bad writing (e.g. a radio talk show host’s studio getting blown-up while on the air, and a villain throwing ransom money into a fire. Who really does that besides an NFL replacement ref?)

Here’s a show Fred Silverman would be proud of… the premiere of new sitcom Partners was a dud, scoring a 2.4/6, down 29 percent from its How I Met Your Mother lead-in (3.6/11). A sample opinion from the Twitterverse:

https://twitter.com/GoHawks31/status/250393774113574913

As for Partners… time to warm up the bus. In the second hour of primetime meanwhile, 2 Broke Girls and Mike & Molly earned a 3.7/9 and 3.1/7, respectively.

Fox’s inane Mob Doctor finished with a 1.3/3, down 13 percent from its premiere last week and down 41 percent from its Bones lead-in. Time to put this practice out of business.

Finally, ESPN scored a 11.5 overnight rating for Monday Night Football, featuring the Green Bay Packers and Seattle Seahawks, down 3 percent from last year’s week three matchup. But its 6.4 rating among adults 18-49 topped all broadcast shows for the evening. It remains to be seen if last night’s controversial ending (see below) will have any future effect on the ratings. The NFL is using replacement referees as the league has locked out its regular on-field personnel. So far, the move has been a disaster on the field – but not in the ratings.

Yet.

Editor’s Note: The YouTube video that was here was removed due to NFL copyright claim.