Fall 2009 pre-season predictions: Friday

Friday is an interesting night. Despite being a night of dramatically lower ratings for so many shows, it’s still one of the most fascinating nights where the numbers are concerned. Last season, that had much to do with the performance, or lack thereof, we saw from Dollhouse, Terminator:TSCC, and Prison Break on FOX. Dollhouse will still figure in heavily this year, but the other networks have also made some interesting moves. The big questions: Has anything changed for Dollhouse? Does the move to Friday spell the end for Betty and Clark? And has CBS finally found a solution for 9:00 with Medium?

There are no surprises at the top spot at 8:00. Ghost Whisperer will continue to dominate the night, although the task won’t be quite as easy as it has been in the past. Law & Order presents a legitimate challenge. Unfortunately, as we saw with the Law & Order numbers last season on Wednesday, the show just isn’t what it once was. This will be a marked improvement for NBC (roughly doubling Howie’s numbers), but not enough for first place. Supernanny should hang around to take third. And then we have a very interesting battle for fourth.

I’m still not sure why CW decided to move Smallville to Friday, but if they have to put any show there, it probably has a better chance of bringing along some viewers than most do. And really, it’s not like the bar was set very high last season. 2.5 million viewers and a 1.3 in the demo would be a huge improvement for the network. And it just might be enough to knock FOX into last place. Does anyone think there is an audience to be found for Brothers and ‘Til Death? Even more troubling, an audience for them on Friday night? If Terminator could fall as low as 3 million viewers in this spot, the new comedy hour will hit the 2s, with a demo under 1. And I’ll actually applaud that. Viewers have repeatedly shown FOX that they have no interest in ‘Til Death, but it goes on, and on, for no other reason than the syndication dollars to be made. ‘Til Death is the new According To Jim, with less laughs.

The real fun though, starts at 9. All of a sudden everybody wants to come out and play. The four big networks all have original scripted programming. Who’d have thought? You could actually bend the numbers to make a case for Ugly Betty, Southland, or Medium to win the hour with a little fudging. When the season gets up and running though, Medium will be the clear winner. One thing the show has proven in it’s haphazard run on NBC is that no matter what night, or what time, they put the show on, the Medium fans show up. And they’ll show up to CBS at 9:00. It doesn’t hurt that it also serves as a great bridge between Ghost Whisperer and Numb3rs either.

Southland and Ugly Betty should be pretty close in the battle for second. Based just on averages, Southland has a slight edge, but that’s an awfully limited sample. And viewers quickly abandoned the show towards the end of it’s run in the spring. It fell from 9.72m viewers and a 3.2 to 6.45m and a 1.9. That ending number opens the door for Ugly Betty and it’s all going to come down to how much of the audience makes the transition to Friday. I’ll give the slight edge to Southland, more for the nature of the show than anything else, but it will be a close battle. Neither will be very impressive though, and to see them make another season following this would be shocking.

Shocking like, a season two for Dollhouse. This is the show that I am most interested in seeing ratings numbers for. Because, really, there is a pretty convincing case to be made against the show seeing any improvement.  The conventional wisdom is that the show got better as the season went along. And I agree, it did. The problem is that the ratings just kept getting worse. The finale was actually the lowest rated episode of the season. The unaired 13th episode was also very good, and I suppose you could make an argument that it will draw in viewers. But given that it was only on the DVD, how many people actually saw it that weren’t already watching? And if it struggled when paired with Terminator, how much help do you think the Brothers/’Til Death hour is going to offer?

Despite all that, I’m actually picking the show to improve year to year. Partly because, seriously, it really can’t get a lot worse. But also because I think the hype of the new season will boost the premiere above where the show finished off last season. And given what we saw in “Epitaph One,” I like the possibilities for where season two is headed. With that as a destination, there should be less of a viewer exodus over the course of the season. It will still drop from the premiere, but we can put the days of less than three million viewers and 1.0 demos behind us. And, insane good news, that was good enough to get it renewed once….

Wrapping up the week at 10, Numb3rs should make it a clean sweep for CBS. There may be some week to week shenanigans where 20/20 and Leno are concerned, based on the sensational story of the week or a really big guest. When it all averages out though, the Eppes brothers will get the job done.

Clacked by Brett Love
on Sep 04, 2009 @ 14:00 EST5EDT