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After First Week of New Season, What Are the Takeaways?

Oct 2, 2013  •  Post A Comment

The first week of the television season started strong with dramas such as Fox’s "Sleepy Hollow," but dwindled to a "whimper" by Sunday, reports Nellie Andreeva at Deadline.com.

So what are the lessons to be learned from the week? Several things still matter for a show’s success, including lead-ins and marketing, she notes.

"Lead-in still matters unless your title has Marvel in it. ‘The Voice’ has successfully launched a third consecutive series, NBC’s ‘The Blacklist,’ one of the breakouts this fall," she notes.

As for marketing, the shows that got a lot of promotion, such as "Blacklist" and "Sleepy Hollow," performed well. "Some, like ABC’s ‘The Goldbergs’ reaped the benefits of both a big promotional push and strong lead-in," the story points out. "But when the show was left on its own, the wheels came off. And a massive launch campaign didn’t help … CBS’s ‘Hostages.’"

Premiere week is "only a snapshot," Andreeva notes, adding: "Still, for the most part, the snapshot is accurate in predicting which shows have a shot at staying on for the long run and which are heading into the proverbial bubble a week in."

The numbers for premiere week show two of the broadcast networks — NBC and ABC — are up from a year ago in the key 18-49 demo, while the other two big four nets, CBS and Fox, are down. NBC led the way with a 3.1 average rating (up 7%), followed by ABC with a 2.3 (up 5%), CBS with a 2.2 (down 8%) and Fox with a 2.2 (down 15%).

In total viewers, only NBC is up from a year ago. CBS led total viewers for premiere week 2013 with an average of 10.377 million (down 3% from 2012), followed by NBC with 9.713 million (up 19%), ABC with 7.990 million (down 4%) and Fox with 6.012 million (down 13%).

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