Fall TV season devoid of must-see new shows; ‘Hawaii Five-O’ only newbie to crack top 20 list

Fall TV season devoid of must-see new shows so far

NEW YORK — Two weeks into a new television season, and it’s clear there are no must-see new programs.

CBS’ Monday night remake of “Hawaii Five-0″ was the only new program to crack the Nielsen Co.’s list of the 20 most popular programs last week. Its audience of 12.7 million viewers was down from the 14.2 million people who saw the premiere — not unusual, but not the sign of a show taking off, either.

Already, two programs have been canceled — Fox’s “Lone Star” and ABC’s “My Generation.” The latter had only 3.8 million viewers last week, deadly for a Thursday night and no help to “Grey’s Anatomy,” which followed it on the schedule.

Other programs — NBC’s Jimmy Smits vehicle “Outlaw,” ABC’s procedural “The Whole Truth” and the Fox comedy “Running Wilde” — need to start showing progress soon, or they could face the same fate.

As the most stable network, CBS has had the most success getting people to try out their shows. The comedy “Mike & Molly” is off to a solid start on Monday nights, and Tom Selleck’s “Blue Bloods” has done well on Fridays, usually a tough night for TV viewing.

ABC’s “No Ordinary Family” opened to an audience of 10.7 million viewers last week, a solid start.

Last week’s favorites were familiar to viewers: dancing, football and “NCIS.”

CBS averaged 11.9 million viewers in prime time (7.2 rating, 12 share) and also won among the 18-to-49-year-old demographic sought by advertisers for the second straight week. ABC averaged 9.2 million (5.8, 10), NBC had 8.1 million (5.1, 9), Fox had 7.1 million (4.3, 7), the CW had 2.3 million (1.5, 2) and ION Television had 1 million (0.7, 1).

Among the Spanish-language networks, Univision led with a prime-time average of 4 million viewers (2.0 rating, 3 share), TeleFutura had 770,000 and Telemundo had 700,000 (both 0.4, 1), Azteca had 170,000 and Estrella had 130,000 (both 0.1, 0).

NBC’s “Nightly News” topped the evening newscasts with an average of 7.8 million viewers (5.1, 11). ABC’s “World News” was second with 7.1 million (4.9, 10) and the “CBS Evening News” had 5.4 million viewers (3.6, 8).

A ratings point represents 1,159,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation’s estimated 115.9 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.

For the week of Sept. 27 to Oct. 3, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: “Dancing With the Stars,” ABC, 21.34 million; NFL Football: Chicago vs. N.Y. Giants, NBC, 20.93 million; “NCIS,” CBS, 19.15 million; “Dancing With the Stars Results,” ABC, 17.34 million; “NCIS: Los Angeles,” CBS, 16.51 million; “Sunday Night NFL Pre-Kick,” NBC, 15.79 million; “The Mentalist,” CBS, 14.65 million; “Criminal Minds,” CBS, 14.57 million; “Two and a Half Men,” CBS, 13.92 million; and “Glee,” Fox, 13.51 million.

ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Co. CBS is owned by CBS Corp. CW is a joint venture of Warner Bros. Entertainment and CBS Corp. Fox and My Network TV are units of News Corp. NBC and Telemundo are owned by General Electric Co. ION Television is owned by ION Media Networks. TeleFutura is a division of Univision. Azteca America is a wholly owned subsidiary of TV Azteca S.A. de C.V.

Online:

www.nielsenmedia.com