Ratings: Mixed results as NBC begins its Geek Fridays

Originally, NBC planned to debut the final season of Chuck and new show Grimm on October 21^st, but they changed their minds and decided to Grimm might benefit from a Halloween tie-in and moved its debut to October 28^th. Chuck went along for the ride even though there was no tie-in to Halloween there.

Originally, the World Series was of no concern. Even if there was a rare 7^th game, it would occur on October 27^th. But, nature didn’t cooperate and caused a rain-out. An unusually competitive match-up caused the first 7^th Game since 2002.

Even though CBS switched to repeats of its original shows, it was too late for NBC because they had promoted October 28^th heavily.

In the end, the World Series didn’t seem to hurt Grimm. It pulled better debut 18-49 numbers than Playboy Club, Prime Suspect, and Free Agents DESPITE being on Friday.

Chuck, on the other hand, had its lowest ratings ever.>

(Note: we will ever know what either show would have gotten without the World Series. So, assumptions should be taken with a grain of salt)

The following chart compares the premiere to last season’s finale. The audience got older. The male/female ratio grew more even and there was a huge decline in Men 18-34’s in the audience.

Note, however, that the “People Using TV” number is also 10% lower even though the World Series pumped up overall TV viewing a bit compared to a typical Friday:

Chuck’s A18-49 rating was midway between a 1.0 and 1.1. It will round down to a 1.0 when using just one decimal.

Here is Chuck compared to Grimm. It skewed more female, but the median age was about the same. Fourteen percent more people were using TV in the hour Grimm ran. It's typical for viewing to be higher in the 9PM hour than the 8PM hour.

Even though Grimm’s audience was more female, it had a decent number of Males 18-34 watching compared to Chuck.

We will have to see how both shows do this coming week. Another thing we will have to see is what type of bump both shows get when Live plus 7 day ratings come in. These are Live + Same Day. Fringe recently got a 60% decrease in Adult 18-49 ratings when the Live + 7's came in.