The fast national data were delayed on Monday, but CBS has finally issued a press release touting its Super Bowl XLI telecast on Sunday night as the third most watched program in the history of American television, behind the series finale of M*A*S*H and Super Bowl XXX.
CBS also claims this year's Super Bowl lead-out "Criminal Minds", enjoyed its "highest-ever numbers in metered markets" — with 26.23 million tuned in, which means the procedural hit all-time high.
The problem is - "Criminal Minds" was down roughly 33 percent versus Grey's Anatomy's famous year-ago post-Super Bowl "bomb episode" which led out of a lower-rated Super Bowl game on ABC.
Unlike last year's "Grey's Anatomy" episode which began with a clever dream shower scene with "lesbian tendencies" (that most certainly appealed to a significant portion of the football audience) and went on to develop a highly engaging dramatic storyline that was well-conceived to hook audiences previously not exposed to the medical drama, this year's "Criminal Minds" episode was a rather creepy, dark and painfully slow horror-movie ripoff of a procedural that lost almost 70 million Super Bowl viewers.
The network should have given its buzzworthy and constantly improving sitcom "How I Met Your Mother" (which happened to air a Super Bowl-themed episode on Monday) a chance to find even wider audience that it rightfully deserves.
And pairing the sitcom off with CBS's new comedy "Rules of Engagement" would have given the show the ratings boost all producers dream of for their pilot episodes. Oh, well...
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I completely agree with your assessment Justin! CBS got really cocky with this show, its not a great show but does well because of its CSI kind of feel. But yes I watched some of the show and it was like a bad slasher flic. Of course I dislike the show because of how it beat Lost, but there is no question that a bad episode of Lost is much better quality than Criminal Minds. Grey's Anatomy was very clever. Criminal Minds was not. I think 26 million out of 93 million is pretty sad. They could have done those numbers with any show they put on after the Super Bowl.
ReplyDeletecompletely agree with both you and roland, justin.
ReplyDeletegrey's worked because it made people who were not all that up on the drama that is grey's be able to jump right in and join us loyal fans with the 'oh my god!' that was the end of the ep. i don't watch (read - abhor) the superbowl and yet i made sure to watch grey's.
not even 'dawson' could save that show.
as for other better choices for after the superbowl, there was also csi miami which even tho not themed was excellent and in miami!