Source : Vancouver Sun

From flagging favourites to sleeper hits, fall is emerging as a season full of surprises

Ratings are down, season pickups are up, advertisers are nervous and viewers are simply relieved their favourite shows are back on.

Two weeks into the new TV season, the fall picture remains as cloudy as ever, with just one official cancellation to date and a surprising number of struggling first-year comedies and dramas picked up for the full season. Adding to the confusion: sliding ratings for some of TV's most-watched dramas.

The network TV business is in no need of a bailout just yet: For every troubling sign, there's a positive indication. Here are some of the early trends.

AGE MATTERS

There are now two separate and completely different audiences, and the difference has nothing to do with gender.

The difference is age -- and the gap in audience tastes is widening between the two groups.

The majority of viewers who watch network television regularly are aged 50 or older, and they're responsible for driving the most-watched programs in any given week.

Top-rated shows for the week ending Oct. 5 included Dancing with the Stars, NCIS, 60 Minutes, Criminal Minds, CSI: New York, Desperate Housewives and The Mentalist.

The Mentalist aside, these are all programs which have consistently scored high among "total audience," or viewers of all ages.

Narrow that age range to only those viewers between 18 and 49, however, and quite a different picture emerges.

The U.S. Nielsen ratings for the week of Sept. 29-Oct. 5 show that, among viewers aged 18-49, Desperate Housewives topped the list, followed by House, Two and a Half Men, Heroes, Survivor, CSI: Miami, Dancing with the Stars, Family Guy and Fringe.

That list is only slightly different in Canada, where Survivor continues to punch above its weight; Heroes is outperforming its U.S. numbers, relative to the size of the two audiences; and House is a broad-based, mainstream hit in Canada among viewers of all ages.

THE VIEW FROM HERE

CBC's off-season acquisition of Wheel of Fortune and, in particular, Jeopardy! has paid dividends.

Jeopardy! consistently flirts with the one-million-viewer mark, according to BBM Canada/Nielsen data, and is CBC-TV's most-watched program some nights.

Rick Mercer Report is riding the coattails of an exciting election season with an average 1.1 million viewers -- a sizable audience for a public broadcaster that looked to be in serious trouble just two years ago.

Rick Mercer Report's companion show, This Hour Has 22 Minutes, is no slouch either: it recently scored 800,000 viewers.

With the federal election decided, those numbers may settle back, but CBC-TV still has to be delighted with the response.

The Tudors is struggling somewhat, with an average 500,000 viewers opposite Criminal Minds's two million for CTV and 90210's 900,000 on Global. A period costume drama set in the court of King Henry VIII was unlikely to ever be a broad-based, mainstream network hit, though.

Little Mosque on the Prairie has drawn a respectable 700,000 viewers into the fold in recent weeks, but soft numbers for companion comedy Sophie (325,000 viewers) have to be a concern for the public broadcaster.

The big story, though, may be the serious moves being pulled by CTV's reality-competition spinoff So You Think You Can Dance Canada.

Dance Canada, originally conceived as a fall-season follow-up to the slipping Canadian Idol, has exceeded expectations, with 1.4 million viewers, and has even grown in recent weeks.

Monday nights have seen the emergence of four bona fide hits in the same time period: The Border on CBC, Dancing with the Stars and Corner Gas on CTV, and Heroes on Global.

Two and a Half Men is pulling in a sizable audience at the same time on CTV's A Channel, which doesn't reach as many viewers as the established networks.

YOUTH SHALL BE SERVED

Fewer than four million viewers watch Gossip Girl each week in the U.S., good enough for just 92nd in the weekly Nielsen ratings.

Gossip Girl is up six per cent over last season's performance, however.

And, more importantly, it scores a direct hit on its target audience of female teens and women in their early 20s -- an age demographic advertisers are desperate to reach.

Gossip Girl and its young-skewing companion show One Tree Hill held steady in their second weeks, despite stiffer time-period competition from the debuts of Dancing with the Stars, Two and a Half Men and Heroes.

Similarly, 90210, despite overheated advance hype and tepid post-release reviews, is scoring similar numbers among its target audience of teens and young women.

90210 will never score high in the Nielsen ratings -- the week of Sept. 29-Oct. 5, 90210 barely managed to make it into 98th place -- but it's considered a success just the same.

CW has picked up 90210 for the full season, despite the seemingly lame Nielsen numbers.

Global TV is the beneficiary in Canada, where 90210 has been averaging 900,000 viewers a week -- even as it scores no more than three million viewers in the much larger U.S. market.

This is the future of network TV, then.

Shows that reach their target audience will win pride-of-place over mainstream hits that appeal to a wide but predominantly older audience.

SECOND TIME UNLUCKY

Ratings are down across the board for most returning hits -- but no more so than for the sophomore shows whose first seasons were cut short by last winter's writers' strike.

The reason may be as simple as bad timing.

Programs like Pushing Daisies, Chuck and Dirty Sexy Money aren't so new that they will appeal to the audience's innate sense of curiosity.

At the same time, they've been away for so long that many viewers who were invested in them 10 months ago are no longer interested in what happens next.

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THE WINNERS

- Dancing with the Stars (CTV/ABC)
- Desperate Housewives (CTV/ABC)
- House (Global/Fox)
- NCIS (CBS)
- Criminal Minds (CTV, CBS)
- CSI, CSI: Miami, CSI: New York (CTV, CBS)
- The Mentalist (new) (A, CBS)
- Fringe (new) (A, Fox)
- Jeopardy! (CBC, syndicated)
- The Border (CBC)
- Gossip Girl (A, CW)
- 90210 (new) (Global, CW)
- Family Guy (Global, Fox)
- This Hour Has 22 Minutes (CBC)
- Rick Mercer Report (CBC)
- Survivor: Gabon (Global, CBS)
- Brothers & Sisters (Global, ABC)

THE LOSERS

- Ghost Whisperer (CTV, CBS)
- Bones (Global, Fox)
- Worst Week (new) (E!, CBS)
- Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (A, Fox)
- Prison Break (Global, Fox)
- Chuck (Citytv, NBC)
- Pushing Daisies (A, ABC)
- Private Practice (A, ABC)
- Dirty Sexy Money (A, ABC)
- The Ex-List (new) Global, CBS
- Sophie (CBC)
- Life (Global, NBC)
- Opportunity Knocks (new) (Citytv, ABC)
- Knight Rider (new) (E!, NBC)
- Do Not Disturb (new/cancelled) (E!, Fox)

© Vancouver Sun