Wednesday 1/11/12 – People’s Choice Awards No Match for ABC, Chelsea Premieres Okay

Despite being up against the People’s Choice Awards on CBS, ABC easily took the lead across the television landscape among A18-49 viewers. Its strong comedy line-up of The Middle (2.28 A18-49 Live Rating), Suburgatory (2.35), Modern Family (3.35), and Happy Endings (2.46) along with drama Revenge (1.92) experienced minimal week to week declines in the demo.

Following a repeat of Criminal Minds, the two-hour People’s Choice Awards (2.32) averaged 8.4 million total viewers, but fell 9% from last year’s event, ranking CBS second for the night with A18-49.

At No. 3, NBC debuted its new comedy hour of relocated Whitney (1.55) and the series premiere of Are You There, Chelsea? (1.86) with the former remaining relatively flat from its last Thursday 9:30PM original on 12/8/11, while the latter grew 20% out of its lead-in among A18-49.  Opening with a new schedule Wednesday helped Harry’s Law (1.10) and Law & Order: SVU (1.68), as they both improved slightly from their last originals on 12/7/11.

Ranking ahead of FOX, Univision's lineup of Que No Podia Amar (1.74) and the premiere of Dale Con Ganas (0.95) landed the network in fourth place overall among A18-49 viewers Wednesday night.

Ranking behind ESPN (NBA coverage), FOX followed a repeat of Mobbed at 8pm with an original airing of the same program (1.24), which boosted A18-49 viewership by 10% from its telecast one week ago.

Trailing in last place across broadcast, The CW aired the ninth season premiere of One Tree Hill (0.64) at 8PM and a repeat airing at 9PM.  In its last season, the premiere lost 26% of A18-49 viewers from its eighth season opener back on 9/14/10.

Source: Nielsen, based on Live data.