ABC Prescribes More Private Practice
The highest rated shall be renewed. The lowest rated shall not.
Infallible TV logic held again, with ABC confirming Friday that it has booked Private Practice, the fall's most watched new show, through the end of the season.
The news, first reported Thursday by E! Online's Watch with Kristin blog, follows the axe that inevitably fell on the head of the CW's Online Nation, the fall's least watched new show, by a lot.
CBS, meanwhile, confirmed two other Watch with Kristin items: the season-long renewals of the freshman comedy The Big Bang Theory and the veteran military drama The Unit.
So far this season, Private Practice has averaged 13.4 million viewers. That's not nearly as many as its forerunner, Grey's Anatomy, or the in-its-prime Lost, which once ruled the 9 p.m. Wednesday time slot for ABC. But the freshman medical drama is doing what it needs to do—namely, outdraw NBC's highly touted Bionic Woman, the fall's next highest rated new show.
Overall, Private Practice, which airs opposite Bionic Woman, is TV's number 12 show among all households, and a top 10 show among advertiser-desirable 18- to 49-year-olds.
As a top 25 show, Bionic Woman is hardly hanging its cyborg head. Last week, it got its own vote of confidence, albeit a more cautious one, in the form of an order for new scripts.
The Big Bang Theory seemingly scored its season-long renewal on the strength of its Monday-night performances, and the continued weakness of the sitcom genre. With an average weekly audience of 9 million viewers, the geek-celebrating series isn't all that bigger than The Class, which CBS canceled after one season last spring, but it's the only series, geek-celebrating or no, that gets to call itself TV's most watched new half-hour comedy.
The Unit's pickup comes as the three-season-old series has picked up viewers from last season to this, defying a fall trend. Last year, the drama averaged 10.8 million viewers; so far this year, it's averaging 11.3 million.
For those keeping score at home, Private Practice, The Big Bang Theory and CW's Gossip Girl are the first three new fall shows to earn season-long commitments. Fox's Kitchen Nightmares was outright renewed for a second season.
Online Nation, which never drew as many as 1 million viewers from the TV nation, and Fox's Nashville are the first two new fall shows to earn hooks.
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