Jajajaja!
OMG! No puedo creer que le echen la culpa a la baja de rating a UGLY BETTY!
Something's always up at Seattle Grace. Except this season, the ratings are down.
Through its first five telecasts,
ABC's Grey's Anatomy is averaging some 3.5 million fewer viewers this fall than last.
On one hand, Grey's Anatomy is in no different straits than other shows:
Almost everything, thanks to increased TiVo use or wicked Wii play, is down when the weekly rankings are first issued. CBS' CSI has fallen from 22.6 million viewers last season to 21.5 million viewers; ABC's Desperate Housewives, from 21.7 million to 19.2 million.
On the other hand,
Grey's Anatomy (from 23.9 million to 20.2 million) has shed significantly more viewers than its fellow top 10 residents, three of whom, Fox's House, ABC's Dancing with the Stars and CBS' NCIS, are actually bigger than they were last year.
There seems to be no clear-cut explanation for Grey's losses. CSI, its main competition on Thursdays, while holding its own, is certainly no stronger. After a season of change, ranging from the set up of the Private Practice spinoff to the Isaiah Washington offscreen exit,
the new season's story lines seemingly aren't riling up fans the way, say, Desperate Housewives' or Lost's off-track sophomore seasons did. And its zeitgeist touch is still deft, with Sunday's New York Times devoting a lengthy article in praise of the medical drama's coining of vajayjay for vagina.
One possible crimp in Grey's Anatomy's style: Ugly Betty.
The hourlong comedy, the freshman ratings star and Emmy winner, is not nearly providing the lead-in it did for Grey's last year. In fact, it's slumping even more than Grey's, averaging nearly 4 million fewer viewers. Last week, it finished a so-so 34th place (10 million viewers), and failed to crack the Top 25 in the money 18- to 49-year-old demographic.
Overall, Grey's Anatomy is still a very big deal. Last week, it was TV's fourth-most watched show, averaging 18.2 million total viewers, and TV's second-highest rated show among 18- to 49-year-olds.
But given its current ratings decline, the next time the doctors at Seattle Grace come up with the new vajayjay, it may take a little longer for the catchphrase to catch on.
