Ratings Review: FOX Thursdays - November Sweeps

It was a very rough sweeps month for FOX Thursday night. THE X FACTOR has yet to recover from the preemption caused by the MLB Playoffs. On average, THE X FACTOR dropped about 4 million viewers and over a full point from it's A18-49 ratings. The numbers are starting to rebound, but it looks like viewers found other programming and did not return after baseball. The one thing THE X FACTOR does have is a very strong social medial activity. It is usually one of the strongest shows of each week, and dominates all other regular network series on each of its nights.

To a lesser extent, GLEE was also affected by the baseball preemptions, but it's numbers were close to what dramedy received during the November sweeps. In my opinion, this is a series that should not have been renewed for this season, let alone receive two full season orders, last spring. This week, FOX announced that when GLEE returns from its winter break, it will occupy the Tuesday night at 8 p.m. time slot. This could help the series bring back some of its former viewers. At the very least, it will not be hurt by the move.

The sad part about how FOX performed on Thursday nights, is that finished in 3rd place, besting the CW and NBC. And, THE X FACTOR usually finished second in it's 8 p.m. time slot.

Series	Category	Week 1	Week 2	Week 3	Week 4	AVG
The X Factor	Viewers*	3.25 [R]	3.67	5.18	5.54	4.41
	A18-49	0.8	1.2	1.3	1.5	1.2
Glee	Viewers*	1.89 [R]	4.01	4.22	4.09	3.55
	A18-49	0.6	1.5	1.4	1.4	1.2

* - in millions