It was a record breaking night for two of the Monday night shows one for all the right reasons, the other for all the wrong reasons.
The 8pm timeslot saw the usual 2 hour battle between ABC's Dancing With The Stars and NBC's The Voice. The Voice, though down from last week's 5.2 rating, won the battle with a 4.9 rating and 14.15 million viewers. Dancing With The Stars was not far behind The Voice in audience terms (in fact more viewers tuned in this week than last week) with 13.77 million viewers tuning in, but was left in the dust in ratings terms, with what will be one of the lowest rating episodes on record, at just 2.1. This goes to show the skewed demographics between Dancing With The Stars and The Voice, with The Voice clearly having more success with younger audiences
Also at 8pm, was FOX's Bones. Last week's episode earned a season low audience of 6.56 million viewers as well as a season low equaling 1.9 rating. This week's episode was up on last week's with a 2.0 rating and 7.06 million viewers. On CBS, a repeat of How I Met Your Mother earned a 1.3 rating and 4.16 million viewers. It led in a new episode of Rules Of Engagement which earned a 1.6 rating and 5.11 million viewers, - well down on last weeks 2.1 rating and 6.11 million viewers, and signifying its reliance on How I Met Your Mother to provide it a solid lead-in platform
9pm saw FOX's The Following successfully halt it's ratings and audience slide, earning a 2.4 rating and 7.06 million viewers - the highest rating and most viewed episode in the last 5 episodes, and a comfortable improvement on last week's 2.1 rating and 6.36 million viewers. Over on CBS, half hour comedy duo 2 Broke Girls and Mike & Molly were on repeats, earning a 1.5 rating and 5.12 million viewers, and a 1.3 rating and 5.29 million viewers respectively
The 10pm timeslot is where all the action on Monday night happened. Despite the poor ratings performance by Dancing With The Stars, ABC's Castle earned a 2.3 rating and 11.76 million viewers, which equals this season's ratings record and becomes the second most viewed episode this season behind the most viewed episode by just 30,000 viewers. This episode also marks the first time in Castle's history that it has eclipsed Dancing With The Stars in ratings when it was its lead-in - a pretty amazing achievement. See the ratings graph at the bottom of this page to see the lines finally swap sides on the graph, after weeks of coming pretty close.
Also at 10pm was NBC's Revolution, which didn't see the pickup some expected thanks to this weeks episode being preempted due to the events in Boston. It earned a 2.0 rating and 5.88 million viewers - a series low in both categories, and making the red line on the graphs at the bottom of this page look worringly steep. Finishing the night on CBS was a repeat of Hawaii Five-0, which earned a 1.2 rating and 5.21 million viewers. This repeat would have helped Castle, because it clearly didn't benefit Revolution.
So there's the wrap for Monday's ratings. Next week sees the season finales of Bones and The Following - much earlier than their opposition on the other three networks. The highly anticipated Castle episode "Still" airs on ABC, which could see a second week of Castle rating higher than Dancing With The Stars, and CBS returns to full strength with an all new lineup of its 5 Monday night shows
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