Thursday Night Ratings: SCANDAL, MISSING, GREY'S ANATOMY Up

The Thursday night Nielsen ratings are coming in. Below is a roundup of April 12 ratings reports we have so far.

From ABC:
MISSING (8:00-9:00 p.m.)
From 8:00-9:00 p.m., up against Fox's AMERICAN IDOL and CBS comedies, ABC's MISSING once again more than doubled the audience of NBC's original comedy block (7.9 million vs. 3.1 million - +155% over COMMUNITY/30 ROCK) and tied among Adults 18-49 (1.4/4). Picking up audience throughout its broadcast, the new ABC drama gained viewers (+4% - 7.7 million to 8.0 million) and young adults (+8% - 1.3/4 to 1.4/4) from its first half-hour to its second half-hour.

* MISSING's overall audience grew week to week by 10% to hit a 3-week high. In addition, the freshman series drew 27% more viewers to the hour for ABC year to year, topping original programming on the year-ago night (WIPEOUT on 4/14/11 = 6.2 million).

GREY'S ANATOMY (9:00-10:00 p.m.)
More than doubling its Adult 18-49 lead-in at 9:00 p.m. (+107%), ABC's GREY'S ANATOMY moved up to No. 1 in its time period among Total Viewers (8.8 million-tie) and Adults 18-49 (2.9/8). In fact among Adults 18-49, GREY'S beat out Fox's IDOL-driven TOUCH (2.3/6) during the 9 o'clock hour by 26%. Additionally, GREY'S stood as Thursday's No. 1 TV show across all key Women demos (W18-34/W18-49/W25-54).

* GREY'S was up week to week in viewers (+7%) and young adults (+4%).

SCANDAL (10:00-11:00 p.m.)
Continuing to exhibit solid retention of its GREY'S lead-in during the 10 o'clock hour, ABC's SCANDAL ranked No. 1 among Adults 18-49 and Adults 25-54. In the hour, ABC's SCANDAL more than doubled its freshman drama competition, defeating NBC's AWAKE by 188% in Total Viewers (7.5 million vs. 2.6 million), by 170% in Adults 25-54 (2.7/7 vs. 1.0/3) and by 133% in Adults 18-49 (2.1/6 vs. 0.9/2). In addition, the new drama won its slot among key Women (W18-49/W25-54) for the 2nd week in a row.

* Bucking the general trend for new shows, ABC's SCANDAL was up over its week-ago debut across a number of key demos: Total Viewers (+3%), AD18-34 (+15%), AD18-49 (+5%) and AD25-54 (+4%).

* SCANDAL attracted ABC's largest audience in the time slot in over 3 months - since 1/5/12.

A note about increasing DVR penetration and year-to-year rating comparisons: Year-to-year rating comparisons based on the Live + Same Day data stream are distorted by the level of DVR penetration in the Nielsen sample, which has jumped up to 43% currently, from 40% at the same point in 2011.