‘Smash’ season 2 debacle, ‘Do No Harm’ help NBC set new February sweeps low

The official news is in when it comes to the February sweeps, and we have to say that this was not a good time to be NBC. Just a matter of a month and a half ago, the network’s programming head in Robert Greenblatt was touting the network’s massive success for the fall half of the season. He warned the media that the pace would not keep up without football and “The Voice” … but who thought things would get this bad?

For the sweeps period, the network averaged a pretty woeful 1.2 rating in the advertiser-friendly 18-49 demographic, which actually placed it behind Spanish-language Univision (1.5) for the first time ever for a sweeps period. Univision has routinely defeated NBC on Fridays and some other nights over the years, but usually the network made up for the difference on some of its other big programming nights.

Unfortunately, most of the network’s big risks failed to reap any rewards. The most-hyped returns of “Community” and “Smash” led to low ratings, and in the case of the former, middling reviews from critics. Meanwhile, new drama “Deception” has underwhelmed, and “Do No Harm” was canceled after two horrendously-rated episodes in which the show failed to even draw a 1.0 rating. Even some big hits during the fall season, especially the comedy “Go On,” have flopped hard without “The Voice” as a lead-in.

On the flip side, CBS won the sweeps period easily with a 4.3 rating that was boosted heavily by the presence of the Super Bowl, though the Grammys along with “The Big Bang Theory” each played an integral role in their success.

Are you surprised at all by some of the network’s terrible ratings at the moment, especially given their success in the fall? If you want to see some of what NBC is planning to do now in order to stop the bleeding, you can do so by heading on over to the link here.

Photo: NBC