Ratings: ‘The Big Bang Theory’ rises for Sheldon / Amy episode; ‘The Vampire Diaries’ stays low (12/10/2015)

The moment that we first heard that “The Big Bang Theory” was advertising Thursday night’s episode as the one where Sheldon and Amy got together, we knew very well what the intention there was: To drive as many viewers as humanly possible to the series. They were well aware of the fact that spoilers would get out there about the two characters, and determined when the dust settled, they were better off trying to take advantage of it rather than hide or deny that something was going on.

The winners – This episode of the show Thursday ended up drawing a 4.0 rating in the 18-49 demographic, which is a nice number for the show and its best total since October. This is a show that doesn’t generate the same sort of monster live ratings that it used to, but it still performed very well.

As for the big surprise of Thursday, how about “Dolly Parton’s Coat of Many Colors”? Sure, the special skewed very old for NBC, but with a 1.8 in the demo and over 12 million viewers, the network probably doesn’t care that much. What really matters is that we could see more of Parton after this.

The losers – “Bones” averaged only a 1.0 for its two-part fall finale, and it wasn’t the only show that struggled to get a boost for a big episode. Neither “The Vampire Diaries” (0.5) or “The Originals” (0.4) managed to really improve much from recent ratings, even though the shows need all of the love that they can get moving into a new spot on Fridays in the new year.

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