Simpsons Channel

Olympic-themed episode ‘Boy Meets Curl’ served as an alternative to the Winter Olympics last night, but the majority of the audience preferred to tune in to the real deal, delivering the show it’s fifth lowest ratings of all time. A total of 5.87 million viewers watched the show, slightly up on this month’s other episode [...]

In the space of three weeks, The Simpsons can go from having its highest ratings in five years, to the lowest ratings of all time in the very next episode. Last night’s episode drew a meager 5.11 million viewers. Seeing an animated Coldplay or a ‘viewer-designed’ character couldn’t save the show, and indeed, Fox, from being slaughtered by the competition.

The Simpsons 20th Anniversary Special – In 3D on Ice, presented by Morgan Spurlock, was an hour long retrospective showcasing 20 years and 450 episodes of the show. Viewers old and new were treated to a rare brief history of the show, through the words of its producers, writers, stars, and guest stars. 13.46 million viewers tuned in to the first half hour of the special, and 11.171 million stayed watching for the second half.

Preliminary figures are in for Sunday’s 450th episode ‘Once Upon a Time in Springfield’. The show was bumped to an after-8pm timeslot due to an overrun of Fox’s NFL coverage, but the 8pm half hour averaged a whopping 21.01 million viewers. These figures will be adjusted later in the week, but we can already tell you before the adjustments that this will be the most-watched episode of Seasons 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 (season 16’s post-Superbowl episode had 23.1 million viewers).

The Simpsons topped ratings last night with 8.65 million tuning in to watch “Thursdays With Abie” at 8:30pm, up by an impressive 25% on the last new episode.

A total of 7.11 million viewers watched last night’s episode ‘O Brother, Where Bart Thou?’ Family Guy had 7.68 million viewers, making it the top watched animated show of the night. The Cleveland Show continues to pull reasonable figures at 6.52 million, and American Dad had 6.19 million viewers at the end of the night.

All shows in Fox’s weekly Animation Domination last night were up on last week’s, and what’s more, a new episode of The Simpsons won the night for the third time this season, with 8.9 million tuning in, a 27% increase on last week’s 7.39 million.