So How Smart Was Pirate Rupert To Air Lie To Me Instead Of The Obama Presser?

(Guest posted by JFein from Fire Andy Reid Now!)

The answer: As it turns out, Pirate Rupert may not have been as dumb as we thought, or at least I thought he was. While the Obama Presser combined had 22.02 million viewers combined from CBS, ABC, NBC, and Univision. However, no one network's airing of the presser had more viewers than Lie To Me: With 7.88 million viewers according to the overnight numbers on TVbythenumbers.com, while the network that had the most viewers for the Obama Presser, NBC, had 6.68 million viewers.

However, as far as Lie To Me numbers go, it was the season's lowest numbers of the season. The previous series low was 8.56 million viewers, and that was the number they pulled last week. But the trend has been to lose a few viewers each week with Lie To Me, especially seeing as it is a new show and it's pilot 12.37 million which went head-to-head with Lost and won. So when you're numbers are that high, you are bound to lose viewers over time (just look at Survivior). And this was also not the biggest amount of viewers lost from one week to the next for Lie To Me, so all in all, while it did not gain them viewers, I would file this one in the category of the late Chick Hern's "No harm, no foul, no blood, no ambulance".

Lie To Me Ratings Week By Week (Wikipedia)