Two syndies wave good-bye

A so-so week for syndicated game shows, and Broadcasting & Cable confirmed some obvious news. The numbers for the week ending March 13:

Wheel of Fortune 7.3 - down a couple ticks
Jeopardy 6.0 - down four ticks, Alex misses Watson
Millionaire 2.3 - up a tick, Meredith is happy
Family Feud 1.7 - up a tick, Steve is happy
5th Grader 0.9 - flat and Jeff is not happy (see below)
Lyrics 0.7 - up a tick but it doesn't matter (see below)

B&C's Paige Albinak made it official, though the news was clear long ago: 5th Grader and Lyrics are gone after this season. The shows were quality efforts and enjoyed decent runs in broadcast and syndication. But the genre withers a bit among the syndies, which is not good.

I'll post TV by the Numbers' viewership averages when they bother to publish them. Hey, they finally bothered: Wheel of Fortune 11.8 million (weekend repeat 4.4 million), Jeopardy 9.5 million and Millionaire 3.3 million. TVBTN obsesses over the 18-49 demo, where they note Wheel finished third among all syndies with a 1.8 rating. Pat and Vanna get so many total viewers that even their demo numbers are pretty good.

Meanwhile, TVNewser brought some okay news for GSN: 374K/256K prime time/total day viewer averages for the March 14-20 week. Not bad though the network is hoping for noticeably bigger numbers come April 11.