Lingo's debutante week

The invaluable Douglas has now posted ratings for the first full week (June 6-10) of first-runs for GSN's new version of Lingo with Bill Engvall.

The show was neither a runaway hit nor an abject disaster. On three of the five days (Monday, Wednesday and Thursday) Lingo topped GSN's ratings. Tuesday was its worst showing, though the first-run at 8:00PM did land at number seven on GSN's list for the day. Lingo-phobes could hardly contain their excitement. (Disclaimer: I'm a Lingo fan.)

Friday was the strangest day of all. Engvall and the five-letter bunch didn't make the number one slot. But Lingo did take three of the top ten slots and four of the top fifteen. Go figure...especially because Lingo's other showings besides the 8:00PM first-run hadn't performed particularly well before Friday.

So Lingo friends and foes both have something to talk about from the first week. But BuzzerBlog's Alex Davis should be happy about one thing: Lingo seems to have helped the desperately needy Improv-a-Ganza. Four times in the five days Drew and the tedious improvisers landed in GSN's top ten, thanks to Engvall's lead-ins. That's a major improvement for Drew and gives hope for a renewal. And Alex is a huge Improv-a-Ganza fan.

I dunno, maybe comedy fans are tuning in for Engvall and staying tuned for Drew. But that was the week that was.

UPDATE: Douglas just posted the numbers for Saturday, June 11. No first-runs for Lingo on this day, but two of the show's three repeats still copped the number four and number six slots. And Improv-a-Ganza also landed a couple slots in the top ten. (Okay, four of its ridiculous six runs didn't do so great.)

It's the Bear Rule. As the gentlemen at TV by the Numbers so often say, when a bear is running after you and another guy, you don't have to outrun the bear. You just have to outrun the other guy.

In other words, Lingo doesn't have to outrun some arbitrary standard set by an Internet pundit. It just has to outrun the other shows on GSN right now. And Engvall and company might be doing just that, despite an absurd rerun schedule.

The top shows for the day were weekend stalwarts Million Dollar Password and Power of 10. These are very short-run acquisitions, so GSN can only use them on weekends. But they often deliver good numbers.