Vampire Diaries and Secret Circle Premieres: Monster Mashed? (And New Hope for Free Agents?)

Thursday night's TV ratings results tell all

By Joal Ryan Sep 16, 2011 5:58 PMTags
The Vampire Diaries, Michael Trevino Art Streiber / The CW

Has The Vampire Diaries lost its bite? Does The Secret Cicle have the power? And why are things looking up (or, at least, not down) for Free Agents?

The answers from last night's ratings race:

SUCKING LESS THAN EVER (NOT NECESSARILY A GOOD THING)

The Vampire Diaries (2.99 million viewers): The third-season opener was the series' smallest yet, but that's not the not-good part.  (Overall, it wasn't off all that much from last fall.) The not-good part was that 20 percent fewer young women, aged 18-34, were lured in.

BEWITCHING

The Secret Circle (2.993 million viewers): A really good start for a CW series, circa September 2011. Also, it did no worse than Nikita did last fall in rounding up the CW's kinda crowd. 

HOPE? 

Free Agents (2.4 milion viewers): One night after coming up way short when compared to network sibling Up All Night, a rerun of its premiere looked less bad after a rerun of The Office.

WHO KNEW?

Wipeout finale (6.7 million viewers): Teen girls do not all swoon over vampires. Roughly, the same number of the species tuned in the bash-'em-up competition show as Vampire Diaries