TV News: ‘Two and a Half Men’ Destroys Ratings, ‘The Playboy Club’ Bombs

CHICAGO – Well, that was predictable. As expected, audiences were curious about how “Two and a Half Men” would handle the departure of Charlie Sheen and the arrival of Ashton Kutcher. The most important demo numbers aren’t in yet but the overall household ratings (the first numbers released) were ludicrously high with season premiere numbers for the CBS hit that doubled last year’s first episode.

Two and a Half Men Photo credit: CBS

“Two and a Half Men” opened with an 18.7 rating and a 26 share, compared to the 9.5/14 for last year’s season premiere. For some perspective, a 9.5 is a very-strong season premiere rating. An 18.7 is just crazy.

As expected, the high numbers for the Kutcher premiere helped out the deserving “2 Broke Girls [16],” which saw a great 12.7/18 in the household ratings. It’s impossible to directly compare given the Kutcher/Sheen story but “Mike & Molly,” which returns next week, opened with a 7.9/11 last year. “2 Broke Girls” was heavily sampled and hopefully enough viewers stick with the program after it leap frogs “Men” back to its regular 7:30pm CST time slot.

People may be happy at CBS but the struggle continues at NBC as “The Playboy Club [17]” opened with numbers similar to last year’s mercifully-canceled “Chase.” “Playboy” started with a 4.1 & 3.7 in its two half hours while “Chase” actually performed better last year with a 4.7 & 4.5. The cancellation clock is already ticking for “Club.”

“Dancing with the Stars” was not quite the behemoth it has been in the past with half-hour ratings that ran from 13.2-14.1 as opposed to last year’s 14.3-15.5. Still huge numbers but an interesting dip. Also interesting was that the dip didn’t impact “Castle [18]” at all which was significantly up from last year with a 9.8 & 8.7 over 8.5 & 7.4. Finally, “Hawaii Five-0” was down about 20% from its season premiere last year but consistent with overall numbers throughout its freshman frame.

[19]	By BRIAN TALLERICO [20] Content Director HollywoodChicago.com brian@hollywoodchicago.com [19]