Welcome back ratings addicts. Here’s your numbers break-down for the week. Let us know what you think in the comments section. Feel free to e-mail me at andrewhingson@toonamifaithful.com about this column if you have any questions or suggestions.

Here are the ratings for May 11th 2013

12:00 AM Bleach 0.8 HH, 1.055 million / 594,500 18-49 (0.47)
12:30 AM Naruto 0.7 HH, 1.048 million / 556,600 18-49 (0.44)
1:00 AM Soul Eater 0.7 HH, 987,000 / 518,650 18-49 (0.41)
1:30 AM ThunderCats (2011) 0.7 HH, 935,000 / 493,350 18-49 (0.39)
2:00 AM I.G.P.X. 0.6 HH, 815,000 / 392,150 18-49 (0.31)
2:30 AM Eureka 7 0.6 HH, 710,000 / 341,550 18-49 (0.27)
3:00 AM Tenchi Muyo! GXP 0.5 HH, 690,000 / 379,500 18-49 (0.30)
3:30 AM Sym-Bionic Titan 0.5 HH, 580,000 / 328,900 18-49 (0.26)
4:00 AM FMA: Brotherhood 0.5 HH, 565,000 / 328,900 18-49 (0.26)
4:30 AM Cowboy Bebop 0.4 HH, 511,000 / 290,950 18-49 (0.23)
5:00 AM Inuyasha 0.4 HH, 506,000 / 278,300 18-49 (0.22)
5:30 AM Inuyasha 0.4 HH, 504,000 / 278,300 18-49 (0.22)

1.0 Adults 18-49 = 1,265,000 in the 2012-2013 season

Pre-Toonami for comparison

9:30 PM Family Guy 0.8 HH, 1.319 million / 670,450 18-49 (0.53)
10:00 PM Family Guy 1.2 HH, 1.954 million / 1.024 million 18-49 (0.81)
10:30 PM Cleveland Show 1.3 HH, 1.962 million / 1.012 million 18-49 (0.80)
11:00 PM Black Dynamite 0.8 HH, 1.216 million / 721,050 18-49 (0.57)
11:30 PM The Boondocks 0.8 HH, 1.170 million / 721,050 18-49 (0.57)

AmbientVirus’ Assessment:

Well, this week could have been better. Not sure if it was graduation or outside movies or whatever but this week was rather dismal ratings wise. Keep in mind that for ratings this week is still good but given the current trend since Toonami expanded to the full six-hour block, this is in the low side of the word “good.”

Bleach started off week at 1.055 mil which is low for the show. Bleach usually gets about 1.1 but has gotten lower and many shows got much lower than they normally would. The positive side to this is that until the start of Eureka 7, the per-slot loss stayed low with the 12:30-2am shows losing less than 75k. So while the lower start hurt the block overall, more people stayed later to watch beyond Bleach and Naruto, giving shows such as Thundercats and Soul Eater a nice boost compared to other weeks.

On a per week view only Naruto through IGPX gained with the rest losing upwards of 115k (5am Inyuasha takes the worst at 117k loss) from last week. I would probably pin this on finals and graduation causing normal viewers to skip Toonami while they either celebrate being set free or for losing their minds on those last questions. I would hope this will increase next week with the start of One Piece.

Per year was an interesting view into what people are watching. Bleach loses by a fraction of 24k from last year but Naruto and Soul Eater get major boost of near a quarter of a million. Between 12:30 – 3:30am every show got either a major to minor increase from last year. Then it takes a rather interesting turn at 3:30 with SymBionic Titan losing 63k from last year than a major drop for the rest of the night. Each show for the last two hours lost roughly 250k which is rather surprising since that was the rerun block of Durarara, FMAB, Bleach and Inyuasha last year.

One point I would like to bring up is Bleach. On all ends, it lost by a small fraction with 83k from last week and 24k from last year. Given Bleach is their current start and star at 12am it’s rather interesting to see it losing out on all ends. Not saying it’s anything to panic about given external circumstances but I wonder if the show isn’t finally losing its touch given the hype for One Piece.

Overall: General loss week again with some surprising losses from last year. Nothing to really worry about though, given finals at least it wasn’t a major loss but hopefully it’ll pick up next week with One Piece starting.

Sketch’s Assessment:

I don’t know what happened to Bleach, it was keeping up with The Boondocks and Black Dynamite nicely lately but that week in particular it lost 0.10 in 18-49 ratings and if that keeps up you can kiss your #ExpandToonami dreams goodbye but there’s no need to panic about one bad night for Bleach, especially when it still cracked 1 million. I brought that up to put something else in perspective because I’ve seen a lot of people hate on IGPX for losing a lot of viewers from ThunderCats that night. Yes IGPX did lose a sizable amount of viewers in 18-49 and prestented the largest drop-off within Toonami with 18-49 but not the largest drop-off for 18-49 that night because Bleach lost more from The Boondocks. Soul Eater and ThunderCats made up for it by doing better than usual but Bleach hurt Toonami that night the same way Black Dynamite hurts it every week, by losing a larger potential audience. We can’t be too mad with Bleach though, as again that was one bad night.

I am growing concerned for IGPX. I’m somewhat puzzled why it loses so many 18-49 viewers because I’d figure people who were teenagers or kids back in 2006 would be the ones tuning in now and most of them would be at least 18 years of age by now. You can’t dog on those total viewer ratings but it did have its highest drop in total viewers thus far. As much as I don’t want to put 2nd run shows before 1st run shows, they may have made a mistake putting IGPX ahead of ThunderCats in their upcoming line-up.

Overall: It was not a bad night and it was a particularly good night for Soul Eater and ThunderCats even if the you might consider the rest of the night less than good. Don’t worry about dropping below 600,000 total viewers that night because above 500,000 after 4:00AM is still very respectable. We’ll see how One Piece joining, Soul Eater leading IGPX and ThunderCats moving to 3:00AM affects the block’s ratings flow in the coming weeks. At the very least, ThunderCats left it’s 1:30AM time slot on a high note and it has already proven capable of decent ratings at 2:30AM so 3:00AM should work out fine.