NBC pulls out an upset

Thursday was an odd night for the Nielsens, with sports programming and scattered repeats making it difficult to get a handle on what happened. But it turned out OK for NBC, which, thanks to the March Madness preemptions on CBS, pulled out a rare victory in the adults aged 18 to 49 demographic.

CBS’ basketball ratings are approximate until final numbers are reported later Friday. For what it’s worth, the regional NCAA semifinals pulled an average of 12.5 million prime-time viewers in the early data from Nielsen Media Research.

In week two, Simon Cowell’s “American Inventor” held up nicely for ABC, with a 5.1 rating/13 share in 18-49, 13 million total viewers, down just 6% in the demo compared with last week’s two-hour premiere. The show is developing a remarkable pattern of spiking ratings as it proceeds. On Thursday, viewership in the demo rocketed 30% from the first half-hour to the second. Usually, that kind of audience growth is seen in football games that go down to the final field goal. Strange. But the people at “Primetime” probably aren’t complaining -- with “Inventor” as the lead-in, the 10 p.m. newsmagazine did its highest ratings of the season (4.5 rating/12 share in demo; 10.9 million viewers overall).

With the little-lamented sitcom “Four Kings” out of the picture, NBC aired a repeat of “My Name Is Earl” in its 8:30 p.m. slot (3.8 rating/10 share; 11.3 million total), leading into a new “Earl” at 9 p.m. (5.2 rating/13 share; 11.3 million overall), which is holding steady with the show’s previous performance. At 10 p.m., the peacock got some mixed news. “ER” was strong enough (5.7 rating/15 share; 13.6 million total) to command the time period. But -- the hospital drama sunk to its lowest demo rating ever.