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Five Shows That Are Doing Better Than You Think

Community, Mad Men, Parenthood Mitchell Haaseth/NBC (2); AMC

Glee's cool, Dancing With the Stars is hot, and football is the bomb. 

These TV ratings things you know.

Here's what you don't know:

MORE: Which CW shows got picked up for the full season?

1. Mike & Molly is hipper than 30 Rock. Only old people watch CBS? Wrong. Even after DVR playback is added in, the Eyeball's freshman sitcom averages more 18-to-49-year-old desirables than NBC's hipster comedies, save The Office

2. Community has growth potential. A struggling show? Sure, this Thursday-night comedy's overall audience and demo rating look pretty anemic the morning after. But in the latest DVR-adjusted weekly rankings, per NBC, the Joel McHale comedy added a bigger percentage of 18-to-49 types than any half-hour comedy after The Office, 30 Rock and Modern Family.  

3. Desperate Housewives still matters. You say you stopped watching after—well, you can't remember when? Well, a lot of somebody elses still tune in. For the season to date, the soap's tied for 10th place in the demo.

And, by the by, House is tied for 10th place, too, despite the 5 million-plus viewers who have abandoned the show… 

4. Mad Men is not a cult show. A nifty factoid from New York magazine: Once all the DVR and video-on-demand viewings of the Emmy-winner's fourth-season premiere were factored in, an episode that looked as if it had averaged a cable-nice 2.9 million viewers ballooned to a big-tent 9.6 million. 

5. Parenthood is not being shunned. On Tuesday nights at 10 p.m., people choose The Good Wife and Detroit 1-8-7 over the Bravermans, but they eventually get back to the TV clan. In the new DVR-adjusted rankings, Parenthood posted a good demo rating, and grew by a bigger percentage than any other series, drama or comedy.

And now for some quick notes on the just-ended ratings week that was:

Brett Favre, if not the continuing saga of Brett Favre's reputed texting habits,  helped lead Sunday Night Football to the franchise's biggest-ever audience: 25.7 million.

Two and a Half Men slipped out of the Top 10. But not to worry, Charlie Sheen and/or Charlie Sheen's presumably pricey legal team, the hit comedy only slipped.

• The new NBC Friday show, School Pride (2.8 million), continued to make the canceled Outlaw look good.  

Jersey Shore wrapped its second season before 6.1 million, tops among all cable series. As an FYI, the episode fell shy of the series-record 6.7 million it drew for the Snooki-Angelina bout. 

Keeping Up with the Kardashians wrapped its fifth season before a cable-big 4.1 million. As an FYI, the episode fell shy of the series-record 4.8 million it drew for its fourth-season finale. 

• Other top cable performers: Pawn Stars (4.2 million); Teen Mom 2 (3.7 million); and, Project Runway (3.6 million).

• Early premiere-week numbers show CBS' The View Clone The Talk didn't unseat The View for coffee-talk supremacy. The ABC chatfest averaged 3.4 million, per estimates, versus The Talk's solid-enough 2.2 million.

Here's the complete rundown of the 10 most-watched broadcast network shows for the week ended Sunday, per Nielsen Media Research:

  1. Sunday Night Football, 25.7 million
  2. NCIS, 19.4 million
  3. Sunday Night Football pregame, 19.34 million
  4. Dancing With the Stars (Monday), 19.3 million
  5. NCIS: Los Angeles, 16 million
  6. 60 Minutes, 15.8 million
  7. Dancing With the Stars (Tuesday), 15.5 million
  8. CSI, 15 million
  9. Criminal Minds, 14.5 million
  10. The Mentalist, 14.4 million