'Scandal' ratings top tough Halloween night

ABC’s Scandal easily dominated Thursday night in the ratings while most shows suffered declines thanks to the Halloween holiday.

Scandal matched last week’s season-low performance with 9.2 million viewers and a 2.9 rating among adults 18-49, even with its Grey’s Anatomy lead-in slipping 7 percent to tie its all-time low.

The only other broadcast shows that maintained last week’s performance level were NBC’s Parenthood and The CW’s Reign, of all things, with NBC’s new comedy Sean Saves the World rising a tad thanks to having a much bigger lead-in this week from a Halloween-themed SNL special. The ratings bump wore off by the time The Michael J. Fox Show aired, with Fox’s show slipping a notch.

But this wouldn’t be a Halloween ratings report without a horror story. You want to see something really scary? Look at The X Factor‘s ratings. Even for a mere clip-show episode airing on a holiday, last night’s number was downright shocking.

Returning to Thursday night after weeks of baseball preemption — another factor in the show’s drop-off — Fox’s singing competition series had only 3.2 million viewers and a 0.8 rating among adults 18-49 for its “Meet the Top 12” non-competition episode. Factor tied The CW’s Vampire Diaries (which was down too) and was resoundingly beaten by ABC’s annual telecast of It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. NBC’s Halloween-themed SNL special — which is also a clip show — delivered more than double Factor‘s rating. Again, this wasn’t a “normal” X Factor episode, but still: Just seeing that “0.8” next to a non-repeat of Factor is pretty dramatic. Factor fell to a series-low 1.5 rating earlier this week against NBC’s The Voice, and this is nearly half that number.

Apparently, nobody really was all that excited about meeting the top 12. Full chart: