HDTV Ratings: February 17

No Ordinary Family‘s ratings weren’t quite as extraordinary on Thursday while An Idiot Abroad recovered from its disastrous premiere a week earlier.

The Ricky Gervais-conceived reality romp about the world’s most hapless traveller pumped up its viewership in all of the major demographics.

The second episode was most popular with household shoppers with kids (8.3% vs 5.4% for the premiere), followed by 25-54 year-olds (6.3% vs 5%) and 18-49 year-olds (5.8% vs 4.9%).

Either the show is building word-of-mouth support or its viewership will be at the mercy of how strong TV2’s 20/20: Special Edition is each week.

For instance, the previous week’s 20/20 drew 14.9% of HHS/kids but Thursday’s edition could muster only 8%.

No Ordinary Family’s viewership also slipped for its second episode, from 13% of TV2’s target audience, 18-39 year-olds, to 10.8%; from 13.3% of 18-49 to 11.2%; from 14.5% of 25-54 to 11.9%; and from 17.6% of HHS/kids to 14.4%.

But it still comfortably won its time slot whereas TV3’s HD crime show, Bones, was a distant third behind it and TV One’s Intrepid Journeys.

However, Bones’ ratings were significantly better than its season premiere’s in all demos except 18-49.

The same demo also deserted TV2’s Fringe but 18-39 year-olds rediscovered it in droves: the show’s 10.30pm rating with this audience jumped from 2.9% the previous week to 5.5% while with HHS/kids, it stayed steady on 5.6%.