TV’S NEW #1 SHOW: TWO AND A HALF MEN

When Ashton Kutcher was named to replace Charlie Sheen on Two and a Half Men, he remarked that it was like winning the lottery. It now appears that the producers of the show and CBS have struck it rich as well, as the season debut of the show with Kutcher ranked No. 1 in the [...]

FINAL RATINGS FOR EMMYS DIP AGAIN

Television’s annual Emmy awards, once one of the medium’s highest-rated annual events, landed in seventh place on the Nielsen ratings list for last week, outranked by NBC’s Sunday-night football telecast, which aired opposite it, a final installment of NBC’s America’s Got Talent and even a repeat of CBS’s 60 Minutes. Helped by football, the debut [...]

THANKS TO TALENT, FOOTBALL, NBC’S GOT RATINGS

It was another week for NBC’s peacock to crow. The struggling network saw its America’s Got Talent rank first and second in the Nielsen ratings, with the two-hour Tuesday edition averaging 12 million viewers and the one-hour Wednesday edition 11.1 million. Moreover, its Sunday night preseason NFL telecast between the Saints and Raiders averaged 9.3 [...]

SAWYER CLOSING IN ON WILLIAMS

An excerpt from Diane Sawyer’s interview with Jaycee Dugard that was included in last Thursday night’s World News with Diane Sawyer not only gave the ABC newscast a rare win for the night over NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, but helped narrow the gap between the rival newscasts to a minuscule 4 percent for [...]

DUGARD INTERVIEW A HUGE COUP FOR ABC

Diane Sawyer’s interview with Jaycee Dugard on a two-hour special edition of Primetime Sunday night, which averaged 14.8 million viewers, has turned out to be the most-watched summer newsmagazine telecast since June 20, 2004, Mediaweek reported today (Tuesday). For ABC, it noted, the telecast represented ABC’s biggest audience in the two-hour period for a non-sports [...]

DUGARD INTERVIEW DRAWS 15 MILLION

Viewers, it would seem, cannot get enough of real-life crime coverage. A week after the Casey Anthony verdict drew record audiences, Diane Sawyer’s two-hour interview with kidnapping and rape victim Jaycee Dugard — Dugard’s first since being reunited with her family — averaged 14.7 million viewers, 14 million during the first hour and 15.4 million [...]

NBC OWNS HALF OF TOP-TEN RATED SHOWS

Time was when NBC’s Thursday lineup alone would provide five contenders or more for Nielsen’s list of the top ten television shows of the week. These days, however, it is extraordinary when any five NBC shows land in the top-ten. But that’s what happened last week. Of course three shows were titled America’s Got Talent, [...]

ABC’S CUOMO DEFENDS CHECKBOOK JOURNALISM

The ethics of paying sources for stories came under renewed scrutiny over the weekend when 20/20 co-anchor Chris Cuomo confirmed that he had arranged for Meagan Broussard to receive $15,000 ostensibly for photos that were used in his exclusive interview with her about her relationship with Congressman Anthony Weiner. Interviewed by Howard Kurtz on CNN’s [...]

KATIE EXITS WITHOUT MUCH OF A RATINGS BUMP

Ratings for the NBC and ABC nightly newscasts were down significantly last week. NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams once again led the field with 8.61 million viewers, but second-place ABC World News with Diane Sawyer narrowed the gap with 7.84 million — just 770,000 viewers behind NBC. The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric [...]

COURIC’S DEPARTURE GOES UNREPORTED BY CBS

Viewers of the CBS Evening News Tuesday night would not have learned that Katie Couric will be stepping down as anchor of the nightly newscast at the end of next month. They would have heard about it if they had watched the other two network newscasts. On his report on NBC Nightly News, Brian Williams [...]

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