X FACTOR FINALE: IT WAS NO AMERICAN IDOL

Rival networks probably concluded months ago that Thursday night’s season finale of The X Factor would attract a huge audience, and they therefore programmed mostly reruns opposite it. But that was when producer/judge Simon Cowell was predicting that regular episodes of the talent show would attract 20 million viewers or more and when Fox was [...]

X FACTOR CLOSING WITH BIG — BUT NOT GREAT — NUMBERS

Its numbers were only a fraction of those for a finale of American Idol, but the final performance episode of The X Factor‘s first season attracted 10.5 million viewers in its first hour Wednesday night and 12.3 million in its second, winning the night for Fox. Everything else on network television looked mostly unimpressive. NBC [...]

DID SURVIVOR BEAT FOOTBALL? MAYBE

Overnight ratings for Sunday night were thrown into confusion today (Monday) after an afternoon NFL game on CBS ran more than 30 minutes into primetime in the Eastern and Central time zones. CBS initially claimed a win for the night, citing strong ratings out of the game for 60 Minutes plus a solid performance by [...]

DANCING WALTZES OFF WITH RATINGS VICTORY

Dancing with the Stars’s final two broadcasts of the season landed at the top of the Neilsen ratings list for total households last week, but only one episode — Tuesday’s results show — landed on Nielsen’s separate list for adults 18-49 — at No. 8. (Each episode drew nearly identical numbers of viewers — about [...]

OPRAH: BIG ON TV, BIGGER ONLINE

Of all the regular TV shows broadcast this year, none was more talked about on the Internet than Oprah Winfrey’s final telecast last week. According to Long Island-based research firm General Sentiment, the final episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show generated more online discussion even than the finale of American Idol earlier in the week. [...]

OPRAH’S FINALE: BIGGEST RATINGS SINCE 1994

Nielsen will not release final figures for another two weeks — ratings for syndicated television shows are traditionally delayed that long — but preliminary ratings for Wednesday’s finale of The Oprah Winfrey Show indicate that the show may have attracted around 18 million viewers. If so, that would have been the talk-show’s biggest audience since [...]

MONSTER AUDIENCES FOR TUESDAYS FINALES

There was a lot of TV viewing going on Tuesday night as ABC’s Dancing with the Stars wound up the season, with 20.97 million viewers for the two-hour season finale, according to Nielsen Research. Some 22.59 million were tuned in for the final half-hour of the show which saw Hines Ward selected as this season’s [...]

PRICETAG FOR AN AD ON OPRAH’S FINALE: $1 MILLION

Commercials airing during the final episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show, set to air on May 25, are being priced at $1 million, Mediapost.com reported today (Wednesday), noting that such a price for a regular TV show has not been seen since the finale of Everybody Loves Raymond in 2005. Such a rate is based [...]

JERSEY SHORE FINDS ITSELF IN AN ENVIABLE … ER … SITUATION

After launching the season with the highest ratings ever for an MTV series episode, Jersey Shore concluded the season Thursday with its highest ratings for a season finale. Thursdays episode attracted 7.6 million total viewers, up 25 percent from season two’s finale and 58 percent from season one’s. Ratings were up 20 percent over last [...]

KING’S RATINGS SURGE ON FINALE

For one last time CNN’s Larry King Live was back where it once was as the most-watched cable news show in its time period Thursday night. The finale edged out Hannity on Fox News 2.25 million to 2.24 million. The margin of victory may have been statistically insignificant, but it looked good in the news [...]

Next Page »