SO WHAT DID XMAS SHOPPERS WATCH ON THEIR NEW TV’S?

The week before Christmas featured nearly as many reruns on primetime TV as a typical week in midsummer — with commensurate low ratings. There were a few exceptions. A repeat of CBS’s NCIS drew 12.4 million viewers to finish in third place behind NBC’s Sunday Night Football telecast (Chicago vs. Green Bay) with 24 million […]

KUTCHER’S MEN SCORES ANOTHER TD AGAINST NFL

For the second week in a row, CBS’s Two and a Half Men topped the Nielsen ratings list for total adults, capturing 20.53 million viewers. Among 18-49 year-old viewers, however, it placed second, edged out by Sunday Night Football on NBC. The two shows, however, were separated by fewer than 500,000 viewers in the younger […]

RATINGS FOR ENTERTAINMENT SHOWS FALL BELOW NEWSCASTS’

For the second week in a row, television executives might have been wishing that their entertainment programs were drawing the sizable audiences that their evening newscasts were. While NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams averaged 7.87 million viewers, NBC’s primetime programming averaged 4.56 million (the average was ballooned by high ratings for America’s Got Talent; […]

NEWS BEATS ENTERTAINMENT IN RATINGS

More TV viewers were watching reports about the budget crisis last week than most entertainment programs. NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams averaged 7.9 million viewers for the week. That would have put it at seventh place on the Nielsen primetime ratings list. ABC World News with Diane Sawyer with an average of 7.4 million […]

FOX FIRST AMONG YOUNG VIEWERS, LAST AMONG TOTAL VIEWERS

Fox’s highest-rated show among total adults last week was the Wednesday edition of So You Think You Can Dance, which came in at No. 23 in the overall weekly ratings. Nevertheless, among the key demographic group of adults 18-49, Fox was the top-rated network for the week, followed by CBS, which attracted far more overall […]

CBS, FOX SHARE RATINGS HONORS

CBS didn’t have to do much more than air reruns and Big Brother to capture the most viewers last week, although Fox won the week among viewers 18-49, thanks largely to its coverage of Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game. NBC also remained a strong contender with its summertime hit America’s Got Talent, which captured three […]

CBS A SMASH DURING XMAS WEEK

During a week that saw millions of folks doing last-minute Christmas shopping instead of watching TV, network schedules that included as many reruns as a week in July, and a blizzard that knocked out Sunday Night Football, usually the most popular telecast of the week, CBS utterly dominated primetime TV. Every scripted show in Nielsen’s […]