AND THE WINNER IS … ABC

Thanks to its annual broadcast of the Oscars, ABC wound up in first place on the Nielsen ratings chart for last week, averaging 10.68 million viewers. That figure was skewed by the 39.34 million who tuned in to Sunday night’s Oscar telecast, the No. 1 program of the week. After the awards show and the [...]

NCIS FELLS AMERICAN IDOL

For the first time, a regularly scheduled entertainment show has knocked American Idol off its perch at the top of the Nielsen ratings chart as the most-viewed show among total adults. According to final figures, NCIS, now in its ninth season on CBS and seemingly growing stronger every season, averaged 19.59 million viewers last week, [...]

NCIS: STILL STRONG AFTER 200 EPISODES

After 200 episodes, CBS’s NCIS remains the top-rated scripted drama on television. This week’s episode attracted 20.98 million viewers on par with episode No. 199, which according to final figures, attracted 20.93. (The difference is considered statistically insignificant.) It was also Tuesday’s highest rated show. Its companion show, NCIS Los Angeles also pulled in impressive [...]

FALLEN IDOL

The season debut of Fox’s American Idol suffered its biggest year-to-year drop ever on Wednesday, dropping 17 percent to 21.6 million viewers versus 26.1 million for last season’s debut episode. It remained, however, the highest-rated show of the night. Its closest competition was CBS’s Criminal Minds at 9:00 p.m., which drew 12.8 million. CBS’s NCIS,, [...]

FOX NEWS A BIG WINNER IN NEW HAMPSHIRE

Mitt Romney was the easy winner of the New Hampshire Republican presidential primary on Tuesday, but so, too, was Fox News. The news channel, whose viewers are largely conservative and/or Republican, averaged 2.25 million during primetime Tuesday night, peaking in the 9:00 hour, as Romney claimed victory, with 2.73 million. Somewhat surprisingly, however, those represented [...]

NCIS DRAWS 20 MILLION VIEWERS ENTERING NINTH YEAR

CBS’s NCIS wasn’t showing the slightest signs of faltering in its old age as Tuesday’s episode attracted 20 million viewers. Against it, the series debut of ABC’s cross-dressing comedy Work It didn’t stand a chance. (Awful reviews didn’t help either. Time magazine’s James Poniewozik called it “the kind of bad dumb show you will use [...]

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 [...]

FOOTBALL IS THROWN FOR A RATINGS LOSS

The most-watched television show last week was not NBC’s Sunday Night Football. In fact, the contest between Baltimore and San Diego ranked only fourth on the Nielsen ratings list for the week, presumably brought down by competition from the season finale of CBS’s Survivor: South Pacific. No, the No. 1 show was CBS’s eight-year-old drama [...]

NBC: FIRST WITH FOOTBALL, LAST WITH EVERYTHING ELSE

Once again NBC’s Sunday Night Football ranked No. 1 for the week with 20.3 million viewers tuning in — but football was all she wrote for the struggling network, whose second-highest-rated show, Law and Order: SVU, came in at No. 40. CBS’s NCIS captured nearly as many viewers as the NFL — 20 million, at [...]

DWTS SEASON FINALE TRIPS UP

It’s hard to call any TV show that attracts 19.5 million viewers a disappointment, but that’s the case with entertainment reporters’ assessments of Tuesday night’s season finale of Dancing with the Stars. That figure, most of them noted, represented the smallest number of viewers to watch a fall finale of the dance contest to date. [...]

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