41.9 MILLION WATCH OLYMPICS’ OPENING CEREMONY

NBC’s strategy of forcing viewers to tune in to its delayed primetime telecast of the Olympics’ opening ceremony may have generated numerous complaints, but, in the end, it paid off in ratings gold. Reporting preliminary overnight results, Nielsen said today that the primetime portion of the telecast between 8:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. averaged 41.92 […]

NBC TO STREAM EVERY OLYMPICS EVEN LIVE

NBC plans to stream every event at this year’s summer Olympics in London live on its NBCOlympics.com website — more than 3,500 hours. The decision is a departure from its past policy of presenting Olympics events on the web only after they have already aired on the network, which, in the case of many of […]

RATINGS FOR MNF DROP

ESPN’s Monday Night Football may have continued to rank as the No. 1 series on cable television in 2011, but ratings were down significantly from last year, particularly when the final games of the season were compared, according to Nielsen data compiled by Multichannel News. In its sixth season on ESPN, the 17 NFL games […]

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 […]

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 […]

BRIAN WILLIAMS SET TO DEBUT IN PRIMETIME

NBC, which leads in news programming while nearly all of its entertainment shows continue to languish, is planning to launch a new primetime magazine program hosted by NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams, the Wall Street Journal reported today (Friday), citing two people familiar with the matter. NBC’s Dateline series has managed to produce solid […]

CBS WINS EVERY HALF-HOUR OF WEDNESDAY PRIMETIME

CBS continued to dominate the Wednesday ratings, winning every primetime half-hour in total adults and adults 18-49 and averaging 12.12 million viewers. But NBC boasted strong second-place numbers with its limited holiday series The Sing-Off, which, in a two-hour episode, averaged 8.38 million viewers. The network said Wednesday that it plans to extend Monday’s season […]

SNL BEATS EVERYTHING IN PRIMETIME

It’s hard to judge whether its a testament to its own quality or to the lack of quality of primetime shows that air on Saturday night, but NBC’s Saturday Night Live, which begins at 11:30 p.m. drew bigger ratings on Saturday than any non-sports show airing on the four major TV networks that night. The […]

FOOTBALL CRUSHES RIVAL TV SHOWS THIS SEASON

This season’s NFL football telecasts are recording the highest ratings in history and drawing twice the number of viewers than the average non-sports television show, MediaWeek reported on its website Monday, citing Nielsen figures. More than 150 million people have watched at least part of an NFL game this season versus 146 million by this […]

ABC NEWS ELIMINATES A QUARTER OF ITS EMPLOYEES

ABC News’s latest round of staff cutbacks — the most stringent in its history — ended on Tuesday with the firing of 22 employees after more than 300-400 other staffers and contract employees agreed to take voluntary buyouts, the Los Angeles Times reported today (Thursday), citing a source familiar with the process. The number who […]