Nielsen Ratings for Tue, March 4: Jericho is Toast

Scoreboard for Tue. March 4, 2008
Total Viewers (million)	20.94	8.91	7.72	5.41	2.30
Rating/Share: Adults 18-49	7.5/18	3.3/8	2.1/5	1.8/5	1.1/3

FOX and American Idol continued its dominance, but as fans of American Idol aren’t worried about the show being cancelled I’m jumping directly to Big Brother 9, Jericho and CBS bashing.

First let me be clear: fans of Big Brother and Jericho,  I love you.  I’m pretty sure Bill G. does too, but I don’t like professing love on behalf of other people. But Bill and I both fancy ourselves as hack business analysts and we are trying to understand the business.   CBS’ decision to continue with Big Brother 9 and Jericho in these slots doesn’t make sense to me.

But the news is worse, and far worse for Jericho than it is for Big Brother.  Big Brother can lay claim to at least outperforming the rerun of NCIS in the 18-49 demo and it has the following going for it:  it doesn’t cost anything to make (relatively speaking) and it has the good fortune, at least on Tuesdays, of facing off against According to Jim and Carpoolers on ABC

Jericho doesn’t have those luxuries, and finished dead last in viewers and the 18-49 demo in a time period won by a rerun of Law & Order: SVU on NBC.

It’s great that the PR flacks at CBS are trumpeting all the alternative/online video sources for watching Jericho, but the purpose of being in business is to make money.  If you don’t want to trust my analysis about the television industry in general, I don’t blame you! :)  But trust me about this: CBS (nor any network) has figured out how to monetize (make money) with the online stuff yet, so none of that’s particularly meaningful to the networks today in March 2008.  Someday it will be hugely meaningful, but today is not that day.

Whenever and however CBS pulls the plug, Jericho is absolutely done on CBS.  The good news for the fans is CBS seems to want to let it run its course.  I’d suggest to the fans that your problem isn’t with CBS, it’s with the producers of Jericho.  If you really want to save this show and have it continue, don’t send nuts to CBS, send them to the producers and BEG THEM to move this show onto the CW or some other network.  Jericho would be the most popular show on the CW and could thrive there.  The producers, actors, writers and everyone else involved in Jericho would have to take a bit pay cut to do that.   They may not want to, and I won’t hold that against them, but I believe the show could thrive on another network, just not a major broadcast network (sorry CW, you’re not major, but I love, love, love me some Supernatural anyway!).

In other news, the premiere of FOX’s New Amsterdam was the second most watched thing on television last night even though it lost more than half the lead-in from Idol and then lost even more in the second half hour.

Today’s (as well as the next few days) worth of data were half-hourly, and though that is sort of a pain in the butt for me to clean that up and make it look pretty in the table below, it is a lot more informative.  Jericho has great fans because they stay the whole hour!  Jericho gained a few viewers the second half hour.  But that’s the only good news.   If you really want to save your show, beg the producers to take the necessary pay cuts (it could still be profitable!) and move it to CW or one of the cable nets.  It’s just not a show that makes sense (from a business perspective) on a major broadcast television network.

Update 3/5 11:20a PST: One of the commenters brought up that I should’ve mentioned that election results were a big deal yesterday in some states and impacted ratings.  I agree, I should’ve mentioned it.  Now I have.  Sadly, barring a miraculous amount of new viewers in the coming weeks, my opinion remains Jericho is toast on CBS regardless.

The night’s full (half hourly) details:

Nielsen Ratings Source: Nielsen Media Research. Full night’s results available via Marc Berman/Mediaweek.