Scrubs Leads All Shows With 68.5% of Viewers Between 18-49

While it’s not nearly as economically significant as the shows that had the most adult viewers from 18-49, it nevertheless is interesting to see the shows that have the highest percentage of their viewers between the ages of 18-49.

The contents of the list were quite interesting, and a bit surprising to me.

Highest % of Season to Date Viewers between age 18-49

What strikes you first about the list is the near complete domination of Fox and NBC. Together they have the first 16 shows and 17 of 20. Fox has half of the top 20, proving its youth oriented power (and the list doesn’t include American Idol). NBC has the top 2 shows and 7 of the top 20.

CBS doesn’t have a single show in the top 20. In fact, the top CBS show was The Big Bang Theory at #35 with 51.1% of its viewers between 18-49. This kind of list drives Les Moonves nuts. It must be all he hears about from advertisers.

ABC has but three, and has already cancelled one of them (Big Shots).

Another thing that stands out to me is that even with the near universal lack of absolute viewer size (only one of these shows was in the average viewer top 20, Moment of Truth at #12), only one of these shows (Big Shots) is likely to be cancelled. So while having shows with a large number of 18-49 viewers is ideal, having a large % of 18-49 viewers isn’t that bad as a stop gap.

Moment of Truth stands out as being the only show on this list, the top 20 absolute viewership list and the top 20 absolute 18-49 audience size list. And it’s a new show this season. As I’ve written before, expect lots more lie detector tests to come in the years ahead.

Nielsen TV Ratings Data: ©2008 Nielsen Media Research, Inc. All Rights Reserved.