Nielsen Ratings Apr 27: Housewives Desperate for Last Year’s Ratings

April 28th, 2008 by Robert Seidman  Email This

Scoreboard for Sun. April 27, 2008
Total Viewers (million)	11.72	8.58	6.22	5.63	1.22
Rating/Share: Adults 18-49	4.0/11	2.1/6	3.0/8	1.3/4	0.5/1

ABC won the first Sunday night of the May sweeps — even though it’s still April — and along with its Thursday performance [looks like all networks threw in the towel for Friday and Saturday] should be in the sweeps lead, at least in the all important 18-49 demo.   On Thursday all networks were down vs. last year other than FOX, which was up.  For Sunday FOX and ABC should be fairly consistent overall versus last year with CBS getting somewhat pummeled year over year. 

NBC must’ve had its most pathetic Sunday night sweeps EVER.  I’ll just let you look at the numbers - it averaged only a 1.3/4 in the 18-49 demo for the night.  Need I say more?  Actually, last year NBC ran with Dateline and a Movie of the Week.  It was already getting pummeled, but this year is worse.

Desperate Housewives easily won the 9pm slot though it was down almost a million viewers  [960,000] versus last year, and down about 15% vs. last year in the 18-49 demo.  Still, Extreme: Makeover: Home Edition in the 8pm slot and Brothers & Sisters in the 10pm slot did a bit better than they did last year.

In some ways it was already clear that CBS had somewhat thrown in the towel, but at least last night’s airing of Big Brother was the season finale.  While BB was no ratings juggernaut, its ratings were very consistent.  A re-airing of Showtime’s Dexter also is performing consistently for CBS, but these cable offerings aren’t setting the world on fire.  Still, Dexter outperformed Monk & Psych on NBC and significantly so in the 18-49 demo.

FOX got pretty good performances from its animation block which were pretty consistent with last year for the most part.   Even last year Family Guy was already doing better than The Simpsons in the 18-49 demo, though we know that the 9pm Sunday slot is better than the 8pm slot due to Daylight Savings Time.  This year Family Guy pulled a 4.3/10 in the demo versus The Simpson’s 3.6/10.  Good demo numbers for both shows.  Even King of the Hill and American Dad are getting 3.0s in the demo.  Something NBC would absolutely kill for.

What can I say about the CW?  A repeat of Girlfriends was its best airing.  Can we be far from Gossip Girl encore Sundays?

Sunday night’s details:

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

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