Recently, our friend Brian Stelter at TV Decoder referred to MyNetworkTV as “the low-rated mini-network owned by the News Corporation“. Considering the possible NY Times vs. Rupert Murdoch politics that might be involved, I asked when the Times would begin referring to the CW as “the low-rated mini-network owned by CBS and Time Warner”? No response as yet from Brian 
The comparison is apt, because this season the CW and MyNetworkTV’s ratings were closer to each other’s than the CW’s were to the average of the “Top 4″ (ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox).
This season, while MyNetworkTV ratings are up [+34.9% in average viewers], the CW’s are down significantly, down more than 20% in average viewers. But everybody loves talking about the CW, they’ve got a great PR machine.
And with Friday Night Smackdown moving from the CW to MyNetworkTV in the Fall, I’d expect the horse race among the “little ponies” to be neck and neck.
Of course, both of these ponies are getting crushed by Univision, but the English language world will hear nothing of that. English TV writers couldn’t be bothered.
Nielsen Ratings Data: ©2008 Nielsen Media Research, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Unless the CW has a magic bullet next season (and it doesn't), I fully expect it to be down another 10 to 15% (especially on Friday – Sunday can't get much worse). MNTV should be up another 30 to 50%, much thanks to Smackdown!. That's going to put the two extremely close, which is impressive considering that the CW was beating MNTV by a 5 to 1 margin in their first seasons.
looking at these numbers, i still can't believe that CW let go smackdown, i certainly think the cw numbers will go down for the next season