Fox Only Network To Finish Up in 2007-8 Season
Unlike my previous series of 2006-7 vs. 2007-8 posts that showed weekly average season to season prime-time viewership changes for the top 5 English networks (and were designed to show what if any changes might be attributable to the mid-season writer’s strike), I’m going to finish the 2007-8 prime-time broadcast season comparison showing the overall changes for the top 6 networks across all viewership categories.
By any standard of measurement, the 2007-8 season was a grim one overall for the major broadcast networks. On average, the six combined to lose 8.2% of their prime-time viewership from the 2006-7 season. The losses were even worse among the youth age demographics, down from 9.6% to 11.8%.
Fox was the only network to show gains for the season and much of those games can be attributed to the Super Bowl alone. Still, even without the Super Bowl, Fox’s results for 2007-8 would have been just about at the level of 2006-7. The other major English language networks would love to be able to say the same.
ABC lost “only” 8.7% of its average viewership from the 2006-7 season, but did much worse among the age demographic groups losing between 12.6% and 19.5%.
NBC lost a consistent 10.5% to 11.8% across all the viewership categories, although it must be said, they were doing significantly worse in the middle of the season.
CBS was down 17.2% in average viewers and 19.7% to 23.0% among the age demographic groups.
CW fared worst among the major English language networks, losing between 20.6% and 26.3% of its viewers in the different categories.
All was not roses with Univision, the major Spanish language broadcast network, either. While it did post a 1.8% gain in adults 18-34 and often beat one or more major English network on a weekly basis in that category, it also suffered declines of between 1.9% and 4.7% in its other categories. And it was unaffected by the writers strike that hit the English language networks.
Our chart shows broadcast network prime-time season to date average prime-time viewership for the 2007-8 season compared to the 2006-7 season.
Nielsen TV Ratings Data: ©2008 Nielsen Media Research, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
May 29th, 2008 at 9:55 am
How ironic is it that the CW lost the MOST in 18-34 year olds - their “target” demon. Those are some craptastic numbers!
May 29th, 2008 at 9:56 am
Demo, demo, I meant demo (I hate this new keyboard). But I like the idea of associating the CW with demons. Perhaps Sam & Dean can exorcise them?
May 29th, 2008 at 10:00 am
Angie, I think for a lot of people it works better with the typo
May 29th, 2008 at 9:58 pm
Melanie, on a percentage basis you are correct. On an absolute viewer basis, CW losses were less because their 2006-7 base was a much lower number.
May 29th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
Well I'd say given the reaction to Moonlight's cancellation and the poor quality of the new shows that CBS plans to launch in the fall, the 25 - 54 demo numbers are going to plummet further. With all these negative numbers and the drop in advertising revenues in 2007 - 2008 to date, you would think that the network executives and their advertisers would wake up.