America’s Got Talent retained the number one spot overall, and this week captured the 18-49 year old crown as well. Wipeout was second overall, and in the 18-49 demo. Wipeout seems to be a little bit more family viewing than So You Think You Can Dance and some other shows since with a full household ratings point less than Two and a Half Men, it still drew more viewers.
It was nice to see the ABC Primetime Special focusing on the life of Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch made the top twenty (#13) as well as the top ten of the demo. If you haven’t watched the actual lecture that Dr. Pausch gave last fall, I can’t recommend it strongly enough. You can watch it on YouTube and you can also dig up the ABC Primetime special here (scroll down a bit to where it says “Primetime>Webcasts” and then select “Remembering Randy Pausch”.
CBS still has a bit of an age problem with some shows in reruns outside of its Monday night lineup, particularly with shows like Criminal Minds, NCIS and 60 Minutes which perform great overall but aren’t even among the top 32 highest rated 18-49 shows. But Monday night performs admirably for CBS, and Big Brother is which had two out of three airings in the overall top twenty (and all three were in the top 25) placed all three of its airings in the 18-49 top twenty. And although neither CSI, CSI: NY, Criminal Minds, NCIS, or 60 Minutes were among the top thirty-two show in the 18-49 demographic, Flashpoint (#12 overall) made it at #32.
I know I spent time noodling the Flashpoint numbers, and came out kind of so-so, but there’s no arguing it was #12 overall and one of CBS’ better 18-49 demo performers (even with a 1.9 demo rating) for CBS. Without some serious ratings attrition, it seems likely CBS would give it another go next summer.
We were definitely ready for some football as even a lowly preseason matchup between the Indianapolis Colts and Washington Redskins (so glad Art Monk finally made it into the Hall of Fame!) missing lots of starters was #16 overall, and #6 among 18-49 year olds.
Nielsen Top Twenty Shows by viewers for the week ending 08/03/08:
| Rank | Shows | Net | HH RATING (LIVE+SD) | HH SHARE (LIVE+SD) | # OF HOMES (LIVE+SD) (000) | # Viewers (LIVE+SD) (000) | 18-49 Rank |
| 1 | AMERICA’S GOT TALENT | NBC | 8.1 | 13 | 9,172 | 13,846 | 1 |
| 2 | WIPEOUT | ABC | 5.2 | 9 | 5,908 | 9,699 | 2 |
| 3 | TWO AND A HALF MEN (R) | CBS | 6.2 | 10 | 6,956 | 9,345 | 4 |
| 4 | SO YOU THINK CN DANCE-WED | FOX | 5.6 | 9 | 6,271 | 8,841 | 3 |
| 5 | CRIMINAL MINDS (R) | CBS | 5.8 | 10 | 6,539 | 8,702 | |
| 6 | SO YOU THINK CN DANCE-THU | FOX | 5.5 | 9 | 6,223 | 8,694 | 5 |
| 7 | NCIS (R) | CBS | 5.7 | 10 | 6,408 | 8,501 | |
| 8 | CSI: MIAMI (R) | CBS | 5.9 | 10 | 6,697 | 8,439 | 20 |
| 9 | 60 MINUTES (R) | CBS | 5.5 | 11 | 6,209 | 8,077 | |
| 10 | CSI (R) | CBS | 5.5 | 9 | 6,162 | 8,033 | |
| 11 | CSI: NY (R) | CBS | 5.2 | 9 | 5,878 | 7,785 | |
| 12 | FLASHPOINT | CBS | 5.2 | 9 | 5,843 | 7,677 | 32 |
| 13 | PRIMETIME: LAST LECTURE | ABC | 5.2 | 9 | 5,815 | 7,653 | 9 |
| 14 | CELEBRITY FAMILY FEUD | NBC | 4.8 | 8 | 5,441 | 7,533 | 19 |
| 15 | OLD CHRISTINE (R) | CBS | 5.0 | 8 | 5,612 | 7,502 | 7 |
| 16 | NBC NFL PRE-SEASON 8/3 | NBC | 4.7 | 8 | 5,328 | 7,446 | 6 |
| 17 | HOUSE-MON 9P (R) | FOX | 4.9 | 8 | 5,503 | 7,416 | 8 |
| 18 | LAW AND ORDER:SVU (R) | NBC | 4.8 | 8 | 5,436 | 7,206 | 21 |
| 19 | BIG BROTHER 10-SUN | CBS | 4.3 | 8 | 4,835 | 6,606 | 11 |
| 20 | BIG BROTHER 10-THU | CBS | 4.2 | 8 | 4,702 | 6,392 | 12 |
Nielsen Ratings Data: ©2008 Nielsen Media Research, Inc. All Rights Reserved
All numbers above based on live plus same day DVR viewing.
Regarding Flashpoint
this is the showing it had after moving to Thursday nights? This is about the same numbers Moonlight had on Friday nights, and CBS kept calling us a “tiny” audience.
CBS never tried Moonlight on a different night, proving that they were prejudiced against it for reasons they are still not talking about. I suspect that had Moonlight been moved to Wednesday or Thursday, and then actually tried promoting it, we would have had larger numbers than Flashpoint.
To paraphrase Sean Connary in the Untouchables, something “stinks like a whorehouse at low tide!”
marcy=March, sorry about that. I seem to have lost the ability to edit my own Disqus comments.