TV Newser’s Steve Krakauer wrote an excellent post about CNN’s head to head ratings win over the broadcast networks for the 10-11pm hour of last Thursday’s Democratic National Convention.
CNN accomplished something on Thursday that had never happened in its more than 28 year history. The 10pmET broadcast of Sen.Barack Obama’s acceptance speech at the DNC was the top rated program on all of television, beating all broadcast networks as well as cable channels.
That was clearly a milestone for CNN, and quite unique for cable, beating the broadcast networks head to head covering the same event.
However, I talked to Steve while he was writing the article and said I was pretty sure that ESPN’s Monday Night Football was the top rated prime-time show occasionally last season (2007-8) for both broadcast and cable television.
It was on 3 nights (all numbers Live+SD):
- Sept 10: ESPN MNF Bengals/Ravens 11.1 million. Top broadcast show: Two And A Half Men 9.95 million.
- Dec 3: ESPN MNF Pats/Ravens 17.5 million. Top broadcast show: Two And A Half Men 11.88 million
- Dec 24: ESPN MNF Broncos/Chargers 8.77 million. Top broadcast show: CSI:Miami 6.06 million
High School Musical 2 had 17 million plus in its initial airing in August ‘07. The *combined* big 5 broadcast networks for that Friday night was about 22 million. So less Friday Night Smackdown, it did almost as good as the big four combined. It outperformed each of the broadcast nets that night by a wide margin. That feels like more of a man bites dog situation to me.
There are perhaps many times when a cable show bests *some* of the broadcast net but bettering all of the broadcast seems much rarer. Aside from MNF and HSM 2, and now CNN nothing comes to mind.
It’s not too much of a stretch to imagine a first run dramatic cable show beating all broadcast competition (mostly rerun, of course) on a given night in the summer.
This summer The Closer has come close to being the top watched prime-time show on a few Mondays.
Yeah, but clearly the “big fact” here is that the broadcast channels were airing the same program
Perhaps the reason cable is doing better has nothing to do with who is the “man” or “dog”, but simply that people crave information, and preferably unbiased information. When NBC got out of the news business and into the dramatic soundbite business, it was that sound “bite” that bit the dog. Try giving us information, drop your political bias, do some real reporting, (leave the office and find out what is happening, rather than parroting what you glean from the other media). This endless Obama BS is really tiring…..did you ever question whether he has ANY qualifications? Did you ever question whether his fascination with wealth redistribution is so close to communism that you can’t tell the difference? Did you even wonder whether Bill Ayers, who tried to blow up the Pentagon is going to be sleeping in the Lincoln bedroom, or maybe appointed to a high post? You might be able to get this guy into the Whitehouse and then bear the responsibility for ruining our country. If you really reported facts, the public might know what you are selling.
Does anyone care to make any predictions as to the ratings performance of Wednesday and Thursday nights of the Republican convention vs. the Democratic convention?
I’m talking two factors here:
1. The relative performance of Fox News vs. other cable and broadcast networks airing RNC coverage in the 10-11pm timeslots; and
2. Overall ratings performance of the RNC in the 10-11pm timeslot.
I’ll go on record as predicting that the Republicans will get about 50% of the overall coverage (point 2) as the Democrats, but that Fox News will probably beat out the other cable nets and may beat NBC or CBS’s ratings, too. I think The Republicans will not get as much coverage because there are new seasons of shows starting up, which will draw viewers away, and because the media as a whole has pushed Obama’s campaign significantly more than McCain’s. I think the reasons for Fox performing well in a Republican convention are obvious.
Outlander,
I think it’s likely that Fox News beats the broadcast nets for the 10-11pm hour on Thursday, and maybe on Wednesday. We’ll just have to see.
I’m not as sure. I get the success of CNN last week: big news, big event, turn on CNN for news. The branding is very effective in terms of a big event or some kind of disaster, but all the other days of the year it doesn’t work out for them. FNC doesn’t seem in that category. Obviously its ratings will be much higher than normal, but if you’re willing to bet on the over/under 8 million for FNC on Thursday 10p-11p, I’ll take the under…
Oh, I didn’t say I thought FNC would do 8 million, that’s unlikely. What I do think is likely is they beat NBC, CBS and ABC for the 10-11pm hour on Thursday and possibly Wednesday.