Fox Continues to Lead All Categories, 2 weeks to go
Even though it’s “Summer” in broadcast prime-time TV land, and the formal TV season is complete, we will continue to track the season to date (STD) results through the technical end of the prime-time broadcast season on September 21. And then we’ll start all over again!
Nielsen TV Ratings Data: ©2008 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved.
Guess CBS shouldn’t have cancelled Jericho! Maybe their ratings in the key demographics would have been higher thereby attracting more advertisers to the “old person’s network” that is now dominated by reality tv.
Long live Jericho (on another network)!
Um, Susan, unless I’m misunderstanding this graph, it includes Jericho, since it’s tracking this past season, 2007-2008, which aired Jericho’s second season.
Julia is correct. The period for this chart is 9/24/07-9/7/08 and includes all of Jericho’s season 2.
A new annual TV season begins on September 22, 2008. Get your champagne ready for Happy New Year!
The trend is evident: CBS’ hit programs are fading. NBC has a real shot at climbing from the Nielsen basement here, provided that they promoted their overall fall programming successfully during sports coverage! I agree with Susan that cancelling Jericho was a terrible idea. The program was relegated to the time slot that “has killed every show since Judging Amy (quoting a Matt Roush article).” Then Jericho, along Moonlight and perhaps Shark, was prematurely axed due to low Nielsen numbers. With nothing fresh left to complement the stale CSI’s and their like, CBS should expect continued Nielsen decline.
clutz,
These numbers include all the strike reruns. Yes, many of the CBS shows are down, but these numbers are worse than they would have been without the extra strike reruns and the strike installment of Big Brother.
Susan-gator,
Not only do these numbers include Jericho, Jericho helped lower them, since the show had fewer overall viewers and no more demo viewers than most of the reruns that were running when Jericho aired.
Holly,
These numbers include strike reruns for all networks. They also include summer reruns and the Olympics. That’s why I’m predicting that the downward trend for CBS, as well as the upward trend for NBC, will continue. Sure, plenty of reruns are factored into this season-to-date. But due to the powerhouse ratings brought on by Olympics and NFL Football, NBC has had the chance to court new viewers. Let’s see if some of the pattern holds true. I could be wrong, but I sincerely believe that CBS is in for a huge slump this year. Summer ratings aren’t exactly perfect, but they may be an early indicator of things to come.
Hi Susan-
I can’t get on to the Jericho boards, please send your mailing address! The tshirts ship date has changed to December 15.
Thank you!
Margot