| Scoreboard |  |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total Viewers (million) | 17.221 | 13.133 | 8.579 | 5.872 | 4.338 | 3.225 |
| Rating/Share: Adults 18-49 | 4.4/11 | 4.5/11 | 4.2/10 | 2.4/6 | 1.8/4 | 1.6/4 |
| Rating/Share: Adults 18-34 | 3.0/8 | 2.9/8 | 4.6/12 | 2.3/6 | 2.0/5 | 2.3/6 |
For the first night of the new television season, many networks will have something to be happy about.
ABC topped the night for average viewership with 17.221 million viewers (over CBS with 13.133 million). CBS won a close race for the adults 18-49 demo with a 4.5 rating (over ABC with a 4.4). NBC won the adults 18-34 demo with a 4.6 rating (over ABC with a 3.0).
We continue to experience hosting difficulties, and there’s no point in apologizing about it for another week — Bill and I will be evaluating our options later. While we are very sorry, we’re also very frustrated and we know you are too. We’re basically just a two man team doing this for fun and love of it, while the last 5 days have not been fun, it’s on us to sort out, and we will…We now return you to our regular scheduled overnight post…
The premiere of Dancing with the Stars was the most watched show of the night averaging 21.123 million viewers. It won both age demos from 8-9, and the 18-49 demo from 9-10. It had the best overall 18-49 demo rating for the night with a 5.3. That’s similar to last season’s debut final viewers of 21.25 but a 9% demo drop from 5.8/15 for adults 18-49.
Heroes was down significantly from last year’s premiere which netted over 16 million viewers, and the 9pm-11pm premiere last night averaged under 10. Still, NBC will likely declare it a hit, and rightly so because it performed well int he 18-49 demo, and crushed the field among 18-34 year olds. Among that youthful demo, Heroes was the most-viewed show last night. Even with less than half the total viewers that DWTS had, it outperformed DWTS by over 40% in the demo.
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles performed a bit better than it did last week, even against more competition. But the numbers are not great, and while I do think DVR viewing will improve the numbers, I am not a big believe that the live plus seven numbers factor in hugely with the networks.
The return of the CBS Monday night lineup plus newbie, Worst Week performed well for CBS, particularly among 18-49 year olds. The worst news for Worst Week is while not the weakest performer in the lineup among 18-49 year olds, it was the weakest among 18-34 year olds and underperformed both Rules of Engagement and The New Adventures of Old Christine in that slot.. We’ll have to see how it does next week. CSI: Miami posted really good numbers, especially for the 10pm hour.
Sorry for forgetting to show the Gossip Girl love. The CW declared the results “mind-blowingly resilient!”
Full details:
| Time | Net | Show | Viewers Live+SD (Millons) | 18-49 Rating/ Share | 18-34 Rating/ Share |
| 8:00 | ABC | Dancing With The Stars (8-10p) (premiere) | 21.061 | 5.2/13 | 4.0/11 |
| CBS | The Big Bang Theory (premiere) | 9.359 | 3.6/10 | 2.5/8 | |
| NBC | Heroes (clips) | 5.958 | 2.6/7 | 2.7/8 | |
| FOX | Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles | 5.816 | 2.3/6 | 2.1/6 | |
| UNI | Cuidado con el Angel | 4.048 | 1.7/4 | 2.0/6 | |
| CW | Gossip Girl | 3.350 | 1.6/4 | 2.5/7 | |
| 8:30 | CBS | How I Met Your Mother (premiere) | 9.745 | 4.0/10 | 3.1/9 |
| 9:00 | ABC | Dancing With The Stars (8-10p) (premiere) | 21.184 | 5.5/12 | 3.8/9 |
| CBS | Two And A Half Men (premiere) | 14.926 | 5.3/12 | 3.1/8 | |
| NBC | Heroes (9-11p) (premiere) | 10.215 | 5.0/11 | 5.5/14 | |
| FOX | Prison Break | 5.929 | 2.5/6 | 2.6/6 | |
| UNI | Fuego en la Sangre | 4.617 | 1.9/4 | 2.2/5 | |
| CW | One Tree Hill | 3.100 | 1.5/3 | 2.2/5 | |
| 9:30 | CBS | Worst Week (premiere) | 11.036 | 3.8/9 | 2.2/5 |
| 10:00 | CBS | CSI Miami (premiere) | 16.866 | 5.1/12 | 3.1/8 |
| NBC | Heroes (9-11p) (premiere) | 9.565 | 4.9/12 | 5.4/14 | |
| ABC | Boston Legal (premiere) | 9.419 | 2.5/6 | 1.4/4 | |
| UNI | Cristina | 4.349 | 1.8/4 | 1.9/4 |
Shows are sorted by viewers in each time slot. Demo wins for each period are in bold.
Nielsen TV Ratings: ©2008 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved. Source Marc Berman/Mediaweek.
Definitions:
Fast Affiliate Overnight Ratings: Local metered-market ratings service of Nielsen Station Index (NSI) in which household ratings and shares are provided to clients the morning following the day or evening of telecast. While routinely used for “next day” immediate analysis, these fast affiliate ratings are by process inaccurate for programs that air live across a network since they represent affiliate time period performance. For example, last night’s 10-11pm affiliate #’s would reflect 10pm on the East Coast but also 10pm on the West Coast which for a live event would not represent the same broadcast or portion of the broadcast.
Rating: Estimated percentage of the universe of TV households (or other specified group) tuned to a program in the average minute. Ratings are expressed as a percent.
Share (of Audience): The percent of households (or persons) using television who are tuned to a specific program, station or network in a specific area at a specific time. (See also, Rating, which represents tuning or viewing as a percent of the entire population being measured.)
LIVE+SD: The number that watched a program either while it was broadcast OR watched via DVR on the same day [through 3AM the next day] the program was broadcast.
For more information see Numbers 101.
FOX should move PB at 8pm. Heroes a nightmare for NBC, CSIM a dream for CBS
Really happy Worst Week got some good numbers. I am sure premiering after Two and a Half Men helped a lot. I hope CBS doesn’t cancel that show.
Oh yeah those winning 18-34 demo numbers are nightmarish! (for Heroes)
Worst Week good numbers? Really? It’ll be gone very soon if it drops even further
@Raymond.
Yes they are, remember this is the top scripted show on NBC. And it’s going down from here just like it did last season after the premiere. Maybe 7-8 million by spring
I was very dissapointed with Heroes, Mohinder getting powers whyyyyyyyyyy.
Well it won’t be the top show in total viewers obviously – Heroes was always over-rated in the ratings department anyway (never reached total viewers hit status) – its always been the demos that have made it a hit – and they are still reasonably strong. You cannot complain with those numbers (even if they are down year to year).
Boy, DWTS is a geriatric show. I wonder how ABC feels that it is slipping into CBS territory. Maybe fine, since it’s one of the networks only hits. I guess the parents (and grandparents) watch DWTS, the kids watch Heroes, and the unemployed cousin in the basement watches the CBS comedies.
I don’t get all this fuss with Dancing w/Stars…first of all: they are mostly unfamilar stars – I watched for 15 minutes after the Sarah Chronicles and thought it was just silly -this one guy could barely dance and the judges are um…”snobbish”! So You Think You Can Dance” is more entergetic and has more personality than the guy hosting this show—and wasn’t he the one who hosted the continueing years of “Funniest Home Videos” – he is not funny nor is he a good host -it’s CHEESY…and I’m in my 40’s…ohh please don’t let me become like that!…Sarah & Friends are losing to this crap? I think Jack Bauer needs to save the day!
I think you can complain, Raymond. NBC won’t, but their one hit show is looking closer to The Office numbers, with far less competition. Definitely time to complain.
I think it’s time for FOX to move in on the 10pm/9c time period – they can then move shows like “Sarah Chronicles” to the 9 or 10pm slots and they’ll have 6-7 hours more to compete…I mean the do very well in over all weekly ratings and they have about 6-7 hours less than ABC, CBS & NBC – and this year they looked a little over booked on Sunday Nights with replacement comedies moving in on comedy’s that are proven!?
Rick, DWTS gets a s–tload of ollllllllld people.
when it comes to DWTS and shows like Idol, they just get a lot of people! It may skew old, but it has a ton of young people too. From 9p-9:30p DWTS had more 18-34 year olds than all shows but Heroes, including Two and a Half Men. ABC will not complain publicly or even privately about a 3.8 rating among 18-34 year olds. It will be interesting to see if it can hold those kind of numbers as things progress.
it looks like to me TSCC and Prison Break actually improved from last week to this week even with all the premiers
“From 9p-9:30p DWTS had more 18-34 year olds than all shows but Heroes, including Two and a Half Men.”
Yes, but the ratio is almost 2:1 Heroes in that category.
Robert, how does TSCC’s 18-49 and 18-34 demo share compare to the Fox network average for this season?
Frank, since last night was the first night of the season, they are exactly average.
Andrea true (well it was only 1.445 to 1, but still), but outside of Grey’s Anatomy there’s little that will outperform Heroes among 18-34 year olds. I’m not even sure The Office will. I continue to believe that ABC will be *thrilled* if DWTS it can keep a 3.8 in the 18-34 demo and that they’ll certainly be able to print cash from the show, despite your opinions of the demo.
Frank, the season is exactly ONE night old
so Fox’s average for the night is the average for the season. Obviously Julia beat me to it…
(Okay now there seems to be a second rick so I’ll add a letter to my comments -)
So if last night is the beginning of the season Sarah is now almost at 6 million viewers on average – I don’t see a happy ending for Sarah – maybe it should have been a summer show…oh wait…(hehe)
haha…oh yeah.
No but what I was looking at was Bill’s renew/cancel index. If a show is at or beating the 18-49 average of the network, then it’s a sign that all is not lost. Yet, anyway.
Frank, fear not! The Renew/Cancel Index returns next Tuesday!
Frank,
American Idol and House will skew the average for FOX. That network isn’t even happy with the numbers for Bones.
Andrea, Idol will not skew the average until next year, and in the secret sauce that created the Renew/Cancel Index I used the pre-Idol 18-49 average from last year.
And House skewed the fall 18-49 average last fall too, so we’ve got you covered!
Well.. it looks like DwTS owns Mondays and Tuesdays.
Wow the first full night of the season looks like a success and Dancing with the Stars doesn’t look like it has lost any of its steam. Well except for FOX, its looks like they need 24 back on badly.
Bill, I stand corrected.
Also Frank, on this week last year K-Ville had better numbers than TSCC.
Why is Prison Break doing so horrible latley. I’m sure it will do better in the winter with 24.
Actually I thought House was down from last year and Bones was up? I don’t know, I could be way off.
Btw, Bill/Robert, anyone have a chart of K-Ville numbers and what it was competing against, and when Fox declared it dead? This seems to be the go-to show all of a sudden for comparing against TSCC.
They should axe out Prison Break it’s a waste of air time.They made a huge mistake bringing Sarah Wayne Callies they ruined the show.It has turned into a badly acted badly written terrible soap opera instead of being an action show. The show stinks to high heavens now!.!
Also what has CBS done why did they take out of the Monday line up the new adventures of old Christine. Even the repeats on Monday’s of her show did very well.Now they put this worse week show which really is very boring and dull they should move it to Fridays away from Monday.
FrankJ, K-Ville is the go-to comparison simply because it was the show that aired with PB last year.
TVaholic kept track of the ratings of all the shows last year. You can see K-Ville’s at http://pifeedback.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/979101551/m/59110157/p/1
Fanny,
CBS moved Old Christine to Wednesday because they wanted to start another comedy block and needed an established show to anchor it.
Bill,
I fear your renew/cancel index this year, largely because I’m pretty convinced it’s going to conclude that TSCC is a goner.
What I don’t understand about TSCC is why Fox put it on Monday night. TSCC and PB are both action-oriented series that appear to appeal to male viewers aged 18-49, and to a portion of the female demographic as well. But the competition for male viewers and female viewers in that demographic is incredibly rough on Monday night — see, e.g., Monday Night Football, Chuck, Heroes, Dancing With The Stars and Gossip Girl.
So what went wrong? Did Fox just badly overestimated the draw of TSCC? Did they underestimate the draw of Monday Night Football? I know some have claimed Fox intentionally killed the series, but I can’t buy that: Fox invested more money in TSCC for Season 2. Why invest more money in a “filler” show?
Why do people keep bringing up football and other competition as the reason PB and TSCC are getting bad numbers this year? Was there no Monday Night Football last year? Heroes, CBS comedies, and DWTS aren’t any more competition than they were last year when PB was getting 7 million and a 3.0 in the demo. It’s not like Fox decided to kill the shows and by moving them to a new night with more competition.
cbs is very disappointed in worst week results … not being able to hold much of two and a half men in a premier does not bode well
Thanks, Holly.
Based on those numbers K-Ville had dropped to a 1.9 in the demo by the third episode and never really rebounded too far. Curious to see what TSCC does next episode. It’s Cameron’s history/flashback episode. Should be highly discussed and watched. If anything can continue the show’s upward climb in ratings, that episode should.
Listen People
You have it all wrong, first HEROES is at Cult status and the DVD numbers does big, it gets big ratings from NBC.COM and Hulu.com and it replays on G4TV, which is what Spike wishes it were. Heroes and Gossip Girls and One Tree is the night for young boys and girls to watch tv, the teens, this is there shows, they can care less about DWTS, the like Sara Conner and some like PRISON BREAK, but they can catch that on FOX.COM, that is where all the people are going, if the stations release numbers for Tivo, DVR, and their website, I bet more people saw HEROES than any other show on TV
I am not worried about Heroes ratings I actually think they will pick up as they are really mixing things up on the show as the season goes on which will make it interesting to say the least and I decided to stop watching TSCC because much like Bionic Woman last year it seems to me this show will be canceled so im not wasting my time with it anymore the way my mondays go I watch Big Bang Theory,HIMYM and Heroes……and I DVR RAW i’m a wrestling fan from way back and yeah I do not get the DWTS numbers either I keep thinking from the lack of actual celebs that the show will drop in numbers but it’s still huge I just don’t get it
I hate the CW . . . did they do ANY press released on Smallville/Supernatural (which trounced Gossip Girl and OTH in the final ratings)?
Raiheen,
Neilen’s does release DVR numbers (we’ll see the numbers for tonight in two weeks), and the networks do track (legal) online viewing. HOWVER, even with DVRs and online viewing added, Heroes would not be the most watched show of the night, not even close. It will probably gain around 1 million through DVR (the numbers we have here include people who DVR’ed it and watched it before 3 am). It will gain less than half that in online viewers.
FrankJ,
Maybe highly discussed by you on this board. TSCC never got a buzz factor.
Angie, yes CW did do a press release for Smallville and Supernatural, but because we are having problems with our site, we didn’t see it initially.
Speaking of site problems, was the internal server error this morning enough to drive you guys to a new host?
Heroes 5.5 in the YA demo is incredible. I bet if they broke it down to YA males, those numbers would be astronomical. This is a huge moneymaker for NBC.
Worst week under performing mother in the better time slot does not bode well for the new show. CBS rightfully expects big numbers from its 9:30 laffers, so I don’t expect this one to have legs.
BBT hasn’t picked up any viewers over the summer which is too bad because I really like that show.
I don’t care what CW says; gossip girl with 2.5 is still not competing with the big boys.
Julia — its getting there. :-/. I believe we have some kind of configuration issue which winds up consuming a lot of server resources and CPU cycles and ultimately causes problems w/the MySQL database. If we can’t get to the bottom of this, we will have to switch, but it’s thorny because I’ll be moving my residence ~ October 10, and I didn’t really want to have to deal with that kind of switch before then as it can wind up eating hours of my time. But this way is no fun either…
I think it is interesting that K-ville and TSCC are being compared simply because they do not share a common time slot. K-ville had the benefit of a PB lead in where as TSCC has to find its own viewers in the old PB time slot. Honestly, I don’t think that a PB lead in would help TSCC at all. There is way too much competition in general on that evening for the “geek” audience at 8:00. Interesting also that TSCC is a second season show whereas K-ville was a brand new show at that point. So, the comparison, while interesting, seems imperfect to me.
I like the idea of Fox expanding into the 10 pm hour. Why they haven’t done that yet is a mystery to me since a number of its shows are good candidates for that time slot.
Joe, I share your pessimism about investing time in shows that are heading in the wrong direction. That’s why I’m avoiding getting into any of the new shows because I anticipate that a number of them are going to be canceled. Once it seems like a show is going to stay on the air, I’ll probably join it…or make fun of it, whichever seems more appropriate. But, personally, I’m not jumping off the TSCC ship until it sinks, and I really hope that most people don’t. Granted, we don’t impact the ratings, but if Nielsen folks have the same mentality…
Holly, it seems that there is an underlying, unstated assumption, especially implied in the football as competition argument that there are more people watching cable shows than ever before and that is affecting the ratings for those shows. I think I’ve used that excuse also for TSCC simply because when it aired in January, it was not really up against Mon night football because the season was winding down. I think PB’s problem, which has been echoed by several posters, is that the show has decreased in quality. Now, I’ve never been interested in PB, and I honestly think that it appeals to a different audience than TSCC does, and PB’s audience is just getting tired of the show.
I hope this year that the networks actually let the shows run all of their episodes…even if they send them into the ghost town of Fri and Sat evenings. There is still one episode of K-ville out there that I am miffed about not being able to see.
Fox…10 pm……Fox 10 oclock news anyone? Could explain why they don’t drop a show there. Not saying they couldn’t change everything around, but that could be the explaination for now.
My brother used to sell ads for a local Fox affiliate (he works for ABC now) and he said that the local affiliates would never be willing to give up the 10 o’clock news.
I was all ready to settle in to a night of CBS comedies and the always “entertaining” CSI: Miami, but after watching 20 minutes of Worst Week (my husband lasted 12) I switched to the end of The Rachel Madow Show. Worst Week just wasn’t funny…at all. I didn’t laugh once. I will just do something else for that half hour. How could they keep up that premise? I don’t really care for How I Met Your Mother but Neil Patrick Harris makes the show entertaining when he is on.
Have patience with your technical difficulties. Good luck.
Julia is exactly correct. Those 10PM news shows for the local Fox affiliates are some of their biggest money makers.
Indeed, the affiliates would NEVER give up the 10pm slot. And I don’t think Mr. Murdoch is thrilled with this. When recently asked whether he’d buy NBC (assuming it was for sale), he said he wasn’t really interested and that he liked the USA cable network as a property but didn’t like the local station affiliate model (even though Fox is in that business as well).
in the longer term, I believe the local model is completely hosed anyway, but we’re not there yet.
Fox prides themselve on having its news “first” at 10pm and they have been doing that since they first were created, so i doubt they will ever change
Can someone please answer me this.If a show get’s 3.5 million viewers.I can understand the 3 million but was does the .5 mean?
.5 = 1/2. so 3.5 million = three and a half million. 3.1 million = 3 million, one hundred thousand, 3.2 = three million two hundred thousand, etc.
Thanks Robert. I have another question a show like Prison Break that get’s 5 million viewers is that good or bad?I mean some people keep justifying it saying it didn’t do bad but isn’t 5 millions low rated in the eyes of a pretty big network like fox? Thanks.
I would say that 5 million is pretty low-rated for Fox,but it was almost 6 million and there are other factors to consider (cost, demographic viewers, etc). there are no easy answers other than compared to House or American Idol, it’s a really low number.
Also 5 million and if it comes in 4th place no matter how they try to spin it, it still didn’t do well at all.
Thanks again Robert.
5 million for PB is pretty bad – cant imagine it will be around for another Season. I stopped watching it after the first episode this season when it turned into some kind of Mission Impossible imititation. Last 2 seasons were nothing to write home about either.
HEROES? Only thing saving that one is its 18-49 and 18-34 ratings which are still very high. The series itself went off a cliff starting with the Season 1 finale. It just hasnt been the same since. Mohinder turning into the fly after stealing the plot device of injections to give regular people superpowers from THE 4400 (Season 4) is just too unoriginal. Will everyone get powers of will 50% die like they did in THE 4400? Some day that plot device is what finished off THE 4400 for good – will it be the case with HEROES too? Probably not as long as the key demos hold up. And Nathan appears to be channeling Jordan Collier from the 4400 – I will throw up my hands if Nathan starts a HEROES CENTER and starts healing people. The last thing we need is for HEROES to be replace with another brain dead talent, singing or game show.
I really think people need to beg their friends and help generate buzz for TSCC. It is too good of a show to let die due to Fox’s faulty marketing. I mean over the years how many brilliant shows has Fox just let die. I mean Arrested Development won every award, was universally declared as hilarious, had big stars and Fox never once thought that “hey maybe this show isnt being marketed right?” I was skeptical when I first heard of TSCC, but it really is a brilliant show and I want to see where its going to go. I dont really watch it for the action, if I want action I’ll put on a John Woo film. I like the dialogue and the interplay between John and Cameron and if I dont ever find out if John gets with Cameron Im going to invent skynet and find out.
Also Heroes is suffering the way the NHL did. They had a pretty large audience, but it was a niche audience mostly who already had reasons to be ticked at the show. The strike hit and the millions of fans who cooled on Heroes got their reason to step away and broke free.
Heroes is no longer a hit show because Tim kring is a hack writer that TRIED to rip off the original creators of the Heroes concept.
NBC has wasted a lot of time and money by not contacting the original creators for story lines that are creative.
Who needs a sci-fi tv show that presents a cheerleader knocking a super hero out with a cheerleading trophy?
Tim Kring is a liar, the strike didn’t effect the storylines, it was the lawsuit that is now in a NYC Appellate court.
If this lawsuit is turned around by the plaintiffs, NBC will have a massive problem on their hands.
And all for what? Because some clown that thinks he is a writer, wanted 15 minutes of fame.
Style, I’m not a Heroes fan, so I don’t follow the news, but what you are talking about sounds intriguing. Do you have a link so I can read up on it?
Robert, I’m curious about your take on this. Apparently Ausiello has some news on Terminator and the ratings, and he’s saying that the status is that FOX isn’t going to buy the back 9 episodes unless the show “starts to climb” in the ratings.
An SCC insider tells me that if the show’s numbers don’t start to climb, Fox is unlikely to order any additional episodes beyond the 13 currently in the pipeline. At Saturday’s EW pre-Emmy bash, Thomas Dekker remained hopeful that they could hold off doomsday at least until the end of football season. “We¹re up against Monday Night Football,” he sighed, “which is tricky because we have a lot of football fans.”
What kind of ratings improvement do you think SCC needs to show every week to satisfy FOX it’s starting to climb? Curious why they didn’t give a range of numbers the show needs to pull in to be viable. Wonder if this means that Warner Brothers is trying to keep the thing going through the movie at least?
Julia,
for more info on the lawsuit against NBC and tim kring GOOGLE ENJAI AND AMNAU EELE OR THE EELE TWINS.
join the movement to put tim kring in JAIL.