Monday Night Football, as is typical, led all shows for the week with 11.9 million viewers, followed by Fox News Channel’s airing of the presidential debate with 8.2 million. The pre-debate and post-debate analysis, as well as the first presidential debate between John McCain and Barack Obama littered the top twenty this week. College Football on ESPN and the new Zack & Cody vehicle, Suite Life on Deck on Disney also landed in the top ten twice and had four airings in the top twenty.
President Bush’s address on the economy also made the list for FNC, with the analysis drawing a few more viewers than the address itself.
WWE RAW took the 13th and 14th spots with over 4.7 million viewers in each case. There were only eight SpongeBob airings in this week’s top forty – the best at number nineteen and 4.4 million. Project Runway may be tied up in a legal dispute over which network gets to air it in the future, but still pulled in 3.7 million viewers, though was beaten by our friends at Nick’s Back at the Barnyard with 3.73 million viewers.
No Emmy Magic?: Mad Men won the best drama Emmy, but it didn’t translate into better numbers on Sunday night, when it had 1.6 million viewers. Of course, it was up against the season-premiere of Desperate Housewives and still tracking much better than last year. For the season, it’s averaging more than 70% better than its first season average of around 900,000 viewers. Full details on Mad Men season two are available here.
Here are some HBO and Showtime Ratings (Showtime did not beat HBO on Sunday!) care of commenter “Wyatt” (thank you!)
- “True Blood” (HBO): 1.82 million viewers (A18-49: 0.9/2; HH: 1.1/2)
- “Entourage” (HBO): 1.6 million viewers (A18-49: 1.0/2; HH: 1.0/2)
- “Dexter” (SHOW): 1.2 million viewers (A18-49: 0.5/1; HH: 0.7/1)
- “Little Britain” (HBO): 0.54 million viewers (A18-49: 0.2/1; HH: 0.3/2)
- “Californication” (SHOW): 0.522 million viewers (A18-49: 0.3/1; HH: 0.4/1)
- “The Life & Times of Tim” (HBO): 0.299 million viewers
Full Top 20 Cable Results for the week ending 09/28/2008:
| Rank | Shows | NET | DAY(S) | Live+SD HH Rating | Viewers Live+SD (000) |
| 1 | NFL REGULAR SEASON L (JETS/CHARGERS) | ESPN | MONDAY | 7.5 | 11,881 |
| 2 | PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE(S)-09/26/2008 | FOXNC | FRIDAY | 4.5 | 8,211 |
| 3 | ON THE RECORD W/GRETA | FOXNC | FRIDAY | 4.3 | 7,413 |
| 4 | SR/PRES DEBATE 1 2008(S)-09/26/2008 | CNN | FRIDAY | 4.2 | 7,140 |
| 5 | COLL FTBALL-SAT PRIME L (ALABAMA/GEORGIA) | ESPN | SATURDAY | 3.9 | 6,683 |
| 6 | ANDERSON COOPER 360 | CNN | FRIDAY | 3.8 | 6,502 |
| 7 | COLL FTBALL-THUR NIGHT L (USC/OREGON STATE) | ESPN | THURSDAY | 4.2 | 6,456 |
| 8 | PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE CVG(S)-09/26/2008 | FOXNC | FRIDAY | 3.6 | 5,850 |
| 9 | SUITE LIFE ON DECK | DSNY | FRIDAY | 3.6 | 5,666 |
| 10 | SUITE LIFE ON DECK | DSNY | SATURDAY | 3.1 | 5,129 |
| 11 | PRES ADDRESS/ANALYSIS(S)-09/24/2008 | FOXNC | WEDNESDAY | 3.2 | 4,967 |
| 12 | PRES ADDRESS – ECONOMY(S)-09/24/2008 | FOXNC | WEDNESDAY | 3.2 | 4,808 |
| 13 | WWE ENTERTAINMENT (WWE RAW) | USA | MONDAY | 2.6 | 4,745 |
| 14 | WWE ENTERTAINMENT (WWE RAW) | USA | MONDAY | 2.6 | 4,737 |
| 15 | PRES DEBATE/ANALYSIS(S)-09/26/2008 | FOXNC | FRIDAY | 2.9 | 4,654 |
| 16 | SUITE LIFE ON DECK | DSNY | SUNDAY | 3.0 | 4,538 |
| 17 | THE OREILLY FACTOR | FOXNC | FRIDAY | 2.9 | 4,531 |
| 18 | SUITE LIFE ON DECK | DSNY | SUNDAY | 3.0 | 4,486 |
| 19 | SPONGEBOB | NICK | SATURDAY | 3.0 | 4,429 |
| 20 | THE OREILLY FACTOR | FOXNC | THURSDAY | 2.9 | 4,313 |
Nielsen Ratings Data: ©2008 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved
Any word on how much worse Raising the Bar’s been doing sans The Closer?
Raising the Bar sunk to 2.5 million on Monday 9/22 w/o The Closer…
HBO & Showtime Sunday Ratings:
- “True Blood” (HBO): 1.82 million viewers (A18-49: 0.9/2; HH: 1.1/2)
- “Entourage” (HBO): 1.6 million viewers (A18-49: 1.0/2; HH: 1.0/2)
- “Dexter” (SHOW): 1.2 million viewers (A18-49: 0.5/1; HH: 0.7/1)
- “Little Britain” (HBO): 0.54 million viewers (A18-49: 0.2/1; HH: 0.3/2)
- “Californication” (SHOW): 0.522 million viewers (A18-49: 0.3/1; HH: 0.4/1)
- “The Life & Times of Tim” (HBO): 0.299 million viewers
Sources:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/television/news/e3iec318db6d1b1e0a6b0fb370ba89ecba8
http://pifeedback.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/63310451/m/681106361/p/14
Thanks Wyatt, appreciate it! I added them to the post.
Mad Men’s numbers speak volumes. Not only did the audience not grow, but it fell by 280,000 a week after winning the Emmy for Best Drama. It’s great that the audience has grown from Season One, but perhaps the truth is that Season Two has been a total let-down from a quality perspective. It’s become so boring.
If this show (not that the networks would have had the balls to do a show like ‘MM’) was on a major Broadcast network, it would have been cancelled by now due to a lack of viewers.
Isn’t that the case with Fox and the ‘Sarah Connor Chronicles’?
If it was on a broadcast network and had those numbers or even triple, yes Mad Men would have been cancelled. So would Dexter, Entourage, and almost every show that is on cable. It’s not on a broadcast network. It’s not on FOX. It’s on AMC, my guess is that AMC is pretty happy about the ratings increases, but that’s only a guess.
While like the first season, parts of season two have dragged, though this past Sunday’s episode was awesome.
What really amazes me is the drop for HBO and its shows. Their numbers are beyond terrible. Granted, none of the shows are that great either, but this is the same network that ran ‘Six Feet Under’, ‘Sex…City’, ‘Deadwood’, and of course the ‘Sopranos’.
HBO lost its edge.
I don’t see how AMC can be happy with the numbers when the show dropped like a stone after winning the Emmy. ‘Mad Men’ is not an inexpensive show to produce and having thrown millions at it, not to mention the millions spent on marketing, it can’t be bringing in the bucks right now with 1.6 million viewers.
One positive thing…it is doing very well on iTunes but Apple doesn’t release what that translates to in regard to actual numbers.
Ian, those drops aren’t dropping like a stone if you look at the bigger ratings picture for the season (the link is in the post above). Dropping from 2.1 mil for the premiere to 1.1 mil a couple of weeks later during the summer was dropping like a stone. 1.6 million against a FULL lineup of new shows on the broadcast networks is actually very good for AMC.
people have to stop comparing everything on hbo to the blockbuster culture changing series sex and sopranos. it’s going to be impossible to replicate that time on hbo. even for showtime and other cable channels. that time was a perfect storm of creativity and timing that will not happen again. these series became part of the american culture. appealed to different audiences and existed at the same time. and hbo could build around them with shows like six feet. it’s not going to happen again. and it’s not right to knock any hbo or showtime show now or in the future for not matching that once in a lifetime moment.
gosh…with ratings like that how can HBO manage to keep it’s shows on the air? Must have a lot of subscribers who aren’t watching.
You do know that HBO is in like 10-12% of homes….
Actually, we do know that HBO is in about 28% of homes, but that’s probably similar to their numbers when the Sopranos and Sex and the City were on, so the dreadful performance of their current shows is still noteworthy.
Why should AMC be happy with Mad Men’s ratings? All the other cable channels cancelled lots of shows having better rating than that. Don’t they operate in a similar fashion. AMC is not premier cable like HBO, Showtime which rely heavily on subscribers. Besides, it seems like Mad Men cost much more on production and marketing than the other basic cable shows. I wonder how deep is AMC’s pocket.
AMC is owned by cablevision, so the pockets are fairly deep if they want them to be. Because its primary intent is to air old movies, it’s not a channel that generates the kind of viewing that say USA generates with its scrited dramas and comedies, but it’s cost structure is also no doubt significantly less than USA.
I certainly could be wrong, but I posit that AMC is happy with Mad Men (and also Breaking Bad) even if the shows have half the viewership of Army Wives, because it gains them critical acclaim and attention and more people watch Mad Men than anything else on AMC, giving more attention to AMC.