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Sunday Ratings: Desperate Housewives, 60 Minutes Win, CW Crashes

Posted on 06 October 2008 by Bill Gorman

Scoreboard CBS ABC NBC FOX Uni CW
Total Viewers (million) 13.490 11.750 10.716 6.060 2.851 0.950
Rating/Share: Adults 18-49 3.8/9 4.1/10 4.1/10 3.0/8 1.2/3 0.4/1
Rating/Share: Adults 18-34 2.8/8 3.3/9 3.6/10 3.8/10 1.2/3 0.4/1

Update: The half-hourly, 18-34 and Univision results are now in. Two things to note (1) Fox rocked in the 18-34 demo winning the night with a 3.8 rating while being way behind in average viewers (2) CBS results for the night are not comparable to earlier Sundays because of the half hour football overrun which because of the limitations of these fast affiliate overnight ratings have skewed the measurement of all of their shows. Wait until tomorrow’s final results to draw any conclusions about CBS results for Sunday.

60 Minutes was the most watched regularly scheduled show averaging 16.42 million viewers but Desperate Housewives had the most 18-49 demo viewers with a 5.8 rating / 13 share for Sunday night, and NFL Football gave big boosts to both CBS and, of course, NBC for the night.

Aided by a football overrun from 7-7:30, CBS racked up the most viewers for the night averaging 13.49 million. Regularly scheduled NFL Sunday Night Football elevated NBC to the nightly 18-49 demo win with a 4.4 rating / 11 share. Note (below) that fast affiliate overnight results are inaccurate for live events.

Although Desperate Housewives the most watched 18-49 demo show of the night it was down nearly 3 million average viewers (but just a tenth and 1.2 in the demo) from last week, and ABC was no worse than second in any hour last night for viewers or the 18-49 demo.

CW sold off its Sunday night programming time to Media Rights Capital who proved that there *is* someone who can do worse than the CW did last year on Sunday nights! It’s premiere night was a disaster with In Harm’s Way drawing only 676,000 viewers, Valentine 1.10 million, and Easy Money 1.08 million.

Without the football overrun they had last week, Fox’s Simpsons, King of the Hill, and Family Guy were flat to down a bit from last week, but American Dad kept its viewers and improved on its 18-49 demo.

Full details:


Time Net Show Viewers Live+SD (Millons) 18-49 Rating/ Share 18-34 Rating/ Share
7:00 CBS Football Overrun 21.991 7.1/21 6.3/21
  ABC America’s Funniest Home Videos 9.110 2.7/8 1.7/6
  NBC Football Night In America (7-8:30pm) 5.810 2.2/6 1.8/6
  FOX King of the Hill x2 (repeats) 3.546 1.7/5 2.0/6
  UNI Sangre de Mi Sangre 2.279 0.9/3 1.0/3
  CW In Harm’s Way (premiere) 0.676 0.3/1 0.3/1
           
7:30 CBS 60 Minutes 16.119 4.0/11 2.9/9
           
8:00 CBS 60 Minutes 16.731 4.2/11 2.8/8
  ABC Extreme Makeover Home Edition 11.749 3.9/10 2.9/8
  FOX Simpsons 7.431 3.6/10 4.5/13
  UNI Sangre de Mi Sangre 2.961 1.2/3 1.2/3
  CW Valentine (premiere) 1.096 0.4/1 0.4/1
           
8:30 NBC Sunday Night Football (Steelers/Jaguars) 13.659 5.2/13 4.5/12
  CBS Amazing Race 10.454 3.2/8 2.4/6
  FOX King of the Hill 6.568 3.3/8 3.8/10
           
9:00 ABC Desperate Housewives 15.521 5.8/13 4.8/12
  NBC Sunday Night Football (Steelers/Jaguars) 13.456 5.1/11 4.5/11
  CBS Amazing Race 11.109 3.2/7 2.0/5
  FOX Family Guy 8.423 4.3/10 5.4/14
  UNI Sangre de Mi Sangre 3.242 1.3/3 1.3/3
  CW Easy Money (premiere) 1.077 0.4/1 0.4/1
           
9:30 CBS Cold Case 10.213 2.5/6 1.6/4
  FOX American Dad 6.847 3.5/8 4.4/11
           
10:00 CBS Cold Case 11.872 3.2/7 2.2/6
  NBC Sunday Night Football (Steelers/Jaguars) 11.668 4.5/11 4.3/11
  ABC Brothers & Sisters 10.621 4.0/10 3.6/9
  UNI Sangre de Mi Sangre 2.922 1.2/3 1.3/3
           
10:30 CBS The Unit 9.427 2.6/7 2.0/5

——————————

Shows are sorted by viewers in each time slot. Timeslot demo winners are in bold.

Nielsen TV Ratings: ©2008 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved. Source Marc Berman/Mediaweek.

Definitions:

Fast Affiliate Ratings: These first national ratings, including demographics, are available at approximately 11 AM (ET) the day after telecast, and are released to subscribing customers daily. These data, from the National People Meter sample, are strictly time-period information, based on the normal broadcast network feed, and include all programming on the affiliated stations, sometimes including network programming, sometimes not. The figures may include stations that did not air the entire network feed, as well as local news breaks or cutaways for local coverage or other programming. Fast Affiliate ratings are not as useful for live programs and are likely to differ significantly from the final results, because the data reflect normal broadcast feed patterns. For example, with a World Series game, Fast Affiliate Ratings would include whatever aired from 8-11PM on affiliates in the Pacific Time Zone, following the live football game, but not game coverage that begins at 5PM PT. The same would be true of Presidential debates as well as live award shows and breaking news reports.

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.)

Time Shifted Viewing – Program ratings for national sources are produced in three streams of data – Live, Live+Same Day (Live+SD) and Live+7 Day. Time shifted figures account for incremental viewing that takes place with DVRs which are currently in approximately 24.4% of all U.S. TV households. Live+Same Day (Live+SD) include viewing during the same broadcast day as the original telecast, with a cut-off of 3:00AM local time when meters transmit daily viewing to Nielsen for processing. Live+7 Day ratings include incremental viewing that takes place during the 7 days following a telecast.

For more information see Numbers 101.

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48 Responses to “Sunday Ratings: Desperate Housewives, 60 Minutes Win, CW Crashes”

  1. dennis says:

    Hmm, such a big drop for DH, they have never hit 15 million viewers in October …

  2. I agree, DH dropping ~3 million viewers week over week is indeed noteworthy

  3. Bill Gorman says:

    Noteworthy indeed. And now noted!

  4. Bob says:

    Not a good season start for ABC. I wonder how GA will do against CSI

  5. Chris says:

    I wonder if King Of The Hill can survive with those numbers. I hope so as they are close to the numbers for American Dad except that FOX loves Seth McFarlane and it seems Mike Judge is moving on to other projects. Just wondering if they will get rid of King for Clevland if Cleveland does well. Also, I find it unsettling, but not surprising, that Family Guy is besting Fox Sunday flagship The Simpsons. I do understand that in 20 years you will see a loss of interest. Just random thoughs I would appreciated any thoughts anyone would have. Thanks

  6. clutz12001 says:

    Well I guess my little old Pittsburgh Steelers, and Jacksonville Jaguars, are not the massive draw of the Cowboys or the Bears eh? We were down a little over 3 million from the Bears-Eagles game. I guess I’m not suprised that the Cowboys are over 20 million viewers though. Very popular draw nationwide.

  7. vitor fernando says:

    the demo for DH is down by 1,2, not 0,1, it had 5,9 in the 18-34 rating and 7,0
    in the 18-49

  8. Bill Gorman says:

    clutz, the Steelers have been more successful more recently where it really matters to them than the Cowboys, the Super Bowl ;)

  9. Bill Gorman says:

    vitor, you are correct! I looked at the wrong column. Correcting now.

  10. sdfsd says:

    Nice to see the “Family Guy” is doing well.

  11. sdffsd says:

    Nice to see that “Family Guy” is doing well.

  12. sdffsd says:

    ^sorry about the double post.

  13. Pad says:

    At this rate CW will have less viewers then the late night tiddlewinks channel.

  14. Julia says:

    You know, this not being able to see comments thing has inspired me to dig up this post about what Jon Armstrong used to make dooce.com able to open up comments: http://blurbomat.com/archives/2007/11/19/early-dooce%C2%AE-v6-nerd-faq/ This was pre-opening comments, but there have been several posts since then about how opening comments and getting over 1000 comments on posts has not crashed the server at all. Just a thought!

  15. Julia, there is absolutely no chance we’ll switch to Drupal. Drupal is a very nice platform, but it really necessitates having access to someone who knows it well and that costs money we don’t have. While it could be the changes I made with caching are causing your problems, I can’t actually replicate the problem you’re having (I see all new comments as soon as they are made).

  16. Julia says:

    Yeah, my friend says he sees comments, too. But I post and don’t see anything and then can see new comments in the comments column thingy, but clicking them just takes me to the top of the post and there are no new comments. Maybe if I shift-reload each time that happens? I’ll try that. (I’m completely willing to blame my horrible Windoze machine at work.)

  17. Gusar says:

    Julia, I’ve observed your problem on my machine as well. And yes, shift+reload helps. Also, don’t blame the Windows machine, I’m on Linux and have this issue. It’s definitely something with the site.

    On-topic: Wow, that is one big drop for Desperate Housewives.

  18. Gusar, thanks for the info, we’ll evaluate our options. I’m not sure why I can’t replicate the behavior (I’m also on windows and I can’t replicate this in IE or Firefox even) and I’m not sure we’ll change back as (knock on wood) the primary objective of keeping the site up and running seems to have been achieved.

  19. Julia says:

    Yes, now that I’m done with my whining (and figured out how to see the comments some way or other) on to the ratings.

    I’m not even slightly surprised by CW’s ratings. Did these shows get any promotion at all? I don’t think we can do anything but speculate, but how will Sunday’s ratings affect CW? Since they don’t “own” the night, and these won’t be counted into their season’s average, I suppose it doesn’t matter too much, but shouldn’t it still reflect very poorly on them?

  20. Julia says:

    Yes, the site staying up is the important thing!

  21. Wopa says:

    Big shows tend to go up and down.. just like CSI last season.

    Season Premiere: 25.22 M, A18-49: 8.2
    Second Episode: 20.97 M, A18-49: 6.4

    that’s a drop of 4.25 million and 1.8 (!) in the demo.

  22. dennis says:

    Wopa: there is definitely something about that … maybe DH will be up next week, but I´m worried they will go under 15 million.

  23. Johnthemon says:

    wow, Simpsons is way down. Family Guy is down a good chunk as well. American Dad and King of the Hill are the most stable of the bunch.

    As for DH, it’s good to see it taken down a notch.

    CBS continues to dominate. Its definitely the biggest network right now.

    Kind of surprising Football did so poorly. It usually is much more bullish.

  24. Holly says:

    Wopa, I don’t think shows like CSI and DH really go up and down that much. The reason for the big drops for DH this year and CSI last year (probably this year as well) is that the finales were major cliffhangers. Last year, people tuned into CSI to see if Sara died. This year, they tuned into DH to see the 5 year jump. It makes sense for viewership to drop for regular episodes after a big event episode.

  25. Johnthemon says:

    oh and American Dad! had an amazing episode last night.

  26. Mandi says:

    I have to agree with Julia– I saw absolutely no promotion for any of those CW shows which is pathetic. But then again, I don’t watch anything on the CW so maybe they promoted it on there? Regardless, I feel it has to affect the CW’s bottom line– if only to make it more difficult to sell off the Sunday slot when the Media Rights contract ends.

  27. deekshant says:

    Did anyone even watch the cw? Their biggest mistake is putting Easy Money against Desperate Housewives. Switch Easy Money with In Harm’s way , because no sensible or should I say not-so-sensible 18-34 person will watch your CW show over DH.

    I wonder how these shows would perform on any other broadcasting network.

    What the CW needs to do is bring Moonlight back…which will ensure atleast 7 million people because the moonlight fans don’t care if the show’s on the CW or the food network.Are the CW guys really that dumb?

    Even bringing Veronica Mars back will help ! (just wishful thinking…)

  28. deekshant says:

    What The CW needs to do is bring back Moonlight because Moonlight fans don’t care if the show’s on The CW or the food network.

    Otherwise, even if your show is good people won’t watch it cause its The CW !

    Are the CW guys really that dumb?

  29. Pad says:

    After reading the Plot for Valentine (and depositing my tea on the screen) Im not that surprised it arrived DOA.

  30. Julia says:

    Ok, let’s get something straight. Moonlight did not have 7 million die hard fans. It may have had 7 million viewers, but many of these were people who just left the TV on all night. And then it had a good number of people who did purposely tune in are not that devoted to it that they would pay any attention to where it went. The few hundred fans on the internet are diehard. There are probably several thousand more, and then whatever CW would be able to pick up on its own (which wouldn’t be much, since this is CW), and you’d be left with a couple, maybe three million viewers.

  31. Steve says:

    I wasn’t a Moonlight fan. Didn’t even give it a go, really. But I really do sympathize with you folks. If the CW gets rid of Supernatural, I probably will mail Dawn Ostroff rock salt every week for the rest of my life. :P But, I would learn when to let go of the issue…on a public forum. It’s time to let Leo Dicaprio sink to the bottom of the ocean folks hehe.

  32. Gerry says:

    UNFORTUNATELY MOONLIGHT LOST ITS EARLY VAMP MOJO AND TURNED ITSELF INTO
    A STANDARD PROCEDURAL.

  33. R.J says:

    Can’t beleve the simpsons and king of the hill and family guy droped. but it’s good to see American Dad doing better.

  34. Outlander says:

    This is off-topic, but, two things –

    (1) How did Sanctuary do on SCIFI last Friday? I watched it and I think it’s pretty good – much better than I would have expected it to be. And I don’t think the casual observer will realize that the entire series is shot in front of a green-screen; the CGI is really good!

    (2) Tonight is the (relatively) heavily-promoted Dodge giveaway thingie episode of TSCC… Limited commercial interruptions, lots of commercials, etc. Since I have lost my shirt in the stock market this month and see nothing but doom and gloom ahead, I’m going to valiantly stand for bullishness and good cheer and predict TSCC’s ratings will be up 15% this week. (Maybe if enough of us feel the same way, the power of positive thinking will make it so. . .)

  35. Bill Gorman says:

    Outlander, I’ve seen no press release about Sanctuary ratings, but today has been a busy day for me for many reasons, so it could have slipped by.

  36. DenverDean says:

    Interesting to note the jump in CC demos as soon as DH finished. (B&S also dropped.) I believe TAR is misused opposite football and after 60M.

  37. Wopa says:

    Cartoon Network Record Ratings, It Is, For ‘Star Wars’ Series
    Lucasfilm’s CG-Animated ‘Clone’ Show Debut Draws 3.9 Million Viewers; 1.2 Million Tweens

    http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6602135.html?q=clone+wars

  38. Bill Gorman says:

    Wopa, thanks for the link. I had the Cartoon Network press release on our site already, but it maddeningly didn’t give the total viewer number.

    3.9 million is, as Darth Vader would say, “Impressive. Most Impressive.”

    Now I await the weekly Yoda vs. Spongebob deathmatch!

  39. Anony says:

    I was one of the few that watched the premiere of Easy Money. Mostly out of curiosity. I actually think it has some potential – but mostly because of Laurie Metcalf! She is really great here – doesn’t look like she can save this show alone. Not sure how much this company producing these Sunday shows will put up with these horrible numbers. I’m not sure if they have any other choice tho?

  40. Gleebo says:

    At this rate The CW should be airing repeats of their shows from the week. Gives people a chance to catch shows that they weren’t able to watch or DVR due to conflicts in timeslot. Thursday nights and Monday nights are impossible to watch and even DVR everything I want to watch and was taking advantage of the repeats they were doing on CW Sunday until the company they sublet to for Sun nights started their programing.

  41. Julia says:

    According to the trackback on this post, Mentalist got a back 9 order. Was there a press release on that? Because the trackback doesn’t link to one, or any source at all.

  42. Holly says:

    Julia, Michael Ausiello from EW reported that CBS ordered an additional 6 episodes of The Mentalist (3 short of the full 22 episode season).

  43. Julia says:

    Thanks!

  44. Josh says:

    I guess The CW is kicking themselves in the head for letting WWE Smackdown go now. They could have just focused on Sunday – Thursday this year and let WWE have Fridays but nope they had to have Monday – Thursday with a different programmer taking over Sundays. This is comical really is. I can’t wait to see MyNetworkTV’s final numbers for Friday.

  45. dennis says:

    Do you have half-hour data for DH and B&S?


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