After 7 weeks of the 2008-9 broadcast prime-time season (through November 9), there is plenty of woe for the big English broadcast networks with double digit percentage losses in the all important adults 18-49 demo for ABC, NBC, Fox and the CW. CBS has fallen the least in the 18-49 demo, down only 6.7% and holding steady.
Economically, this season is shaping up to be a very difficult one for the big broadcast networks. Viewership is again down, and national spot TV ad rates are crashing.
The 18-34 demo adults performance of the CW continues to be a notable exception to the overall trend this season. Our Nielsen reported ratings show it down just 1.2% vs. last season, a success on a relative basis. CW’s more detailed Nielsen ratings (which we see via press release only) show them up with 18-34 women on the season.
My guess is that CBS, CW and ABC will begin to see some improvement vs. last season in early 2009 when prior year comparisons to the strike damaged portion of the season get a lot easier. NBC may be another matter, their results last season actually improved on a relative basis during the strike, but they have the Super Bowl this year, which will also lead to a huge spike in their average making comparisons tricky.
Univision is up across the board vs. last seasoas is MyNetworkTV (MNT). They’re up drastically over last season, thanks mainly to the addition of Friday Night Smackdown!. Note just their numbers, because their bars are truncated. The scale for the other networks would be useless if I adjusted the scale for them.
Our chart shows broadcast network prime-time season to date average prime-time viewership for the 2008-9 season compared to the 2007-8 season. Click the image for a full sized chart.
Nielsen TV Ratings Data: ©2008 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved.
Also sporting events are starting to move to cable, potential the BCS and problem others will follow suit weakening main networks
Once again, I think Dawn was very shortsighted to let Smackdown go. I know she’s trying to get the female viewers, but any viewers are better than the zero viewers she currently has on Friday.
probably* lol
One example.. So MNT had a 0.1 in the demo las year, this year they have a 0.2, that’s an increase of 50%. Looks huge but its artificial numbers.
Cool, that’s one reason I truncated the MyNet bars. However, another way to look at it is that if the 18-49 rating of the network is well correlated to its advertising revenue that MyNet has increased it’s revenue potential by 50+%.
who has the superbowl next year?
ryan, NBC has the 2009 Super Bowl.
All hail MyNetwork!
What a hoot.
well at least UNI and MyNetwork TV are on the rise.
Do you have the averages for the 5 networks this season vs. last year?
Greg, do you mean the *combined* average of the 5 top English broadcast networks? I haven’t calculated that for this chart, but I might add it back in the future. You can get a pretty good idea of the average by looking at the individual bars though.
yes…the “combined” average