Nielsen TV Ratings Data: ©2008 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved.

Though the last regular season installment of Sunday Night Football led a lackluster week of mostly reruns, CBS again dominated taking eight of the top ten spots and fourteen out of twenty.

Nielsen Top Twenty Shows by viewers for the week ending 12/28/08:

Nielsen Ratings Data: ©2008 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved

All numbers above based on live plus same day DVR viewing.

Nielsen Top Twenty Shows Among 18-49 year olds for the week ending 12/28/08:

Nielsen TV Ratings Data: ©2008 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved.

All numbers are Live + SD (live, plus same day DVR viewing)

Due to the holidays I didn’t see as much cable data for the week as we have recently, so sadly I can’t tell you how TNT’s A Christmas Story marathon did, or how the basketball games did on TNT on Christmas night (they weren’t among the top forty).

For the week, the final Monday Night Football game of the season with 13.80 million led cable viewing by a large margin, followed by several college bowl games on ESPN and pre/post game coverage via ESPN’s Gameday. The Champs Sports Bowl where Wisconsin was thoroughly pummeled by Florida State led the bowl game coverage on cable with 7.059 million average viewers.

The 10pm airing of WWE RAW last Monday (12/22) and two airings of NCIS rounded out the top ten. SpongeBob, which typically dominates these lists faced much pressure from NCIS. NCIS had six airings in the top 20, while the yellow and porous wonder could muster only two — the 19th and 20th spots on the list. Of the top forty shows for the week, NCIS was twelve of them, SpongeBob “only” placed six airings in the top forty for the week.

Full Top 20 Cable Results for the week ending 12/28/2008:

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Live + Same Day Cable News Daily Ratings for December 29, 2008

P2+ Total Day
FNC – 1,110,000 viewers
CNN – 637,000 viewers
MSNBC –459,000 viewers
CNBC – 236,000 viewers
HLN – 343,000 viewers

P2+ Prime Time
FNC – 2,009,000 viewers
CNN—906,000 viewers
MSNBC –1,010,000 viewers
CNBC – 173,000 viewers
HLN – 891,000 viewers

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via Fox Sports press release:

NFL ON FOX IS NO. 1 FOR SECOND STRAIGHT YEAR

FOX Posts Third Most-Watched NFL Season Ever;
National Doubleheader Game is TV’s Top Fall Program

FOX NFL SUNDAY, Nation’s No. 1 Pre-Game Show 15 Years Running,

Scores Highest Rating in Three Years

New York – The NFL ON FOX is No. 1 – again.

FOX’s fifteenth NFL regular season coverage came to a close last Sunday (12/28), and based on fast national ratings released today by Nielsen Media Research, it is the highest-rated NFL network for the second consecutive year. The NFL on FOX averaged a 10.5/22 household rating/share for all games, beating NBC’s 10.2/16 in prime time, CBS’ 10.0/21 and ESPN’s 7.6/12 on Monday nights.  Prior to last season, no Sunday afternoon NFL broadcaster had ever beaten the prime-time broadcast package since its inception in 1970, and now FOX can make the claim two years running.

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Scoreboard
Total Viewers (million)	9.84	6.59	6.07	4.94	4.40	1.11
Rating/Share: Adults 18-49	3.0/8	2.0/5	1.6/4	1.7/5	1.7/5	0.4/1
Rating/Share: Adults 18-34	1.9/6	1.7/5	1.3/4	1.5/5	1.8/6	0.5/1

The CBS Monday night lineup continues to impress and CBS easily won the night in viewers and in both age demographics. Two and a Half Men had a 3.6 rating among 18-49 year olds, with a repeat! CBS aired a rerun of Gary Unmarried rather than Worst Week. Gary’s retention numbers out of Two and a Half Men — which were much better than Worst Week’s are no doubt already spurring discussion that Gary Unmarried should be kept over Worst Week. Though such thinking does not jibe with our Renew or Cancel Index and I’m sure if Bill reads this he’ll shake his head furiously and say “you can’t compare how Gary Unmarried does in reruns with how Worst Week normally does!”

To which I would reply: of course I can, it’s the Internet! It’s true last night’s performance was much better retention than the last time a new episode of Worst Week aired (two weeks ago), but it was also much better than last week when Worst Week was a rerun.

But to defend Bill’s imaginary position (he’s on vacation for a few days, so I can’t discuss it with him) holiday numbers can be a jumble that are worthless to compare. And with the exception of Two and a Half Men CBS ratings with repeats were noticeably higher last night (particularly in the case of CSI: Miami) than last week’s repeats. Perhaps the Monday Night Football effect — MNF broadcast its last game of the season last week.

What’s not a jumble is this: the performance of the CBS shows in reruns is impressive.

Full details:

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Live + Same Day Weekend Ratings
Cable News Ratings December 27, 2008

P2+ Total Day
FNC –704,000 viewers
CNN –508,000 viewers
MSNBC – 455,000 viewers
CNBC – 207,000 viewers
HLN – 305,000 viewers

P2+ Prime Time
FNC –907,000 viewers
CNN – 392,000 viewers
MSNBC –515,000 viewers
CNBC – 284,000 viewers
HLN – 407,000 viewers

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