Not the most interesting week of cable viewing, and then #13 Oklahoma State being upset by Oregon in the Pacific Life Holiday Bowl led all cable airings averaging 6.22 million viewers. iCarly, WWE Raw and LSU’s 38-3 beatdown of Georgia Tech in the Chick-fil-A Bowl rounded out the top five. True Jackson VP on Saturday night and an hour of SpongeBob on Sunday scored well for Nickelodeon, and NCIS continues to perform well on USA.
Leverage fans – the show is well off its premiere numbers, but still managed 3.772 million last Tuesday to rank 19th for the week. A rare appearance by the History Channel in the top 20, but it’s Armageddon Week on History (I am not making this up!) and the two hour Nostradamus: 2012 documentary ranked 15th, averaging 3.877 million during its initial airing on Sunday. It airs again this Thursday (1/8) at 8pm if you missed it and would rather watch tales of our impending doom than the BCS Championship game. Here’s History’s description of the documentary:
Nostradamus: 2012
In 2012, a rare and possibly Earth-shattering astrological alignment is due to occur that will precipitate a cataclysmic event. Whatever is in store–a massive cosmic collision, a global environmental disaster, an Armageddon-like religious showdown, or a more subtle transformation–there have been multiple predictions from different times and cultures that December 21, 2012 will mark a major shift in the history of our planet. This explosive two-hour special seeks answers to key critical questions that may loom in just four years: Is there any modern scientific proof that such an alignment will indeed happen? Is any other compelling evidence throughout history that 2012 will be a year of unprecedented, even deadly, upheaval? We’ll look for the parallels between the nightmarish daily headlines and the 2012 prophecies from Nostradamus and others. CC HD [TVPG]
SciFi fans, I didn’t mean to forget about you, it’s just that I wound up watching the two final episodes of Stargate Atlantis before they’d ever aired, and then promptly forgot (no spoilers, but I enjoyed the finale which airs this Friday — and the very final scene was awesome for me as it involves my favorite city!). Anyway, the penultimate Stargate Atlantis pulled 1.743 million on Friday, and Sanctuary drew 1.85 million.
MTV’s spin-off of The Hills, The City drew 1.6 million in its initial airing on 12/29 at 10pm and 1.545 million at 10:30pm. The Hills had been waning, but The City drew significantly less than the 2.6ish million The Hills averaged for its most recent season.
Full Top 20 Cable Results for the week ending 01/04/2009:
| Rank | Shows | NET | DAY | Time | Viewers Live+SD (000) |
| 1 | OKLAHOMA ST/OREGON | ESPN | Tue | 08:17P-11:59P | 6,220 |
| 2 | MISSOURI/NORTHWESTERN | ESPN | Mon | 08:00P-12:03A | 6,076 |
| 3 | ICARLY | NICK | Sat | 08:00P-08:30P | 5,943 |
| 4 | WWE ENTERTAINMENT | USA | Mon | 10:00P-11:11P | 5,675 |
| 5 | LSU/GEORGIA TECH | ESPN | Wed | 07:30P-11:00P | 5,635 |
| 6 | WWE ENTERTAINMENT | USA | Mon | 09:00P-10:00P | 4,902 |
| 7 | TRUE JACKSON, VP | NICK | Sat | 08:30P-09:00P | 4,546 |
| 8 | NCIS | USA | Mon | 07:00P-08:00P | 4,331 |
| 9 | SPONGEBOB | NICK | Sun | 12:30P-01:00P | 4,162 |
| 10 | SPONGEBOB | NICK | Sun | 12:00P-12:30P | 4,127 |
| 11 | SPONGEBOB | NICK | Sat | 12:00P-12:30P | 4,112 |
| 12 | SOUTH CAROLINA/IOWA | ESPN | Thu | 11:00A-02:33P | 4,093 |
| 13 | NCIS | USA | Tue | 07:00P-08:00P | 3,992 |
| 14 | SPONGEBOB THE MOVIE | NICK | Wed | 12:00P-02:00P | 3,919 |
| 15 | NOSTRADAMUS: 2012 | HIST | Sun | 09:00P-11:00P | 3,877 |
| 16 | THE NANNY EXPRESS | HALL | Sat | 09:00P-11:00P | 3,557 |
| 17 | ICARLY | NICK | Sat | 01:30P-02:00P | 3,828 |
| 18 | ICARLY | NICK | Sat | 01:00P-01:30P | 3,779 |
| 19 | LEVERAGE | TNT | Tue | 10:00P-11:00P | 3,772 |
| 20 | SPONGEBOB | NICK | Sat | 11:30A-12:00P | 3,760 |
Nielsen Ratings Data: ©2009 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved
Hi,
Any numbers for Sanctuary and Stargate Atlantis? SGA had a big episode on Friday night, 2nd to last episode, was hoping for a nice uptick. Thanks so much.
Best,
Marc
I added the info to the post, but I don’t think there was any uptick. 1.743 million for SGA and 1.85 million for Sanctuary.
Im looking for Mtv’s The City premiere ratings and for the 2nd episode… someone can help me?
Thx!
xx
Leverage is not a mega-hit, but its doing a solid job for TNT without The Closer on its own at that against stiff competition from Law & Order: SVU over on NBC. Getting close to 4 million viewers on cable is a winner in my mind.
Over at Nick, it looks like the one-two punch of the growing mega-hit iCarly and timeslot neighbor True Jackson, VP are doing really good right now. These are among their highest ratings for an original episode especially True Jackson. 6 million is a whole lot of viewers. iCarly is Nick’s biggest hit since Spongebob. iCarly has great replay value too, look at its ratings at 1pm in the afternoon. That was probably the most watched program at that time on all of television.
Hallmark is killing on Saturday Nights, that’s become a post-CBS Saturday destination for those kind of viewers.
The Bowl games as usual did a great job for ESPN.
Looks like Raw is going to start benefiting from not having to go head to head with Monday Night Football on ESPN until September. 5.7 million viewers is the highest number I’ve seen for Raw in a long while. They’re going to get even higher as they march closer to Wrestlemania 25.
Thx so much 4 the info Rober!!
LMAO – “Nostradamus no match for SpongeBob” – Mr. Seidman, that wins the award for Best Post Title EVER
My nephew could have told you that Nostradamus is no match for SpongeBob, and to him it would have meant nothing about TV ratings!
Any idea what the Sci-Fi premier of Serenity brought in on Saturday? I was flipping through and happened to catch it when it started, and was surprised to know it was just now premiering on Sci-Fi considering it came out in 2005. I do like the movie more each time I see it though.
Rachel, Serenity averaged 1.606 million on SciFi Saturday night.
…Is that good or bad? Numbers on cable shows confuse me.
I’d say it’s “pretty good” for a movie going on four years old. It ranked as the 10th best show on SciFi for the week (all airings, not just primetime and it was beaten out by several airings of the Twighlight Zone during SciFi’s New Year’s Eve/Day Twilight Zone marathon. The highest rated program on SciFi for the week averaged 1.927 million, but it was WWE ECW (extreme championship wrestling).
The next best program on SciFi was the Sanctuary episode mentioned above.
Ah, cool, cool. Thanks for the info Robert.
see http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117998157.html?categoryid=14&cs=1 for info. on Leverage vs. Nip/Tuck.
Would TNT still consider the show a hit if it continues to pull in numbers like this?
Leverage last night (2.85mm, mentioned in Noah’s link) was down almost a million from the 3.77mm last week referenced above. I don’t think it’s a hit on TNT with less than 3 million.
Any numbers for the Looney Tunes marathon on Cartoon Network last week?
How did each of the New Years Eve and New Years Day college football games do? In particular, curious how the limited distribution (NFL Network on only 1 of 3 cable providers in MN) impacted the Insight Bowl on 12/31.
Can someone please list the nielsen shares for all the bowl games? I’d like to see how the Emerald Bowl viewing stacked up against the other 31 games. Thanks.
jg, unfortunately we didn’t get that kind of data for the week of 12/22-12/28 so we’re kind of hamstrung. we did have rating information and viewer numbers for the Emerald Bowl (listed as Miami/Cal) in last week’s cable post, but no share info for that or any of the bowl games that aired on cable from 12/22-12/28.
I look forward to the day when cable ratings are as important to advertisors as network ratings, so we can see what to me would be far more interesting age/gender etc breakdowns. Yeah you can get them for five age subgroups, but only the top twenty. Nice to see the Big 12 outclassed the SEC in the ratings,too. But Florida played Oklahoma like a piano. ( Is Florida really a southern state in the sense that Alabama or Mississippi are? Oh, yeah. I think Ole Miss beat Texas Tech. Never mind.)
Thanks guys! Seeing how good two of my favorite shows are doing makes me so so happy! All hail SpongeBob and iCarly. Note that this comes from a college student! lol.
Nothing from TBS on how the “A Christmas Story” marathon went this year?
Bill, the top draw of the marathon was 8pm on 12/24 with 4.54 million. #2 was 10pm that day and drew 4.332 million. We just got the cable data for the week of 12/22 today.