WWE RAW took the top two spots, but the NFL Draft on ESPN was not far behind. Considering that the NFL Draft had a duration of five hours and that we don’t see the hourly data, it could well be that the two most-watched hours of cable last week were the NFL Draft.
Yankees/Sawx and iCarly rounded out the top five. In Plain Sight had one of its weaker (perhaps weakest, I didn’t check) outings. I’m not really surprised because the season premiere didn’t seem that great. The episode on Sunday though was much better and back to last year’s form. We’ll see if things pick back up next week. The debut of Jeff Goldblum on Law & Order: CI averaged 4.1 million. Disney had some success with the movie Hatching Pete averaging over 4.1 million viewers. Discovery appears to have a cable hit on its hands with Deadliest Catch which also averaged over 4 million viewers.
I normally don’t take requests, but am somewhat crunched for time presently, so I’m not listing any shows outside of the top twenty. However, in a rare reversal this week I will take requests and do a table based on the first 20 requests received for airings outside the top 20 and then add it to the post. Please note, we don’t have access to data for the premium channels (HBO, Showtime, etc). Requests are now closed and the shows have been added below. If we do that again, please limit yourself to one request per person please.
Top twenty cable network television shows for the week ending April 26, 2009:
| Rank | Shows | NET | DAY | Time | Viewers Live+SD (000) |
| 1 | WWE ENTERTAINMENT | USA | Mon | 10:00P-11:07P | 5,498 |
| 2 | WWE ENTERTAINMENT | USA | Mon | 09:00P-10:00P | 5,101 |
| 3 | NFL DRAFT L | ESPN | Sat | 04:00P-09:00P | 5,058 |
| 4 | YANKEES/RED SOX | ESPN | Sun | 08:00P-11:22P | 4,598 |
| 5 | ICARLY | NICK | Wed | 08:00P-08:30P | 4,521 |
| 6 | NCIS | USA | Mon | 07:00P-08:00P | 4,334 |
| 7 | FOR THE LOVE OF RAY J | VH1 | Mon | 10:00P-11:30P | 4,223 |
| 8 | HATCHING PETE | DSNY | Fri | 08:00P-09:40P | 4,138 |
| 9 | LAW & ORDER: CI (ORIG) | USA | Sun | 09:00P-10:00P | 4,100 |
| 10 | DEADLIEST CATCH | DISC | Tue | 09:00P-10:01P | 4,049 |
| 11 | SPONGEBOB | NICK | Sat | 09:30A-10:00A | 3,992 |
| 12 | IN PLAIN SIGHT | USA | Sun | 10:00P-11:00P | 3,969 |
| 13 | SPONGEBOB | NICK | Sun | 09:30A-10:00A | 3,962 |
| 14 | PENGUINS OF MADAGASCAR | NICK | Sat | 10:00A-10:30A | 3,941 |
| 15 | NCIS | USA | Mon | 08:00P-09:00P | 3,937 |
| 16 | NCIS | USA | Sat | 09:00P-10:00P | 3,875 |
| 17 | LAKERS/JAZZ | TNT | Thu | 10:42P-01:29A | 3,824 |
| 18 | NCIS | USA | Tue | 07:00P-08:00P | 3,801 |
| 19 | BULLS/CELTICS | TNT | Mon | 07:07P-09:53P | 3,760 |
| 20 | SPONGEBOB | NICK | Sun | 09:00A-09:30A | 3,746 |
| Other shows (based on request order, not ranked or sorted) | |||||
| SOUTH PARK | CMDY | Wed | 10:00P-10:30P | 2,587 | |
| I LOVE MONEY 2 | VH1 | Mon | 09:00P-10:00P | 2,491 | |
| HILLS, THE | MTV | Mon | 10:00P-10:30P | 2,342 | |
| COLLEGE LIFE | MTV | Mon | 10:30P-11:00P | 948 | |
| RESCUE ME | FX | Tue | 10:00P-11:03P | 1,538 | |
| PENGUINS OF MADAGASCAR | NICK | Fri | 08:00P-08:30P | 3,195 | |
| LAKERS/JAZZ | ESPN | Sat | 09:00P-11:41P | 3,299 | |
| INTERVENTION | A&E | Mon | 09:00P-10:00P | 1,359 | |
| GREEK | FAM | Mon | 08:00P-09:00P | 714 | |
| ROOMMATES | FAM | Mon | 09:00P-09:30P | 520 | |
| IRON MAN | NICK | Sun | 01:00P-01:30P | 1,918 | |
| IRON MAN | NICK | Sun | 01:30P-02:00P | 1,509 | |
| PISTONS/CAVALIERS | TNT | Tue | 08:07P-10:42P | 3,699 | |
| JAZZ/LAKERS | TNT | Tue | 10:42P-01:28A | 3,607 | |
| CELTICS/BULLS | TNT | Thu | 08:07P-10:42P | 3,389 | |
| PHONE, THE | MTV | Tue | 10:00P-11:00P | 920 | |
| DAISY OF LOVE | VH1 | Sun | 09:00P-10:00P | 1,950 | |
| BREAKING BAD | AMC | Sun | 10:00P-11:00P | 1,035 | |
| RW/RR THE DUEL 2 | MTV | Wed | 10:00P-11:00P | 1,798 | |
| UNSTABLE | LIFE | Sat | 09:00P-11:00P | 2,317 | |
| CHASING A DREAM | HALL | Sat | 09:00P-11:00P | 1,758 | |
We also have weekly rankings of the top advertising supported cable networks.
Nielsen Ratings Data: ©2009 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved
Thanks for taking requests! So, do you have the numbers for South Park?
I’m a little disappointed In Plain Sight dropped below 4 million. That’s not good.
Can you please post the numbers for I Love Money 2?
The Hills and College Life please
could you please post the numbers for Rescue Me. And its good to see 2 boston teams make the top twenty shows
Can I get the numbers for “Penguins of Madagascar” on Friday (4/24) at 8pm Eastern?
Thanks.
L&O:CI was good with Goldblum. I’m curious to see how many peopled stayed with the draft, I just flipped through to see who went & when.
what about the lakers-jazz game 4 which followed the NFL draft? i’m sure it was big time.
Can you please post the numbers for Intervention and Saving Grace
The ratings of the new schedule of ABC Family in Monday, with 4 episodes of Roomates dans one of greek if it’s possible
Hey, hope you don’t mind two requests from me, but could you post the numbers for “Iron Man: Armored Adventures” from Nickelodeon on Sunday (4/26) from 1-2pm Eastern?
Thanks!
How about numbers for the NBA playoff games that would be in the top 40
The Phone?
Would you by chance have possibly seen the premiere ratings for Daisy of Love?
In Plain Sight’s series low for last season was their finale with 3.78 million.
Sorry to be a pain but please post the Duel 2 numbers.
Breaking Bad Please
For the Love of Ray J placed 7th? For the Love of God who is watching that awful show?
FYI, there was no Saving Grace last week (its season finale was the week before) and last week there was only one episode of Roommates. I will get a table up once there are a few more requests.
“do a table based on the first 20 requests received for airings outside the top 20 and then add it to the post”
if I’m fast enough to be in the top 20, I would ask for the saturday night “movie of the week” of Lifetime (Unstable) and Hallmark (Chasing a dream) or just the lowest rated between them
Thanks
Life After People on History, the original premiere on Tuesday the 21st and a rerun on Sunday the 26th.
I knew you’d be all over the right numbers for USA, Linda!
thanks for checking.
I’m interested what the highest rated show on BBC America is or how Primeval is doing on SciFi.
I’d love to see how Primeval is doing on SciFi.
Request for ECW (Sci-Fi), Impact (Spike), and Superstars (WGN)
What’s the 521st program on the list?
#s for Friday’s episode of The Best Years on The N!
table added above, but missing the last couple of comments. Primeval: 771K, ECW: 1.659 million. No more requests, sorry.
LOL @ Doghouse. It was the Wednesday at 9pm episode of House of Payne (1.561 million). The Best Years on the N! was 144K (8,236th on the list, for those keeping score at home).
And now, no more requests, and this time I mean it!
Many thanks for the numbers!
Unstable is the worst performance for an original movie premiere on Lifetime in 2009 (not surprising considering it was certainly less “buzzed”, if we can talk about buzz regarding Lifetime movies, compared to the likes of Prayers for Bobby, America or the Nora Roberts telepics).
Chasing a dream may be the worst for Hallmark too (but I don’t know as I miss the viewership of one of their movie earlier this year).
I guess “not so young” women go out too on Saturday night when weather is good!
Greek’s numbers are shocking for me. Really curious to see if ABCFamily brings it back for the 3rd season as previously announced. Pretty much the same situation as for Damages
Thank You!! Man, Breaking Bad’s numbers have gone down, good think it’s already renewed.
Wow. The 821st program on the list pulled 1.561 million viewers. That is a bit higher than I would have expected but I had no frame of reference when predicting what the number would be. There is such a wealth of ratings information about cable that nobody ever sees. For example, it would be extremely interesting to see a chart detailing the viewership for every single cable channel, even for just for one hour out of the week.
Heck, it would be interesting enough seeing just the twenty cable channels with the highest viewership. You can sort of do this with just the numbers in the above two charts. For Monday:
NCIS USA Mon 08:00P-09:00P 3,937
GREEK FAM Mon 08:00P-09:00P 714
WWE ENTERTAINMENT USA Mon 09:00P-10:00P 5,101
I LOVE MONEY 2 VH1 Mon 09:00P-10:00P 2,491
INTERVENTION A&E Mon 09:00P-10:00P 1,359
ROOMMATES FAM Mon 09:00P-09:30P 520
HILLS, THE MTV Mon 10:00P-10:30P 2,342
FOR THE LOVE OF RAY J VH1 Mon 10:00P-11:30P 4,223
WWE ENTERTAINMENT USA Mon 10:00P-11:07P 5,498
I for one find that interesting. And at best (from 9-9:30PM) there are only four shows/cable channels involved; they total 9.471 million viewers. I imagine there were tens of millions of other viewers watching other cable channels between 9PM and 10PM last Monday.
Think about Friday when The Best Years was on The N! with its 144,000 viewers. Was that the worst performing cable channel in its timeslot?
I don’t know if it is too late, but do you have the ratings for House of Payne? I know you usually put them in the table. Thanks.
WWE Superstars on WGN America did a 0.9 household rating which is very good for that channel but probably disappointing for McMahon. WGN is just not in as many homes at USA, Sci-Fi, or MyNetwork TV.
Thank you for posting the numbers for Moonlight last week. Wish you could this week too!
The N is a pretty small channel. Maybe 144,000 viewers is good for a new episode! Or maybe not.. lol.
Not a great SpongeBob week, I guess
Spongebob’s battle with NCIS is still neck-and-neck…or would be if Spongebob had a neck… But he is beating the Penguins (does Penguins air a lot and only have one in the top 20, or does it only air once?).
I’m really shocked with those Greek numbers on ABC Fam. It seems like its on the low end of viewership compared to some of their other original programs (Wildfire, KyleXY).
Even though College Life on MTV isn’t pulling in huge numbers, they’ve got to be satisfied just getting close to 1 million viewers. Talk about a show that costs virtually nothing to produce, compared to something like RW/RR challenges.
Like them or not, gotta give credit to Matt & Trey for keeping South Park relevant…what, ten years later? I admire the fact they can crank out an episode so quickly (3 days?) with satire on current events.
Deadliest Catch…still going strong. ADDICTED to the show!
Holly, per request I listed one other airing of Penguins of Madagascar in the second table. It airs about 30 times, almost all of them on NICK with a handful on the lesser-watched Nick Toons. SpongeBob has almost 3x as many airings. NCIS aired around 25 times last week (all on USA).
Not a request, just a vote of thanks!
Thank you Robert!
Thanks for the numbers!
can you post, TNA, ECW, Making the band finale & Tough Love and daisy of love
wwe raw will dominate cable
wwe raw will dominate cable and might hit 10 million.
OMG @ Greek numbers !!!!! What happened ?!?
Thanks for posting Roommates! Of course it reached over 500,000 viewers for the 1st time (w/o help of Secret Life) and ABC Family looks to be cancelling it. Ugh.
WCG Ultimate Gamer — does anyone know how well this show did? Any numbers for the final show or any of the episodes? A lot of people are really curious how well it did.
Hey, can you show Reno 911! ? thanks
Can you post the ratings for JONAS? Thanks so much. It’s so nice that you take requests!
Are you going to post today’s numbers? If so please include the challenge numbers. (Sorry I am a bit of an obsessed fan, lol).
Chris, all the numbers are delayed until at least tomorrow. (Hopefully not longer.)
http://tvbythenumbers.com/2009/05/05/overnight-and-weekly-data-delays/18062
Oh ok. Sorry that I didn’t notice that earlier. But I hope the delay stays for tommorrow.
wwe rules losers