Update: First, the one piece of information I know people want to see are the numbers for the season premiere of HBO’s True Blood.
Note: the numbers in the table below are for the ad-supported basic cable only, but the 3.7 million for True Blood will be in the top twenty when I see the consolidated data. I have updated the table based on the consolidated info. This is the first HBO (or premium cable show of any kind) I’ve seen make the top 20 (or even top forty) since the finale of Sopranos was the #1 cable show in June 2007.
Unfortunately I haven’t seen the numbers anywhere yet and other than telling you that it wasn’t among the top twenty shows, I can’t tell you much. Normally one might read into the lack of information or HBO press releases that HBO is hiding bad news. But I don’t think you can do that here. HBO is perhaps the least boastful network we’ve ever encountered. The DVD launch of season one of True Blood in the first few weeks makes for one of the better launches of a TV series DVD. Sales estimates put the DVD at over 850,000 units and $30 million in revenue after three weeks of release. And there was no boasting from HBO. Sooner or later I’d guess we’ll see the numbers somewhere and we’ll post them.
The season premiere of The Closer stood tall above its summer cable competition and nothing got within a million viewers of it. WWE RAW (allegedly WWE RAW was just purchased by Donald Trump – The Donald made Vince an offer he couldn’t refuse — whether like the show, that announcement was for entertainment purposes only, we’ll see!). Royal Pains again scored 5.59 million, though it increased its demo viewing over it’s first week. Burn Notice dropped to 5th and 5.24 million viewers, but it aired against game four of the NBA finals, so look for it to rebound some this week.
In Plain Sight rebounded nicely from the prior week, going back up over four million (4.27) and back into the top ten, edging out Jon & Kate Plus 8 and Deadliest Catch.
In a rare event, SpongeBob did not make the top twenty. The yellow and porous one’s best outing was #28 with 3.4 million.
I’m not the only one catching up on NCIS on USA. Five airings made the top twenty, and ten airings made the top forty.
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Top twenty cable network television shows for the week ending June 14, 2009:
| Rank | Shows | NET | DAY | Time | Viewers Live+SD (000) |
| 1 | CLOSER, THE | TNT | Mon | 09:00P-10:00P | 7,139 |
| 2 | WWE ENTERTAINMENT | USA | Mon | 10:00P-11:14P | 5,935 |
| 3 | ROYAL PAINS | USA | Thu | 10:00P-11:00P | 5,590 |
| 4 | NASCAR POST RACE SHOW | TNT | Sun | 04:58P-05:11P | 5,531 |
| 5 | BURN NOTICE | USA | Thu | 09:00P-10:00P | 5,242 |
| 6 | SPRINT CUP RACNG/MICHIGAN | TNT | Sun | 01:59P-04:58P | 5,118 |
| 7 | WWE ENTERTAINMENT | USA | Mon | 09:00P-10:00P | 4,873 |
| 8 | IN PLAIN SIGHT | USA | Sun | 10:00P-11:00P | 4,271 |
| 9 | JON & KATE PLUS 8 | TLC | Mon | 09:00P-09:30P | 4,252 |
| 10 | DEADLIEST CATCH | DISC | Tue | 09:00P-10:01P | 4,189 |
| 11 | LAW & ORDER: CI (ORIG) | USA | Sun | 09:00P-10:00P | 4,141 |
| 12 | PARENT TRAP, THE (1998) | DSNY | Thu | 08:00P-10:20P | 4,119 |
| 13 | NCIS | USA | Wed | 09:00P-10:00P | 3,812 |
| 14 | NCIS | USA | Sat | 10:00P-11:00P | 3,781 |
| 15 | LONESOME DOVE PT 3&4 | AMC | Sun | 08:00P-12:00A | 3,745 |
| 16 | NCIS | USA | Sat | 09:00P-10:00P | 3,723 |
| 17 | ARMY WIVES | LIFE | Sun | 10:00P-11:00P | 3,710 |
| 18 | TRUE BLOOD | HBO | Sun | 09:00P-09:58P | 3,700 |
| 19 | NCIS | USA | Sat | 07:00P-08:00P | 3,683 |
| 20 | NCIS | USA | Sat | 08:00P-09:00P | 3,669 |
| because I lost a bet: | |||||
| GREEK | FAM | Mon | 08:00P-09:00P | 665 |
Nielsen Ratings Data: ©2009 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved
First, the one piece of information I know people want to see are the numbers for the season premiere of HBO’s True Blood. We haven’t seen any info yet, but we will post it when we see it.
Nice to see In Plain Sight back in the top 10 with over 4 million viewers. Its also nice to see Royal Pains as the number 1 scripted show on USA!
USA is becoming one of my favorite networks, followed by TNT.
According to this:
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/294649-cable_Ratings_True_Blood_Delivers_For_HBO.php
The second season premiere of True Blood drew a whopping 3.7 million viewers for the first showing!
Stephen, I beat you to updating the post, but only by a minute.
Any news on last night’s premiere of “Zeke & Luther” on Disney XD?
If you’re NBC Universal, at what point do you conclude it’s more profitable to invest money in Monk, Burn Notice, In Plain Sight, etc. on the USA network than it is to dump good money after bad on the broadcast network?
Outlander, to some extent I think that point has already been passed. Not in absolute dollars, but in a “Where’s our best ROI?” way. I think that NBCU feels that its money is better invested in its cable properties and has been shifting the broadcast/cable balance for several years.
USA has 55% of the spots
and very interesting that the Nascar post race show beat the actual race itself
In Plain Sight back in the top ten? Good news.
Also that’s a big jump between the two hours of Raw this week – an increase of more than a million people.
Cullen, not really that surprising. The post-race show had the advantage of only being 13 minutes in duration and being immediately after the end of the race, while the race had to pull its average for almost 3 hours.
I agree, Robert. The NASCAR fans I know will check in every few laps during the early part of the race, and not settle in continuously until the last hour or so.
For The Parent Trap airing on Disney Channel for the millionth time, those numbers are pretty darn good.
Was going to watch the basketball game but the HD signal kept doing the wave on our local ABC affiliate, had seen the CBS shows, and had no real interest in the NBC programming in addition to the fact that the weather guy kept breaking in with severe weather reports, so I was wandering around the dial and saw that “Law and Order: Criminal Intent” was on. Jeff Goldblum adds a lot to that show. Then I saw that “In Plain Sight” was on after that. Odd but interesting show. Usually watch USA on the Fridays with “Monk,” “Psych,” and the aforementioned current “House” reruns but I think I will be watching on Sundays too. Would have watched “True Blood” but our cable company decided to take away our movie channels a year or so ago in the hopes that we would all switch to digital cable. Saved me thirty bucks a month. If I want to watch any of the premium movie channel shows I have to find other outlets but there are plenty.
Any numbers for Nurse Jackie and Weeds ?
law and order criminal intent with jeff golblum was great sunday night they seem to have gotten better on usa network
In Plain Sight and Criminal Intent are really benefitting from lack of the competition, the renewal seems likely and Royal Pains is doing stellar as well.
Army Wives is up from last week which is good and Lonesome Dove on AMC did very well too.
Also just want to note the race was over well earlier than the scheduled time due to very few cautions. The race was scheduled to run til 5pm but was over around 4:25, post-race was to run 5-5:30pm. Fans who like to tune in to catch the end of the race missed out this past weekend.
Winston, we published them last week:
http://tvbythenumbers.com/2009/06/09/showtimes-nurse-jackie-pulls-in-135-million-viewers-and-is-picked-up-for-season-two/20426
I’ll be interested to see RAW next week with no commercials. I assume the numbers won’t change much.
Thats one of the reasons why I hate watching WWE on TV. So maybe I’ll tune in this time, rather than watching the matches on youtube.
Hmm, do any non-summer non-sports cable programs regularly get 5 million?
I didn’t know True Blood was so big. Though I’m guessing critics would say it’s for reasons different from Sopranos’ bigness, since while Metacritic reviews are “generally favorable,” no critic cited loves it.
Yay Jon + Kate sub-5 mil.
Nick is not in the top 20 at all this week. When was the last time that happened?
(I know Penguins is #21, because it was #20 until Robert updated the post to include True Blood)
Real Housewives of NJ numbers??
QUOTE:
j says:
Hmm, do any non-summer non-sports cable programs regularly get 5 million?
———————————————————————————–
Yeah, when The Closer was running new episodes back in February, it got 5-7 million weekly.
@J, non-sports shows that can regular pull 5 million can be (I think) counted on one hand. In addition to The Closer, there are only 3 other shows I think can regularly do it with NEW episodes:
iCarly, SpongeBob and Burn Notice.
Well, I meant shows that don’t air new episodes in the summer (esp since the majority of Closer is still summer eps). I’m not doubting that summer cable shows could do well in the regular TV season, I’m wondering if cable has a steady hit in the regular TV season.
Oh I just read your comment Robert. Thanks. Wait, Burn Notice is regular-season? Huh.
real housewives of nj? or runs house numbers from last night?
Oh, Burn Notice’s last season was half-and-half summer-and-not. Now the more interesting question would be, what cable shows regularly draw a 2.0 rating in 18-49? But 18-49 cable #’s are scarce. I do remember reading that Burn Notice was #1 in the demo last…year or maybe last season.
some cable nets have been splitting their seasons up into mini seasons with some of their shows. That happened with both Burn Notice and The Closer who had mini seasons with episodes airing during the “regular” broadcast tv season. You could scroll back through all the cable archives or pull up the episode lists on Wikipedia to get an exact accounting of when they aired and how many episodes it was.
What about Touched By an Angel? I see Hallmark Channel is airing the show 5 nights a week @ 8pm.
What about any of the over 13,000 airings of shows that hold some interest to someone? What about CSI Miami on A&E, what about Family Matters on Nick at Night? Yankees Red Sox on ESPN, The Nanny? Roseanne? Dog The Bounty Hunter? Cake Boss. BONES reruns??!!? How about the HGTV $250,000 challenge? What about Corey in the House? Operation Repo? Cardinals/Indians? Handy Manny? Hoodwinked? Rebroadcasts of The Closer? All 60 Spongebobs?
Home Improvement? What Not To Where? George Lopez? Kim Possible? And on and on (and on and on and on) it goes.
What about That’s So Raven?!
Didn’t The Closer and Saving Grace split their seasons due to the fact they premiered later because of the Writer’s Strike. Saving Grace dipped below 3m due to the lack of Closer lead in so it will be interesting how it does with HawthoRNe.
BTW, doesn’t Monk get 5m regularly?
The restored version of old classic Lonesone Dove outscored some new series.
Jon, OK, now I need one hand to count them all. My recollection is that Monk did routinely average over 5m. I am not sure if all of the split season decisions were due to the WGA strike. Apparently Burn Notice is going to take a similar tack this summer, and not air all the eps and hold some over for the regular season.
P.S. Hammer got hammered
Okay okay dont get all emtional… I remember the should was very popular back in the day.
i meant the SHOW was very popular! what a typo.
Shem, I was just having fun
I don’t think there is really anything to make of the numbers though (which were in the 600K-800K range) because people don’t watch Hallmark as much as a lot of the other channels.
Apparently Leverage is going to have seven episodes in the summer and right in the winter. It’s not unusual to split the season as it spreads the wealth and avoids competition from the broadcast network although In Plain Sight and L&O:CI are airing episodes without interruption.
Will be interesting if Leverage gets a True Blood style boost given its loyal fanbase and the first show to successfully air without a lead in from The Closer.
Anybody see that Yahoo! article the other day that was trying to use “Jon & Kate’s” 5+ million viewership rating number as a reason why America was “turning on the couple?”
Obviously whomever wrote the article doesn’t understand how Cable TV ratings work because the numbers that show is pulling in is HUGE and I’m sure TLC is nothing but exstatic with the show’s newfound mainstream “fame.”
Hey…I’ve noticed how GSNs ratings have gone up recently. Can you tell me how Deal or No Deal reruns are doing at 7 PM? Plus, with all the horrible reviews for Big Saturday Night, how well did it do in the ratings?
Um…having trouble with your comment posting system…let me try this again…
Hey…I’ve noticed how GSNs ratings have gone up recently. Can you tell me how Deal or No Deal reruns are doing at 7 PM? Plus, with all the horrible reviews for Big Saturday Night, how well did it do in the ratings?
You wont post this till next week, but Jon and Kate Plus 8 dropped to 2.9 million viewers last night.
how come you guys don’t put all the other shows on like you used to
Daniel, our agreement with Nielsen was to limit lists to the top 20. Lately they have been talking to us about compliance a little bit.
YAY true Blood did amazing!!!
Good to see In Plain Sight back in the top 20 seems like its heading for renewal. Robert Seidman any idea what Raising The Bar did
Raising in the Bar wasn’t in the top 20 by viewers, (3.568M viewers so basically lost more than 1/2 of the Closer lead-in) but it was #16 by household rating
Jon: “Apparently Leverage is going to have seven episodes in the summer and right in the winter.”
Aarggggh! I want my Leverage ALL AT ONCE!
USA is a real beast. All of their original series are hitting well and RP was a surprise last week building off of their hit Burn Notice. In Plain Sight and CI should be able to get back to the 5 million viewer range now that the NBA Finals are over.
Raw has been growing every week ever since Memorial Day. This is Raw’s best chance to get huge audiences until MNF starts back up. Raw with Trump might be high every week as it got a huge 6 million viewers in that 10pm hour last night.
Army Wives is still doing well for Lifetime. Lifetime needs to make a lead-out for it.
Whoa what happened to “iCarly” this week?!?!?!?! I think Nick is making a big mistake by airing new episodes whenever they feel like it. Sure they want a ton of new episodes to go through a quarter of next year, but I think fans are getting restless with the two – three week breaks per episode.
The Parent Trap always gets great ratings. IT still does. I don’t know how anyone can watch a movie so many times… lol. Tanner I think you can request those Real Housewives of NJ numbers through Twitter… speaking of that, Robert are you taking requests through Twitter still?
I never saw the 1998 version of Parent Trap since such movies don’t interest me.
However, I DO remember watching the original 1961 movie with Hayley Mills and Maureen O’Hara. Hayley didn’t interest me at my tender age of 12 – I thought she looked like a boy – but Maureen with her flame-red hair and creamy complexion – and built like a brick outhouse – at age 42 at the time – was my first huge crush. I watched every O’Hara movie I could find after that. LOL! In fact, I saw her again in “Only the Lonely” in 1991, at age 71, and she STILL looked good!
As for watching a movie multiple times, on TV or in the theater, I usually do that. You frequently pick up stuff you missed the first time around, if the movie has any “legs”. I’ll see a movie in theater six or seven times if I really like it. It depends, though. Some movies, like the latest Star Trek, I’ll see only once, maybe twice if I have the money.
Looks like Sundays @ 9p have become very competitive. True Blood (my favorite), L&O:CI, and Lonesome Dove were all in the top 20…
My TV is on USA more than 50% of the time. My favorites are Burn Notice, In Plain Sight, Psych, Monk, NCIS, L&O CI, House, and now Royal Pains. I also watch The Closer, True Blood, Saving Grace, Nurse Jackie, and The Deadliest Catch. I love having a summer season. Nice having something to look forward to after a day in the sun.
Scarecrow, I am with you! My favorite channels this summer are cable channels! They have everything and with USA’s hit dramas like In Plain Sight and Criminal Intent and their new one, Royal Pains, which is amazing, I will be sad to see summer end when we have to go back to watching the stuff that the broadcast networks are offering up.
USA TNT and HBO are the networks Im watchiong this summer, those networks have the good shows.
I agree iCarly shouldn’t be scheduled that way. This is the first new episode in a month and that’s not good to not show up in the TOP 20. iCarly fans were very confused these past couple of weeks since they scrapped the June 6 episode then promote the boxing movie and not air it. There’s a lot of confusion. They need a steady schedule for iCarly not all over the place.
I think it’s interesting that Raising the Bar loses more than 1/2 the audience of lead-in The Closer. I remember the same was true last season. Guess Steven Bocchco has a lot of pull at TNT. But you’d think TNT would rather build on the success of The Closer.
Robert did MTV send you the Duel II reunion numbers?
Where can i see all tv show ratings? I mean ALL Show?
Well, you have to look around more. This page clearly only shows the top 20’s, so google it and I’m sure you can find the show you’re looking for. I’m kind of annoyed with all of these requests because the show you want is obviously not in the top 20 if it’s not shown in the list.
Try to look around the internet yourself.
Doing an internet search is not exactly the most helpful way to find some of the shows a lot of people are looking for. At best a search will turn up one or two episodes from the current season, it will show ratings from a previous season, or the numbers will be put in ways that most people do not understand (specifically demo or household numbers instead of total viewers).
I can understand the plight of a lot of people coming here to request their favorite shows. I’ve been closely following ratings for about 10 months now and this is the ony site I know of where it seems like the moderators are the most accessible and accomodating. I go to at least 6 sites (including this one) every week to try to look for the ratings of the shows I follow and still this one is the most reliable.
The folks here try to do their best given that they still have to follow all of these rules about what to release and what not to release.
Tre, The only way you are going to see ratings for ALL TV shows (or even all prime time TV shows) is to pay for it. Nielsen is a business. They do research and interested companies (networks, advertisers, etc.) pay to see the results. They allow some of the information to be published on sites like this, but they do put limits on what can and cannot be made public.
True Blood, hottest show in tv right now.
My grandma was wondering how the Kendra show is doing. Are the ratings still as good? Denise Richards benefiting from the ratings still? Sorry Grandma doesn’t have twitter. Please have mercy for her… you never hear about these show’s ratings after the first episode when everyone is bragging about the ratings. thanks