| Scoreboard |  |
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| Rating/Share: Adults 18-49 | 1.5/5 | 1.1/3 | 1.1/3 | 1.0/3 | 0.6/2 | 0.2/1 |
| Rating/Share: Adults 18-34 | 1.6/5 | 0.8/3 | 0.7/2 | 0.6/2 | 0.6/2 | 0.2/1 |
| Total Viewers (million) | 3.005 | 4.300 | 4.372 | 6.706 | 1.595 | 0.790 |
On its second Sunday, NBC’s Merlin nearly perfected its vanishing act, managing only an anemic 1.0 rating for the adults 18-49 demo. ABC’s Impact mini-series didn’t do much better, but the good news for ABC is that it’s over. Fox animated repeats needed only a 1.5 demo rating to rule the night.
ABC flip-flopped America’s Funniest Home Videos and Just For Laughs vs. last week, and both saw their ratings improve. 60 Minutes was up a tick in 18-49 demo from last week.
Note: Fast Nationals for FOX from 8-10p are approximate. FOX added a tribute to Michael Jackson at the beginning of The Simpsons resulting in irregular running times: The Simpsons aired until 8:34p, King of the Hill was 8:34-9:04p, Family Guy ran 9:04-9:34p and American Dad aired 9:34-10:03p.
You can see TV ratings from other recent Overnight ratings reports here.
Full details:
| Time | Net | Show | 18-49 Rating | 18-49 Share | 18-34 Rating | 18-34 Share | Viewers Live+SD (million) |
| 7:00 | ABC | America’s Funniest Home Videos (repeat) | 1.1 | 4 | 1.0 | 4 | 4.543 |
| CBS | 60 Minutes | 1.1 | 4 | 0.6 | 2 | 8.549 | |
| NBC | Dateline NBC | 1.0 | 4 | 0.6 | 2 | 5.013 | |
| FOX | King of the Hill (repeat) | 0.8 | 3 | 0.8 | 3 | 1.895 | |
| CW | Valentine | 0.2 | 1 | 0.2 | 1 | 0.592 | |
| 7:30 | FOX | American Dad (repeat) | 1.1 | 4 | 1.1 | 4 | 2.284 |
| ABC | Just for Laughs | 1.0 | 4 | 0.9 | 4 | 4.247 | |
| 8:00 | FOX | The Simpsons (repeat) | 1.6 | 5 | 1.7 | 6 | 3.289 |
| ABC | Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (repeat) | 1.0 | 3 | 0.9 | 3 | 3.947 | |
| NBC | Merlin | 1.0 | 3 | 0.6 | 2 | 4.294 | |
| CBS | Million Dollar Password (repeat) | 0.9 | 3 | 0.6 | 2 | 6.456 | |
| CW | Larger Than Life (movie) | 0.2 | 1 | 0.2 | 1 | 0.838 | |
| 8:30 | FOX | King of the Hill (repeat) | 1.5 | 5 | 1.7 | 5 | 3.117 |
| 9:00 | FOX | Family Guy (repeat) | 2.0 | 6 | 2.3 | 7 | 4.066 |
| NBC | Merlin | 1.1 | 3 | 0.8 | 2 | 4.252 | |
| CBS | Cold Case (repeat) | 1.1 | 3 | 0.6 | 2 | 6.354 | |
| ABC | Impact (mini-series, 2 of 2) | 1.0 | 3 | 0.7 | 2 | 4.199 | |
| CW | Larger Than Life (movie) | 0.2 | 1 | 0.2 | 1 | 0.940 | |
| 9:30 | FOX | American Dad (repeat) | 1.7 | 5 | 2 | 6 | 3.377 |
| 10:00 | NBC | Law & Order: SVU (repeat) | 1.1 | 3 | 0.9 | 3 | 3.932 |
| ABC | Impact (mini-series, 2 of 2) | 1.1 | 3 | 0.5 | 2 | 4.660 | |
| CBS | Without A Trace (repeat) | 0.9 | 3 | 0.6 | 2 | 5.465 |
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Shows are sorted by 18-49 rating in each time slot.
Nielsen TV Ratings: ©2009 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved.
Definitions:
Fast Affiliate Ratings: These first national ratings, including demographics, are available at approximately 11 AM (ET) the day after telecast, and are released to subscribing customers daily. These data, from the National People Meter sample, are strictly time-period information, based on the normal broadcast network feed, and include all programming on the affiliated stations, sometimes including network programming, sometimes not. The figures may include stations that did not air the entire network feed, as well as local news breaks or cutaways for local coverage or other programming. Fast Affiliate ratings are not as useful for live programs and are likely to differ significantly from the final results, because the data reflect normal broadcast feed patterns. For example, with a World Series game, Fast Affiliate Ratings would include whatever aired from 8-11PM on affiliates in the Pacific Time Zone, following the live football game, but not game coverage that begins at 5PM PT. The same would be true of Presidential debates as well as live award shows and breaking news reports.
Rating: Estimated percentage of the universe of TV households (or other specified group) tuned to a program in the average minute. Ratings are expressed as a percent.
Share (of Audience): The percent of households (or persons) using television who are tuned to a specific program, station or network in a specific area at a specific time. (See also, Rating, which represents tuning or viewing as a percent of the entire population being measured.)
Time Shifted Viewing – Program ratings for national sources are produced in three streams of data – Live, Live+Same Day (Live+SD) and Live+7 Day. Time shifted figures account for incremental viewing that takes place with DVRs which are currently in approximately 24.4% of all U.S. TV households. Live+Same Day (Live+SD) include viewing during the same broadcast day as the original telecast, with a cut-off of 3:00AM local time when meters transmit daily viewing to Nielsen for processing. Live+7 Day ratings include incremental viewing that takes place during the 7 days following a telecast.
For more information see Numbers 101.
Just for Laughs got pretty good retention out of AFV. I know it’s a bit early to predict, but I bet ABC will pull a Better off Ted and renew Just for Laughs for a 4th season solely because of retention. I’m assuming NBC will keep on burning off episodes of Merlin until the season is finished since the ratings are so-so.
Your forgot to say that Merlin DID BETTER! of course it can’t have perfect ratings after first horrible episode..
Steve, how do you figure Merlin did better? Last Night it averaged a 1.05 adults 18-49 rating, on 6/21 it averaged a 1.35.
Or did you mean better in some sort of magical way?
I can’t see how ABC doesn’t renew JFL. It’s ratings are terrible, but there are already hundreds of episodes produced (in Canada) and ABC must get them for an extremely low price because there’s little production involved. It’s a decent timeslot filler, for the summer.
The 8:30 KOTH, Family Guy, and American Dad all started a little late since FOX aired ‘Do the Bartman’ before ‘The Simpsons’ began. So numbers may adjust a little.
Also, Valentine was brand-new.
Wow…My prediction for Merlin was right. It looked horrible, and it’s doing horrible.
But than again, it’s NBC. Even a great show will fail on NBC….right KINGS?
Don, I have added the Fox scheduling caveat. Interesting about Valentine. Although we have the notice on the site of its return, both of our data sources had it flagged as a repeat.
Valentine got Jericho-like ratings. No wonder it was axed. CW is running out the clock on Sundays with stuff nobody wants to watch. I watched 5 minutes of the beginning of it – talk about dumb – a gun that makes people fall in lust? Ugh. Who thought of that? They should be shot —- out of circus cannon into the Pacific Ocean. C in CW stands for Crap.
Whats up next week on CW? In Harms Way???
If its knights, magic and sword fights you want I think Legend of the Seeker is better than Merlin. I watched one episode of Merlin and that was enough for me.
In my area, I didn’t bother with any of the repeats and generally weak summer entrys. I watched a Agatha Christie mystery (Hercule Poirot) on PBS Masterpiece Theatre. At this time of year especially, some of you who want a change from all the repeats and all the “throw against the wall and see what sticks” network drivel might try some of the PBS English mysteries. One warning: They require some thought and concentration to follow.
Merlin is some kind of lame Harry Potter rip off.
I watched one episode of that Just for Laughs show last year and it was terrible. It’s a hidden camera show where they play pranks on people, but they mute out the people’s reactions, so what’s the point? I hear the reason they mute the people’s reactions out are because many of them speak French and ABC apparently thinks its audience is too dumb to read subtitles.
Bill, could you post a link to this day from a year ago. I’d really like to see the numbers. Thx!
Andrea, I’m a big believer in the “teach a man to fish” school of thought. If you go to our Archive page above (link in the blue nav bar) one of the things you will then see is the list of monthly archives. You can click on June 2008 and enjoy all the ratings posts from that month!
Between this Impact and the 2 NBC upcoming miniseries, what’s up with networks suddenly wanting to offer disaster movies during the summer? I guess they must be cheap.
Miniseries is a dying format in US television (even on cable they’re difficult to find) and it won’t be saved by a couple of hurricanes, storms and meteorites hitting the Earth in between summer re-runs.
You know, it was a simple request; I felt like a got a bit of ‘tude. I’ve always done the slow search, I didn’t know about the Archives list. I found the info, but now I’m in no mood to discuss ratings. Thanks, Bill!
Andrea, sorry if you felt some ‘tude, but the process by which I would have hunted for that overnight report would have been nearly identical to the one you’d have used with the process I explained. Self service > my service!
So sad. A *rerun* of Password was #2 overall last night (and miles ahead of its competition in its time slot) but it just can’t perform as well in 18-49 so it’s probably getting axed.
Chad, I wouldn’t draw any conclusions about MDP’s future from the results last night. Super cheap shows like it can exist in broadcast schedule nooks and crannies quite happily.
Normally I wouldn’t, Bill, but if you remember back in January, the program had aired 4 episodes and the most recent one scored 10.43m overall but had a 1.9/5 in 18-49, fourth in its slot…and it was yanked with 2 episodes left. It could also have had something to do with scheduling of football at that time, but ever since then I’ve been fearful for the program’s future.
What about total viewers?
Fox barely had a better ratings demo and was 4th in total viewership. While CBS and NBC were the one and two of the night in total viewership. How is over 4 million viewers for Merlin on a Sunday night (which the networks have virtually abandoned) bad? That would be hailed a raging success on any cable network. Let’s face it, especially in the digital tv age the broadcast networks are losing power and viewers to endless choices on cable. Also, it means that whole families are sitting down to watch Merlin, which is exactly what the show was meant for in England. With kids being under 18 and their parents being above 34, its not surprising Merlin is not making the coveted demo.
Kalena, total viewers is meaningless to the advertising revenues of the networks (which correlate closely with adults 18-49 viewing), so while we include them in a baseball scorecard sort of completeness, they are not involved in the “final score”.
Just for Laughs is a great show. It’s a laugh-riot. I hope they renew it. It’s one of the most clever shows on TV now. More people just need to find out about it.
Merlin is a great show! It definitely started out kind of weak, but the third and fourth episodes last night were fantastic! It’s certainly better than most of the crap that the networks put on the airwaves.
Merlin is a hit in the UK…I wonder why not here?
Has there been any word on how HUNG did over on HBO last night?
Any info on the BET Awards last night? Seemed to be like it was the only thing worth watching on TV last night, especially with the Michael Jackson tribute and the cable news coverage of it.
I watched the two episodes of “Merlin” last night. The series hasn’t surpassed any of my expectations, but neither have I had the desire to shut off my TV set. March of 2010 and Season 3 of “Chuck,” are still a frustratingly long ways away.
Hey Biggie, HBO numbers come out late Tuesday evening usually. That is when we find out about the (awesome) new episode of True Blood as well.
I know the total viewers number does not count for ad revenue. The number of viewers included in the demo for ads is so low, they may soon be irrelevant. This is beyond sad.
Ooh god, more British tv next fall.
According to the latest rumors female girl group Girl Aloud will get their own reality show on The CW, never heard of them btw, did you guys?
I like Merlin, but its rarings are horrible. NBC is stupid for putting it for two hours, and they hardly advertise it too.
I’ve heard of Girls Aloud – they show up on the Superiorpics celebrity pic Web site all the time. Another “hot girl bimbo band” a la Spice Girls. Never actually watched them do anything, though. My guess is they have a quarter or less the talent of The Corrs.
Biggie writes, “Has there been any word on how HUNG did over on HBO last night?”
I heard the ratings were pretty limp. Get it? Limp? I kill me.
Merlin has grown on me. Is it cheesy? Sure, but then so was much of classic tv we now remember fondly. It’s at least a heck of a lot better than Heroes.
Limp…yeah, I get it. I thought the show was pretty “solid”…get it? Solid…lol…Have we worn it out already..
i only whaced Password on Cbs at 8 than True Blood and Hung the only time i watch a reapet is if i didnt see the episode before and i dont watch any reatily shows
Merlin?
never even heard of it before now. (obviously wasn’t the only one…)
Just For Laughs has no subtitles because of the FCC. FCC regulates that foreign shows and foreign language shows must be either muted or dubbed if they want to be aired, NO SUBTITLES. I guess Just For Laughs picked the latter option. Although I think it would be better if they were silent, it kinda reminds of an old silent movie that way.
But as for the FCC regulating languages, the only way you can get around it is get a special license that shows you are going to be airing in a foreign language, which is what all Spanish networks have. ABC just doesn’t have it because they’re an English speaking network.
Carg0, tbats because it just premiered last week genious. If Merlin were on cbs or abc this site would be appluading it as the breakout hit of the summer.
Cbs is really pushing the fall Line up i keep seeing promos every other commerical break nice to see them to promate early the best they could have done was take Meduim
@Jamie, Only if it were getting a LOT better numbers. The only net that would consider a 1.0 a “hit” is the CW.
Without a Trace repeats continue to beat everything else in total viewers, both on Saturday and Sunday. We fans are not about to give up until the bitter end.
Diane M, perhaps you missed the memo. The bitter end was May 20.
I’m surprised commentators (including the guy who runs The Live Feed) have been seemingly critical of Merlin’s ratings. I’m all for networks taking risks in airing original programming during the summer, even during June — the deadest of all months. It can’t have cost the network anything, since it was bought from England. It seems to be performing better than any rerun NBC could throw on (rerun the entire Biggest Loser series? They cant have L&O repeats playing every single day). And I bet there’s a good chance NBC will air it at a reduced cost next summer too, as the British have already given it a second season. I guess I’d rather the commentators be less jaded and realize that not every show in this age will be a “hit,” and that even though it has poor ratings in relation to shows during the traditional season, this show may be making some money for the network.
What was FOX’s tribute for MJ before The Simpsons?
Steve, the fact that the ratings for Merlin are terrible (they are!) and the show is inexpensive for NBC (likely, based on what I know) aren’t mutually exclusive conditions, they both are true!
The fact that pretty much every show airing on US broadcast TV during the summer is cheap and has unknowably low expectations means that (like unscripted shows during the regular season) I don’t try and predict these shows futures.
So, I won’t be writing “Merlin’s doomed!”, but I will likely be writing some version of “Merlin’s ratings suck!” again and again during the summer
Mark says:
June 29th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
“Just For Laughs has no subtitles because of the FCC. FCC regulates that foreign shows and foreign language shows must be either muted or dubbed if they want to be aired, NO SUBTITLES….
“But as for the FCC regulating languages, the only way you can get around it is get a special license that shows you are going to be airing in a foreign language, which is what all Spanish networks have. ABC just doesn’t have it because they’re an English speaking network.”
What, pray tell, gave you these ideas?
Merlin tied for second place in both airings (8pm: T2 Demo, 2 Total; 9pm: T2 Demo, 2 Total). And the Merlins tied L&O reair last night in demo and outperformed it in total viewers. Saying “Merlin sucks” is correct but not the whole story, since anything else NBC would probably air would either do as good or worse (since L&O repeats generally perform among the best reairs on NBC). Even in regards to the other networks, the Merlins held up pretty well, pushing NBC to tied for second overall in the night.
I know this is a site about ratings, but it seems like “ratings” and “money” can’t really be separated… you can write headlines all you want as having “horrible ratings” but that story gets old and is simplistic in this day-in-age. It’s more interesting to delve into trying to figure out the net benefit for each show for the networks.
Especially as NBC execs have said over and over again they are managing for margins, not ratings. It may be worthwhile and interesting to read, in regards to their mantra, how this show is doing for them. Maybe even better than how this show is doing based on aging standards.
That said, I think Merlin is a really interesting case. Fairly popular in England and shown across the world to mediocre results… what does that mean for the future of the show in general and for NBC Universal? A much better story in my opinion.
But yes. Not great ratings. Seems like there’s more to the story though. At least your site didn’t say nobody cared about the night’s ratings…
Steve V., I’d love to know how much each show costs so we could figure their profitability, but costs aren’t public knowledge, so we can guess, but never really know any net financial benefits. But you are partially correct, demo ratings are quite closely related to the revenue a show produces.
And I am well aware that NBC claims to be managing for margins, and I applaud that in general, but the problem is that since their financial information is so buried within GE’s reporting we’ll just have to take their word for how well they’re doing on those margins!
As for Merlin in particular, it’s a meaningless show, certainly meaningless to the future of NBCU, and not a very interesting case at all to me. It’s a cheap summer time filler that couldn’t do much better than Dateline. In relative terms, nobody cared about last night’s Merlin ratings. I’m fairly certain that it was crushed in the demo last night by both In Plain Sight and Law & Order: Criminal Intent on USA.
As for the post headline, I’ve got to write something, and it was either Merlin, Impact, or Just for Laughs. What would you have gone with?
I have to say that Merlin is probably the most meaninful show on Sunday night and I’m glad that NBC saw what the show had done for British television and is giving it a chance on it’s affiliate stations. I just hope that Merlin continues and yes the ratings for Merlin are improving week after week. Just this week alone the second episode came second in it’s time slot. So yes this is a significant achievement. Thank you NBC for seeing a really good quality televison show and giving it a chance to a whole new audience.
Cable easily won the night on Sunday. BET thru Neilson is reporting that the BET Awards featuring salutes to Michael Jackson with an appearance by Janet Jackson drew 10.2 Million viewers. Ad these numbers with the USA programs and HBO with Trueblood and Hung and what can you say…..America was watching cable.
MichaelJA, I completely agree. But the fact is, in aggregate in prime-time, more Americans are almost always watching cable than broadcast. Broadcast networks average only about 45% of the audience during the regular season, and an even lower share during the summer.
We’ll have more complete cable show numbers for the week ending Sunday tomorrow morning.
Yea. It’s tough, and I know the data just isn’t available. Thought in comparison, Friday Night Lights had about the same demo during the year and fewer total viewers… and there weren’t a ton of headlines of “Friday Night Lights was basically unwatched.”
And it’s not your headline I really have a problem with. Though I think focusing on the positive may be good, like: Simpson’s Jackson tribute fuels Fox to demo win. Or if you want to go with the non-reruns, perhaps something like: Merlin, Impact drop on slow summer Sunday.
Basically, I would have liked more thought in the analysis than “Merlin nearly perfected its vanishing act.”
If I ran the site (which I dont want to do because you guys generally do an amazing job), I would have done something more similar to zap2it’s write-up about the ratings:
http://www.zap2it.com/tv/ratings/zap-tv-ratings-062809,0,6021208.story
And then I would have supplemented that eventually with a separate write-up about if summer co-productions or direct imports work out financially for networks, despite low ratings. Or if a rerun or just a new reality show (which could be expensive) is better. Maybe also a write-up of “Should broadcast TV give-up in June?”
And I agree this show is sort of meaningless for NBC, I was more trying to get to the question of since BBC reupped the show regardless what it does in America, what does that mean for NBC’s future decisions? Should they be promoting it more, since they can get episodes at a very cheap rate in the future? I know some viewers shun new shows because they will be canceled within a few shows… it wont be the case for this one and will probably live for several seasons overseas. Other good question: Would this be a better show on SyFy, which has rebranded to include fantasy shows?
Anway, just putting in my two cents. Not really trying to slam your write-up. This was way more than I ever wanted to comment on the stupid show.
Steve V., agreed, no more about Merlin.
Unlike Zap2it, we don’t really spend any time writing about average viewership (except when we lack anything else, as is typical with historical numbers) because it doesn’t matter to the advertising revenue or the future prospects of individual shows or networks. It’s akin to saying the Giants had the best batting average in the game last night. Interesting to some (that’s why we put it in the tables), but not particularly meaningful. Many TV trade sites (and print publications) ignore average viewership entirely.
As for no Friday Night Lights headlines for Friday overnight reports, spring Fridays were all about Dollhouse and Terminator, they’d each drive 10x the traffic to the sight that FNL fans would. And we correctly surmised early on that FNL ratings, in particular, were meaningless as a predictor. It was only coming back if DirecTV wrote another check (which they did), but we had no way of guessing what DTV would do.
Interesting. Fox wins as no other network shows up. Merlin is a pretty well produced show and it is disappointing that it has to be shown on what is right now the best night of television during the off months without a lot of advertising. Sunday nights on cable. Between Law and Order: Criminal Intent, In Plain Sight, True Blood, and HBO’s new Hung who else has a chance. Impact was a farce and everything else being shown worth anything was a repeat.
Merlin got the same treatment as Virtuality got being played on an even worse night Friday this past week. I think the commercial networks are just burning product to show when they have air time they don’t care about. The less they promote it the less they lose if it doesn’t perform well. End of story.
Lizard
“What was FOX’s tribute for MJ before The Simpsons?”
The clip of Do the Bartman, the song MJ wrote for Bart back in ‘91.
1991? That was back when The Simpsons was at its peak. Now its barely watchable. Mostly I watch the couch gag then channel surf. Still get good ratings so its likely to continue as long as the cast wants it to and doesnt ask for more money.
Somewhere in my archives I have a copy of Bart Man on VHS.
I hadn’t even heard that Merlin was airing here in the US, I’m probably not the only one.
The main thing I have heard about it on the ‘net though, was that it is popular with teen girls who like the two young male leads as a couple.
Mostly, it sounded like a kids story?
If it stays popular in Britain and another season or two are produced, do you think NBC would run them in the summer next year?
@ Bill Gorman
Geez, do you have some kind of Vendetta against Merlin or somethin??
“spring Fridays were all about Dollhouse and Terminator, they’d each drive 10x the traffic to the sight that FNL fans would”
I KNEW you guys were doing so many of those titles, and articles for that reason!
JTI, of course we do, but there has to be something behind the title or folks stop coming back. But we’re no different than anyone else, that’s just the name of the game.
That said, as I wrote above, there was little to write about FNL. It had terrible ratings and its survival was 100% dependent on a check from DirecTV, and that was the case all season long, so there really wasn’t much new to say about it on a week to week basis.