A new episode of Disney’s Hannah Montana with 6.9 million average viewers beat out The Closer with 6.3 million to top all prime time cable show average viewership for the week ending July 5, 2009. Hannah also had two other airings in the top 20 for the week.
With Jon & Kate Plus 8 dropping down past #100 for the week, WWE Raw moved up into spots 3 and 4, but lost viewership compared to the recent Trump “ownership” episodes. The NASCAR race and its post race show on TNT were #5 and 6 for the week. Lifetime’s Army Wives managed to squeeze in between SpongeBobs at #16.
Those predicting (hoping for?) the demise of the yellow, porous one (I’m looking at you, Holly), were dealt a setback as SpongeBob had 7 of the second 10 shows in the cable top 20, and 30 of the top 100 (out of about 14,000) cable shows for the week.
All of USA’s top scripted shows were in repeats for the week, so they were well down the list.
Although we don’t get HBO numbers with our regular cable data, I will post the True Blood numbers when I see them.
Robert is on hiatus until late July, I am on my own till then, so we will not be handling Twitter (or other) requests for ala carte show numbers.
Top 20 cable network television shows for the week ending July 5, 2009:
| Rank | Programs | Net | Day | Time |
Viewers (Live+SD) (000s) |
| 1 | HANNAH MONTANA | DSNY | Sun | 08:00P-09:00P | 6,901 |
| 2 | THE CLOSER | TNT | Mon | 09:00P-10:00P | 6,295 |
| 3 | WWE ENTERTAINMENT | USA | Mon | 10:00P-11:09P | 6,241 |
| 4 | WWE ENTERTAINMENT | USA | Mon | 09:00P-10:00P | 5,682 |
| 5 | NASCAR POST RACE SHOW | TNT | Sat | 11:15P-11:27P | 5,475 |
| 6 | SPRINT CUP RACING/DAYTONA | TNT | Sat | 08:05P-11:15P | 5,277 |
| 7 | SONNY WITH A CHANCE | DSNY | Sun | 09:00P-09:30P | 5,167 |
| 8 | NCIS | USA | Mon | 08:00P-09:00P | 4,406 |
| 9 | HANNAH MONTANA | DSNY | Sun | 07:30P-08:00P | 4,096 |
| 10 | JONAS | DSNY | Sun | 09:30P-10:00P | 4,034 |
| 11 | SPONGEBOB | NICK | Wed | 01:00P-01:30P | 3,669 |
| 12 | SPONGEBOB | NICK | Mon | 01:30P-02:00P | 3,646 |
| 13 | HANNAH MONTANA | DSNY | Sun | 07:00P-07:30P | 3,636 |
| 14 | SPONGEBOB | NICK | Mon | 01:00P-01:30P | 3,632 |
| 15 | SPONGEBOB | NICK | Wed | 01:30P-02:00P | 3,622 |
| 16 | ARMY WIVES | LIFE | Sun | 10:00P-11:00P | 3,622 |
| 17 | SPONGEBOB | NICK | Mon | 12:30P-01:00P | 3,614 |
| 18 | SPONGEBOB | NICK | Fri | 01:30P-02:00P | 3,602 |
| 19 | WIZARDS OF WAVERLY PLACE | DSNY | Sun | 10:00P-10:30P | 3,587 |
| 20 | SPONGEBOB | NICK | Fri | 01:00P-01:30P | 3,541 |
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Nielsen Ratings Data: ©2009 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved
Wow. Kids shows on Nick and Disney rule the cable top 20!
Wow at the complete oversaturation of kids shows on this list.
True Blood was off for July 4th this week, so no new numbers.
How could someone not like Spongebob?
Now NCIS has taken a dive…did all the watchers switch over to SpongeBob?
BTW, I don’t dislike Sponge Bob or hope for his demise. I just find the back-and-forth between NCIS and Sponge Bob for cable top-20 dominance amusing.
Wow, Secret Life must have really collapsed this week.
This is what happens when you let Jon and Kate divorce.
Personally I can’t believe HM beat TC, I like watching TC, ugh….
Hannah Montana was some big hour episode on Sunday that they promoted for at least two weeks. So the big numbers were expected.
I can’t believe I know this but…Didn’t Jon & Kate go on hiatus? So those numbers would be from a rerun.
It was a retrospective from the past 10 years of their marriage.
It’s funny that RJ mentioned The Secret Life. I have been really enjoying this second season, but I think the death storyline, which has slightly un-exaggerated the character’s personalities and made them remotely realistic, and while it’s made the show much better for me, probably turned off a lot of the younger viewers.
USA Today’s ratings chart says Secret Life got 3.3 million viewers. I think they try to omit repeats from their top 15 cable shows list.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/nielsens-charts.htm
Secret Life had the same sharp drop in week 2 last January as well. In January, episode 2 followed a Kyle XY rerun; and this time, episode 2 followed the 4th airing in a week of the Make It Or Break It pilot. Episode 3 last January rebounded by half a million, so the ratings for this week’s episode might be more telling about the show’s ratings trajectory.
Cruncher, the rule that USA Today uses to come up with that list isn’t “no repeats” since they left off the NASCAR post race show as well, and included a couple Hannah Montana repeats, and at least one Wizards repeat. It seems to be “here are the top cable shows minus some we selected at our whim”.
Or viewed more sinisterly, “No SpongeBobs”. If so, the absorbent one will deal with them in his own time.
It really does seem like that Bill but I couldn’t find another word or phrase for it other than just posting their list as it truly is and not what they want it to be. USA Today really does pick and choose shows at their whim and they have the most bizarre top 10/15/20/25/etc cable list (I actually do know of a couple sites that post a top 25 and a top 40 cable list but they don’t post it in total viewers) that I see on a regular basis.
Run, USA Today, RUN!!!
I know that CI wasn’t on last week, but does anyone know if that show is getting renewed. I wish it would’ve been on cause it would’ve probably gotten into the top 20 or the top 10.
^I’d say chances are good that it will be renewed (depending on cast negotiations, etc), but on 6/21 it only got 3.4 million, which would still put it out of the top 20
That’s kind of sad Raising The Bar isn’t even making the Top 20 how disappointing. I’d love to see the numbers whenever you guys get them for Warehouse 13 as it’s doing a 2 hour premiere tonight and I’ve been looking forward to it for months since I first heard about it.
The USA Today’s selection criteria might not be pure, but it isn’t done on a whim nor is it out to get SpongeBob — at least not any more than its out to get iCarly, Hannah and other children’s programming. It doesn’t include any repeats of the kids’ shows. When there’s a new SpongeBob, they will include it. Especially since they only publish 15 shows in the table (though they do blurb shows outside the top 15 in their weekly writeup separate from the table) it does wind up providing a more diverse list.
The NASCAR post game show wasn’t included because it was under 15 minutes.
All right! SpongeBob is back! but what? Hannah Montanna #1? *shudders*
Bill…Can you please tell me the numbers for Tyler Perrys Meet The Browns??
i love that show and im just hoping that it wont get cancelled because of low ratings!!! thanks allot!
CI fan,
No news about a ninth season yet for Criminal Intent from TPTB at USA Network. It seems late, but no news has been given for a third season of In Plain Sight either; and, of the two, IPS has posted better ratings most weeks this time out.
My guess would be USA Today only includes prime time shows. Everything they listed aired in the evening.
Even though if a tree falls in the forest, etc, I’m going to bang this out anyway for the sake of my own standards if nothing else: We’re always being cautioned here not to jump to conclusions, yet most of the assertions above wouldn’t pass muster in a high school debate tournament. ( At least the ones before I lost patience.) The only pattern I see is the usual: childrens’ programming and redneck ( or red state; yes, that’s an inference) sports. Another I think intelligent guess from a region where people actually work for minimum wage at manufactering jobs and not for a sales commission or % of the box office: vacation times are so staggered in most workplaces, and summer recreation so hard to quantify, that it doesn’t surprise me a few anomalies exist in the cable top twenty in July and late June. In case anyone thinks I’m being a wiseass, as a guy with no kids I have also had to observe my friends with kids and what they watch and what movies they feel safe to attend. If more Hollywood execs and their syncophants ( this is not an anti-talent diatribe) didn’t pawn their kids off on nannies or butlers or ex-spouses’ fitness trainers or whatever and actually conducted reasonably average domestic lives, things like a crappy Transformers movie or Paul Blart doing well, and a lot of the basic cable numbers, wouldn’t freak them out so muich. Part Two someday: Why Nickolodeon is even worse than Disney as an influence on your kids. …
I understand you not wanting to publish a million shows on here, but it would be nice if every once in awhile (perhaps quarterly), you’d publish the top shows on TNT, USA, BRAVO, etc… All of these kids network shows are insignificant to many of your readers.
Mark, it’s not that we don’t want to publish more show data, it’s that Nielsen, the copyright owner of the data, doesn’t want us to publish more data.
If anyone is wondering (most likely Kyle XY fans since they WANT to see ABC Family fail):
Week 3 (7/6/09):
Secret Life – 2.8 million
Make It or Break It – 1.8 million
Mateo looks to be correct, it looks like the USA Today list rule is: primetime shows only, and no really short shows (like the NASCAR post race).
The rule has nothing to do with excluding kids shows. Hannah Montana, Jonas and Wizards of Waverly Place are just as much kids shows as SpongeBob.
We dropped everything to see the Hannah Montana episode because Malese Jow had a guest role. (Yay Malese)
otherwise we tend to use our TV to funnel XM satellite music and Rangers baseball, that’s about it these days
Meet The Brown Numbers Anybody????????????
@ Jalen People, The only site I know of that has Meet the Browns ratings basically every week is a site that only posts how many Aftican-American viewers watched the show. Their list for this most recent week won’t be out until Friday however the 2 entries on their list from the week of June 22-28 both got 2.5 million African-American viewers. I don’t know how that translates into total viewers but it can’t be substantially higher than that.
How sad that kids these days are brainwashed…especially with the Hannah crap. EW!
Thanks for those number RJ. I knew MIOBI’s numbers would be less this week. The forum for that show is about dead and if it was reaching the target demo that ABCF said it was aiming at, that forum would be as busy as SL’s. That target demo is very internet savvy. SL dropped off but they will still remain strong probably. Easily strong enough for ABCF to continue the show. It would be great if you would continue to monitor the new ABCF shows for us. We Kyle XY fans are a diehard bunch and are still campaigning to bring the show back in some form.
savekylexy.com
savethetub.com
kylexy.net
Anyone heard anything of the Real World: Cancun?
The only thing I’ve seen anywhere about the Real Worl Cancun today is that it got 1.183 million 18-34 viewers. I don’t know how that would translate into total viewers.
If Real World: Cancun is the same thing as Real World XXII, the most viewed airing, July 1, @ 10pm, averaged 1.95 million viewers.
“Mark, it’s not that we don’t want to publish more show data, it’s that Nielsen, the copyright owner of the data, doesn’t want us to publish more data.”
But ABCMediaNet publishes their ‘copywritten material’ all the time.
It’d be like the NBA complaining to a newspaper about publishing the standings.
Also, you can find box office totals on the web, how is this different?
Yes, Bill. Thanks! Thats a great increase for Real World. Half a million in a week.
has anyone heard anything about Runs House on MTV this season, and real glad to see Real World Cancun had 1.95 mil last week!
@ Number Cruncher…
thanks allot for that can you tell me the web site you are talking about?
Don, I’m not saying I am happy about it, just that Nielsen is the copyright owner of the ratings and we will, to at least a reasonable extent covered by their rights, work to accommodate them.
It isn’t even remotely like basketball standings, they are public news.
Box office totals are collected by the individual film distribution companies for their own films, and passed along by them to be aggregated by a number of different services, among them boxofficemojo.com. Then those aggregators either publish them directly or pass them along to other publishers. The ownership of box office data is very different than the ownership of Nielsen’s ratings data.
Jalen, you can see the top 10 African American (as well as Hispanic, Broadcast, Cable and Syndicated) shows each week directly from Nielsen here:
http://www.nielsenmedia.com/nc/portal/site/Public/
Note the links in the lower right.
When we first started the site, fall 2007, we published lots of lists each week with African American and Hispanic ratings, but there just wasn’t the reader demand for us to keep doing it.
thanks bill
and i looked and it was very suprising that the highest viewers in african americans was only 1.3…million! but i will look each week on the site!
hope i find meet the browns!
also as a side not
if u were to bring back the african american ratings each week
i would forsure look at them
Jalen, unfortunately both the data Bill linked to and the data we used to publish was only for the broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX) shows when it comes to the African American and Hispanic data. So sadly, you won’t find the Meet the Browns African American viewing data there. Hopefully Number Cruncher will post a link.
Oops, sorry, forgot this was the cable network post. We did formerly post cable network data for African American and Hispanic audiences when we started the site, but as Robert wrote, the links above are only for broadcast networks.
ok…i was wondering lol!
i will keep searching for a site that
give info on that!
thanks allot for yu guyz help!
Here is the link to the site I go to for the African-American ratings. They do a top 25 list for broadcast and cable shows. They won’t post the ratings for June 29-July 5th until tomorrow (Or Monday if the holiday happened to delay them)
The broadcast one (June 22-28)
http://www.targetmarketnews.com/storyid07020901.htm
The cable one (June 22-28)
http://www.targetmarketnews.com/storyid07030901.htm
Goodness my previous comment went into moderation. I guess it’s because I put 2 links in it. I’ll try to remember to use one link at a time for the future.
thanks number cruncher!
is there somewhere i can see a list of the top 20 rated cable shows that adults actually watch?
For Jalen People, Robert and anyone else interested. This is the list for the top 25 cable shows among African-Americans for the week of June 29-July 5th
http://www.targetmarketnews.com/storyid07100901.htm
The top 25 broascast shows for the week is also there on the site but I won’t link it here. Also, the way the article is formatted looks terrible in Firefox so it may be better to view it using Internet Explorer.
Awesome! even NCIS re-runs scored high viewers!
Hello Neighbor. It is “I” King Julien. I am sooo sad. The little yellow sponge boy is more popular than me and my subjects aka The Penquins of Madagascar. I shall banish-ed him from kingdom.
Did Warehouse 13 do anything?
SpongeBob is hands down the best cartoon of this decade. It deserves to get good ratings.