Ah, hope springs eternal (or maybe the impulse to suck up to the broadcast networks does) in the broadcast TV media. Starting last week, stories started appearing about how well the broadcast TV 2009-10 season had begun.
Broadcast Execs Can Breathe Again, Broadcasting & Cable
Viewers Return To Tube, Variety
Network Phenom: Little Broadcast Erosion, MediaDailyNews
Strong start to the fall TV season, LA Times
Unfortunately, the broadcast prime-time ratings averages for the first week tell a different story. CBS and Fox are very slightly up for adults 18-49 vs. last season, MyNet is well ahead, but NBC, ABC and the CW are way down. And the CW even had the benefit of the automatic boost to its seasonal ratings averages just by dumping Sunday nights!
Update: I’ve updated the chart to show the changes in the adults 18-34 and 25-54 ratings. CBS and Fox showed a bit more increase in adults 18-34, but otherwise the pictures are very similar.
NBC’s drop was assisted by The Jay Leno Show 5 nights a week, but few of the rest of their shows are doing well, and the Sunday Night Football game this past week was a bit below average. ABC had some good news with Cougartown and Modern Family, but the bad news from the decline of its other shows like Desperate Housewives drove their ratings down. For the CW, the only good news was the results for Vampire Diaries, the rest of their schedule had declining ratings (at least in the data we have currently, no 18-34 yet). Fox was buoyed by a 2 hour House premiere, but the good doctor will be back to an hour from now on. And CBS might want to temper its PR gloating this week. They got a nice football overrun on Sunday, and they haven’t premiered Three Rivers yet. The worst may yet be to come.
Our chart shows broadcast network prime-time season to date average prime-time viewership for the 2009-10 season compared to the 2008-9 season.
Nielsen TV Ratings Data: ©2009 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved.
CBS is keeping going up, can’t figure out what’s so popular with CSI and NCIS…
Fox is up thanks to house…
NBC Down 20% 18-49 The Leno Effect?
“NBC Down 20% 18-49 The Leno Effect?”
Combined with the “Heroes and SVU premiering lousy” effect, yes.
Certainly The Jay Leno Show helped drive their ratings average down, but none of NBC’s shows have done well, and they had a below average rated Sunday Night Football for the week, which really hurts them a lot.
I think most of those articles are upbeat because they thought most returning shows would perform worse than they did in May sweeps.
I think the networks did do a better job in terms of getting people to watch their new shows. Modern Family actually built on DWTS in 18-49. And Glee has only dropped a couple tenths of a point. And CBS did well with its Tuesday night lineup.
But NBC and CW are clearly doing worse. And ABC’s returning hits are down from last year. So it makes sense that the year to year comparison shows a decline. Still, I and obviously a lot of other people, expected premiere week to do worse.
Does NBC now stand for Need Bl**dy Creatives?
Or perhaps Zucker is trying to take it to Now Behind CW?
at least FOX is going up. Sorry NBC but your good as Dead.
Hmmm…according to that chart, the CW is slightly up. Is that a mistake?
@MasterMoron,
I think you’re misreading the chart. The CW is down 26% in total viewers and 19% in the 18-49 demo.
Oh, never mind. I thought the two charts were comparing last year to this year. I didn’t realize it was just two separate demographics.
So what happened to CW being up due to Sundays? Did MRC Sundays not start last year until a few weeks in?
But didn’t NBC expect and forecast a big drop with their demos since they only need Leno to do a 1.5 or whatever?
I think the articles are generally correct: Fox & CBS are up and that reverses a trend of declining audience for broadcast television. ABC is getting killed because their powerhouses from last year are dropping but their new shows seem to be doing well, so they can’t be too upset.
And NBC is still a shtshow and the CW is barely a network.
Why can’t The CW just go away!
I like some of CW’s programming so I personally would rather have them stick around at least till there’s a good ending to Supernatural.
I’m curious to know why TV is getting hammered so badly with CW getting more then other networks.
Poor ABC they were doing so well last year
Chris Kw. has the right idea here:
There’s three metrics of success-
Numbers vs. end of 08/09 season.
Numbers vs. average of 08/09 season.
Numbers vs. premiere week of 08/09 season.
By the first metric, the numbers are better. But by the third metric, they are off by a bit – even more disconcerting given the weak post-strike crop. That leads me to think that the seasonal averages will again be down by 10+%, even with stronger new shows than last year.
The only silver lining is that there have been a number of strong premieres. People will still sample new shows – the question being how to keep those audiences, when there are dozens of cable alternatives waiting for them.
“the question being how to keep those audiences, when there are dozens of cable alternatives waiting for them”
And HUNDREDS of titles on DVD!
Smackdown accounts for MyNet’s increase and some of CW’s decrease. Its premiere on MyNet was October 3, 2008.
MyNet is a syndication package now, but is the site treating it like a network anyway?
ABC has to be troubled by their 11% decline, worse than NBC’s 10%.
JR, up until this week Nielsen treated MNT as a network. I’m sure they will be removed from the chart next week as Nielsen will no longer be reporting them with the rest of the networks.