Live + Same Day Cable News Daily Ratings for September 3 2008

In another big night for cable news, Fox News 10-11pm viewership of 9.038 million for the Republican National Convention beat all 3 broadcast networks covering the convention for the hour.

CNN’s viewership of 6.114 million puts it behind NBC (7.72 million) but ahead of ABC and CBS for the 10-11pm hour.

P2+ Total Day
FNC – 2,272,000 viewers
CNN – 1,395,000 viewers
MSNBC – 745,000 viewers
CNBC – 176,000 viewers
HLN – 401,000 viewers

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Update: Here’s the breakout of the cable news network ratings for Wednesday night’s coverage. At 10pm FNC had over 9 million viewers and beat all the broadcast networks as well as its cable competition. Here is some additional, more detailed, information.

TVWeek is reporting that the total audience for the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night September 3 at an estimated 37 million:

An estimated 37 million people watched Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, the Republican nominee for U.S. vice president, during her star-making debut at the Republican National Convention Wednesday night, according to preliminary local data from Nielsen Media Research.

Gov. Palin’s audience eclipsed the 26 million who watched Sen. Hillary Clinton’s speech on the second night of the Democratic convention last week and the 24 million who watched speech the delivered on night three by Gov. Palin’s Democratic counterpart, Sen. Joe Biden.

Gov. Palin’s numbers are comprised of viewers on NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox News Channel, CNN and MSNBC. The Democratic convention was covered by two additional networks that aren’t airing the Republican convention: TV One and BET.

Gov. Palin’s audience was just a million viewers shy of Sen. Barack Obama’s convention record audience of 38 million on the Democrats’ closing night.

[...]

Interestingly, the DNC was also covered by Univision, but TVWeek, like everybody else in the English media, forgets to mention that.

Live + Same Day Cable News Daily Ratings for September 2 2008

Note that Fox News Republican National Convention 10-11pm viewership of 6.179 million beat the broadcast leader NBC by over a million average viewers.

P2+ Total Day
FNC – 1,907,000 viewers
CNN – 1,132,000 viewers
MSNBC – 614,000 viewers
CNBC – 180,000 viewers
HLN – 395,000 viewers

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From a SCI FI Network press release:

SCI FI SOARS WITH MOST-WATCHED SUMMER EVER 

CHANNEL HITS RECORD HIGHS IN TOTAL VIEWERS, 
YOUNGER VIEWERS AND WOMEN 

CHANNEL ALSO HEATS UP WITH BEST AUGUST EVER 
RANKING 4TH WITH VIEWERS 25-54 AND 5th WITH VIEWERS 18-49 

SCIFI.COM SEES DOUBLE-DIGIT GROWTH 
WITH MOST-TRAFFICKED SUMMER EVER 

New York, NY – September 3, 2008 – SCI FI Channel’s line up of original programming delivered its most-watched summer season ever, according to just released Nielsen Media Research. The overall ratings performance marks SCI FI’s best summer ever among total viewers (1 Million), younger viewers 18-34 (253,000) and men 18-34 (143,000). The Channel also hit record highs for the season with women 18-34 (110,000), 18-49 (278,000) and 25-54 (310,000).

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We’re over a day late with this news, but TNT’s new Stephen Bochco produced Raising the Bar set arecords in both households and total viewers for a series premiere on an advertising supported cable network. Ironically, it set the ad supported network record without running any commercials at all, but TNT’s The Closer did that its first few seasons too.

“Bar” drew 7.735 million viewers, breaking the previous record set by USA’s The 4400 in 2004 which had 7.407 million. “Bar” was on in 5.709 million households, topping the previous record for a series premiere by TNT’s own launch of The Closer in 2005. The old record was 5.259 million households. Basically, “Bar” almost three million more viewers than 90210 series premiere (not to mention more than 4 million more than the season premiere of Gossip Girl, which makes me ashamed that we’re just getting around to posting these numbers!

“Bar” also ousted USA’s In Plain Sight for best series premiere of the season and drew 2.837 million adults 18-49. Below is the full press release from TNT:

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Live + Same Day Cable News Daily Ratings for September 1 2008

Monday prime-time turned out to be substantially coverage of Hurricane Gustav instead of the first night of the Republican National Convention. Regardless, Fox News was tops across the board in all the total day and prime-time aggregate and age demo categories.

P2+ Total Day
FNC – 2,309,000 viewers
CNN – 1,829,000 viewers
MSNBC – 670,000 viewers
CNBC – 170,000 viewers
HLN – 462,000 viewers

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On Sunday I pondered whether the programming executives at AMC were as incompetent as “Duck” Phillips by running a new episode of Mad Men last Sunday - one of the better episodes of the series in my estimation - on a night where few people were watching TV.  While I had been pondering which was better: to air things on a night with more competition when more people are watching or on a night with less people watching TV but also less competition.   

Though I had been leaning towards the former, especially given the performance of TNT’s series premiere of Raising the Bar, I was already tilting towards the latter.  Then I saw that Mad Men had drawn 1.5 million viewers last Sunday and it looks like the execs at AMC are as golden as Don Draper is at Sterling Cooper, so it is me who is more like “Duck” Phillips.  Excuse me while I throw my fat cat out on the mean streets of San Francisco and go in quest of a bottle of Jack Daniels…

We still never saw any numbers for the Sunday August 24 episode, but the August 17 episode was down to 1.1 million viewers, so 1.5 million is an improvement of 36% over that episode, which I’m sure AMC is delighted with.    It looks like running a new episode on Labor Day Sunday, especially on the heels of a five episode season two mini-marathon worked out for AMC — even with fewer folks watching TV.

The Chicago Tribune’s Maureen Ryan did a lot of thinking on Mad Men and describes why even though she loves the show, it can be hard to watch.

Led by Barack Obama’s acceptance speech and other coverage of the Democratic National Convention, CNN took the top spot and seven of the top ten in this week’s top twenty. Fox News’ best placement was at number 12, though FNC took two other spots in this week’s top twenty. MSNBC’s best placement was thirteenth, it’s only spot in the top 20 (or for that matter the top forty). Racking up over 7.4 million viewers, The Closer took the second spot.

I’m not sure if WWE RAW really ran on SciFi on 8/25 (something seems quite appropriate about that and NBC Universal owns both SciFi and USA) but that’s what Nielsen listed in the spreadsheet. While ranked 33rd out of 40 shows on a households ratings basis, because it gets more viewers per household, it shot up all the way to number 15 when ranked by viewers.  Update via commenter Bryan:  It did run on SciFi because US Open Tennis coverage aired on USA Network, though it also aired delayed on USA as well.

A sampling of popular shows not in the top 20, but among the top 40 (we’re limited by Nielsen to publishing tables of only 20 shows, sorry!) were Disney’s Wizards of Waverly Place with 3.739 million, ABC Family’s Secret Life of An American Teen (3.649 million), Bravo’s Project Runway with (3.547 million) and a slew of SpongeBob and other convention coverage.

Full Top 20 Cable Results for the week ending 08/31/2008:

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