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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Finally, the Nielsen gods have smiled on us and released the weekly top show data into our grubby little hands! When Nielsen data is your “manna from heaven” let there be no doubt that you’ve sinned at least a little bit…

And If there was any doubt in your mind whether I really have that much more of a preference for 6.445 million vs. 6.4 million, have no doubt! Since atypically I took a look at the “live viewing only” numbers for the week, it is interesting to see that although the Cheetah Girls: One World movie nipped The Closer in live viewing by a mere 9,000 people, nearly three hundred thousand more people watched The Closer on DVR the same night it aired.

As Bill Gorman notes, the performance by the season finale of Law & Order: CI with the Goren/Eames team with 5.15 million viewers eclipsed the ratings of the final installment of the Logan/Wheeler team. Chris Noth’s exit as Logan the previous week drew 4.6 million. Considering the Olympic-sized competition, I’d guess USA is happy with the numbers for both airings, and I doubt Chris Noth’s ego is bruised much in the process.

Monk and Psych continued to fare well against the Olympics and while many (myself included) originally scratched heads pondering why NBC Universal’s own USA Network would “waste” fresh episodes against the Olympics it certainly appears this is another thing that NBC got right. Other than the opening ceremonies on Friday, the other two Olympic Fridays were among the top 3 least-viewed Olympic airings on NBC.

I probably will hold off on the “Secret Life of an American Teen has more viewers than Gossip Girl” post until next week. But “Teen” deserves some credit.

Not in the top 20 table below but in the top 40 were: ten more SpongeBob related airings, the season premiere of The Hills (3.483 million), Hannah Montana (3.443 million), LOTR: Return of the King on TNT (3.348 million), Disney’s Wizards of Waverly Place (3.285 million), Bravo’s Project Runway (3.202 million), Nick’s Back at the Barnyard (3.197 million) and 5 at 5 (3.158 million) and two airings of Law & Order: SVU reruns on USA (3.08 million and 2.901 million).

Full Top 20 Cable Results for the week ending 08/24/2008:

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Due to lack of data availability, we may be suffering a Nielsen data inferiority complex. In an attempt at compensating, we’ve pulled together some more cable data from a few sources (primarily USA Today) with the live plus same day DVR viewing numbers (Live+SD). Still no Mad Men numbers, sorry.

Last Monday’s (8/18) season four premiere of The Hills pulled in 3.5 million, down a couple hundred thousand from the season three premiere of 3.7 million. Law & Order: CI ended its seventh season on a pretty high note with 5.2 million viewers.

Nielsen Ratings Data: ©2008 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved

Unfortunately we have not yet seen the normal LIVE+SD numbers for the weekly top cable shows yet. In order that we might post something, here is the data based only on LIVE viewing.

Typically we report Live+SD (same day DVR viewing) numbers as they are the most common numbers reported by Nielsen. I’m reporting the following numbers only so that we might have some data available until we can access the Live+SD data.

You will not want to compare these numbers to any other numbers you may see around the internets or to last week’s numbers or any other prior week as it wouldn’t be a fair comparisons. The same day DVR viewing can account for quite a bit of a show’s overall numbers. For example this week’s #1 show on a LIVE basis was the Cheetah Girls: One World movie on Disney, which had 5.66 million viewers on a live basis. But it had 6.2 million viewers including the same night DVR viewing which amounts to around 10% in that example (I only know about that because we saw the data reported elsewhere). It’s possible the DVR viewing the same night for The Closer was even bigger and that it will be the #1 show in the final analysis with same day DVR viewing baked in.

I will do a completely updated post once we have the data, but here’s the week’s top 20 based on live viewing only. I’m sorry for the delay.

Full Top 20 Cable Results for the week ending 08/24/2008:

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Full Top 20 Cable Results for the week ending 08/17/2008:

Nielsen Ratings Data: ©2008 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved

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TNT’s The Closer again dominated the cable viewing universe, having over 2.5 million viewers more than its nearest competitor, WWE RAW. TNT’s Saving Grace was actually ranked second based on a household ratings basis, but slipped to third when it comes to viewers because more people per household and/or screen watch WWE RAW.

For those of you wondering, “what the @#&! was NBC Universal thinking airing new episodes of Monk and Psych up against its own Olympic coverage on the mother ship at NBC,” these results aren’t going to make you stop wondering. Monk still at least made the top 20 (at #19) but shed almost a million viewers from last week, when it was the ninth ranked show. Psych, which last week had a 2.7 rating and 4.3 million viewers to take the tenth spot didn’t even make the top 40 this week (all we can conclude from that really is that it had a 2.2 rating or worse but got squeezed out of the top 40).

Update: Psych apparently did 3.4 million according to USA Today. They either get much more data than we do (very likely) or they get a list that doesn’t include programming for kids. Either way, USA Today’s list is sans SpongeBob, Disney, and cartoons in reruns on Adult Swim, and then sorted by viewers.

Perhaps not even NBC thought its opening ceremonies would do so well. Other usual suspects and some of my favorites on USA scored well as usual, even in the face of Olympic competition so maybe they figured the same would happen for Monk and Psych. Kudos to Law & Order: CI, In Plain Sight and Lifetime’s Army Wives which ran directly against the most-watched night of Olympics coverage on NBC so far (Sunday) an still held up reasonably well. Also notable is Secret Life of an American Teenager on ABC Family taking the 10th spot with over 4 million viewers and TBS’ House of Payne at number twelve with almost 3.8 million.

Some of you ask, “hey, if you get the frakking data for 40 shows, why not just post it all!” I wish it were that simple, but Nielsen says we can’t post tables of more than 20, and we’d like to keep seeing the data, so there you have it.

But not in the list but among the top 40, besides an additional 12 SpongeBob airings there were three Family Guy arings on Adult Swim, three airings of Drake and Josh on Nick, Project Runway (#25) on Bravo, and Army Wives, which was #30 with 3.4 million viewers.

Other than that, we don’t know how your favorite shows did, sorry. Any data I see about ratings for cable shows that didn’t make the top 40, I always include in the link list (lower right-hand portion of this site under “Seidman’s Reading”, or you can access directly here).

Full Top 20 Cable Results for the week ending 08/10/2008:

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The Closer continued its cable dominance last week hauling in 7.36 million viewers for TNT. NASCAR Sprint Cup Racing continues to perform well for ESPN landing in the second spot with 6.19 million. Both hours of WWE RAW took the third and fourth spots, and a new Law & Order: CI was fifth with 4.93 million.

Burn Notice, Monk, Psych, and In Plain Sight all pulled more than four million viewers for USA, as did Saving Grace for TNT. Lifetime’s Army Wives also had more than four million viewers, as did yet another airing of The Incredibles for Disney. SpongeBob took the fourteenth, sixteenth, eighteenth and nineteenth slots on the list for Nickelodeon and Princess Diaries 2 annd Studio DC: Almost Live took the fifteenth and seventeenth spots for Disney. An airing of Family Guy on Adult Swim rounded out the top 20.

We get the top 40 weekly rankings for cable, but Nielsen only allows us to publish lists of 20, so that’s what you see below. But we feel that it’s OK to tell you that SpongeBob took 12 out of the 21-40 slots, and that iCarly took three of them, with Fairly Odd Parents and Mighty B! scoring one airing each. Bravo’s Project Runway was thirty-third with 3.29 million and the Lifetime Movie Fab Five: The Texas Cheerleaders was thirty-ninth with 3.042 million. Disney’s Suite Life of Zack & Cody rounded out the top 40 with 3.038 million viewers.

Full Top 20 Cable Results for the week ending 08/03/2008:

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Dang, who knew!? I mean I was all over a marathon weekend of catching up on season one of Mad Men and its season two premiere on Sunday night (2.1 million viewers in the final tally), but completely missed out on Next Food Network Star which pulled in 4.5 million viewers on Sunday and cracked into the top 10 for the week.

I loved Mad Men, but unsurprisingly even though it was up more than double from last year’s average, it didn’t break into the Top 40. I’ll cut it some slack because it faced off against In Plain Sight (4.2 million, #14), Army Wives (3.6 million, #21) and ESPN’s Sunday Night game where the New York Yankees played the Boston Red Sox in Fenway Park (#13, 4.2 million).

The Closer, in usual summertime fashion was perched in the top spot with nearly 7.1 million viewers followed by the NASCAR fiasco at the Brickyard in Indianapolis which pulled in 6.67 million.

A Hannah/Miley “best of both worlds” concert in 3D to boot, was the third most watched show of the week with nearly 5.9 million. Miley Cyrus is smarter than some give her credit for. She’s mumbling publicly about how long she wants to continue to Hannah while everybody and their mother is apparently throwing money at her. My guess is that Disney will throw as much money at her as it possibly can to keep her around. Monk, Psych and WWE RAW were strong as usual for USA, and TVbytheNumbers favorite, Burn Notice took the six spot with almost 4.8 million viewers.

A bad week for our absorbent pal, SpongeBob. His best showing was #20! Bob still managed to place 11 airings in the weekly top 40 though. Not already mentioned or in the list below but also in the top 40: Deadliest Catch on Discovery (3.56 million), Design Star III on HGTV (3.45 milllion), a couple of Family Guy airings (3.4 million and 3.2 million), Drake and Josh (3.35 million) and a Law & Order: SVU repeat (3.4 million).

Full Top 20 Cable Results for the week ending 07/27/2008:

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