A little more Misty May-Treanor could get me to look at this Fall’s Dancing with the Stars. Though I know my favorite TV Host Tony Kornheiser will be rooting for the 82 year old Cloris Leachman. I like the notion of big Warren Sapp taking it all, but of the athletes it would appear Olympic gold medalist May-Treanor and Maurice Green have the advantage. Though as ever, sympathy votes for Susan Lucci!

Who’s your pick to win the seventh installment of DWTS?

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Here’s the latest from NBC, Beijing games are already the second most-viewed games of all time, now surpassing Lillehammer Winter Olympics of 1994 (and that had Tonya H. and Nancy K. and a couple of the top 100 broadcasts of all time). Also, check out this take on how the Olympic numbers are hugely a function of more people watching TV than normal (we already knew this, but still nice to see some numbers).

206 MILLION WATCH BEIJING GAMES ON NBC UNIVERSAL THROUGH 13 DAYS, SURPASSING LILLEHAMMER

NBCOlympics.com Tops 1 Billion Page Views

85% of All U.S. TV Households Have Tuned In

BEIJING -Aug. 21, 2008 -Through just 13 days, NBC Universal’s Beijing Olympic coverage has surpassed the 16-day viewership total for the entire Lillehammer Winter Olympics, making it the second most viewed television event in U.S. history. The 206 million viewers are 13 million more than the first 13 days for Athens (193 million) and 5 million more than the Atlanta Games (201 million), which was the most-viewed television event in U.S. history. NBCU’s coverage has reached more than 85 percent of all U.S. television homes.

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But young people turn to the Internet as the top news source during the day.  A trend that will not likely ever be bucked.

Since Bill is on vacation, there’s been a void in our news charts.  Hopefully this will tide some of you over until he’s back next week.  I’m including a few charts from the latest Pew Research below, but there’s a lot of info on Pew’s site and many more tables and charts than I have included here that are worth checking out if you’re at all interested in news, how it’s consumed, and the historical trends.

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Here’s the latest numbers dispatch from NBC. The Beijing games are still on pace to be the most watched Olympics ever, surpassing even the 1996 games hosted in Atlanta.

BEIJING -Aug. 17, 2008 -The Networks of NBC Universal have reached 185 million total viewers, on pace to be the most watched Olympics ever, even surpassing the Atlanta Games. Through eight days the total viewership for the Beijing Games has already surpassed the total viewership for the entire Torino, Nagano and Albertville Games. The 30.0 million average viewers in primetime and the 17.4 rating/30 share, each represent significant gains compared to Athens in 2004 and Thursday’s TAMi reached 101.4 Million.

• Through eight days NBCU has attracted 185 million total viewers, 14 million more than the first eight days for Athens (171 million) and five million more than the Atlanta Games (180 million) which was the most viewed television event in history. The eight-day total for these Games has already surpassed the final overall viewership for the Torino, Nagano and Albertville Games (184 million each).

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Mad Men held up nicely against the Olympics this past Sunday, drawing 1.26 million viewers, down only five percent or so versus the previous Sunday up against tougher competition (AKA same difficult competition of In Plain Sight and Army Wives, but with the Summer Olympic Games thrown in for good measure). 

It’s still well off the season two premiere but only a 5% drop against the Olympics isn’t shabby.  Top cable hitThe Closer  was down 18% week over week, so being closer to In Plain Sight’s limited 1% retreat week over week is probably good news for AMC.  If I were a Nielsen home, Mad Men’s ratings would definitely be a tiny bit higher as I’ve watched all three episodes this year live at first airing.

Mad Men’s 1.26 million came on a household rating/share of 0.8/1 and an 0.5/1 in the 18-49 demo.

It sounds tiny, compared to the Olympics, but it’s still about twenty times better (literally) than the Jonas Bros Internet video streaming got via MTV’s web site… 

 Data via Travis Yanan on Marc Berman’s PI Forums.

Some minor spoilers ensue…

Though it’s not anything we’ll likely ever see TV ratings for, I recently watched the latest “direct to DVD” Stargate installment, Stargate - Continuum.

I’m a long time Stargate fan, though as with many shows (even the great Star Trek: The Next Generation) I mostly didn’t get that into it the first couple of seasons.  I probably saw a few episodes of the first couple of seasons via syndication before I caught the bug and went back to the beginning.  Ultimately I enjoyed it so much that I signed up for Showtime so I didn’t have to wait until syndication and have stayed on through the SciFi years.  I think it’s a great franchise, even though the last couple of years minus Richard Dean Anderson as Col. Jack O’Neill were so-so.   But, I think Stargate: Atlantis has done a great job of continuing the franchise by creating characters who are fun and enjoyable along with interesting story arcs.

The earlier direct-to-DVD Stargate “movie”  The Ark of the Truth was OK, but I couldn’t recommend it really, even though it’s always good to spend time with “old friends”.  I liked Continuum much, much better, though realistically some of that was for the “old friends” aspect.  Can I ever really get sick of hearing Teal’c say, “Indeed”!?  Probably not. 

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ABC has announced that it is moving its summer game show, Wanna Bet from the Monday night original programming graveyard to Tuesdays following ABC’s lone summer hit, Wipeout.

Sandwiched in-between the disastrously flailing High School Musical: Get in the Picture at 8pm and The Mole which is drawing few at 10pm, Wanna Bet did as badly as the shows it was sandwiched between.

Not including this past Monday, Wanna Bet was averaging 3.27 million in its first couple of airings. It’s Monday number in the overnights was 2.81 million. Wipeout, excluding this past Tuesday’s “best of” compilation was averaging 10.21 million for its summer run. There’s no doubt at all that Wanna Bet will benefit from the switch, the question is how much?

Consider that if Wipeout holds its current numbers and Wanna Bet loses even half the lead in it will still have around 5 million viewers — that would be about a 66 percent improvement.

How many viewers do you think it will get in the new slot?

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It wasn’t exactly in the realm of psychic power to predict that the second episode of Mad Men season two had a ratings drop, and drop the ratings did. I didn’t see the full numbers but MediaWeek is reporting on the live numbers  (as opposed to the LIVE+SD numbers that include same day DVR viewing — the most typically reported Nielsen ratings currency).

On a live basis, viewing was down from 1.95 million for the premiere to 1.33 million for the second episode. The first episode had 2.06 million viewers when the same day DVR viewing was included, but I didn’t see that number for week two.

Even at 1.33 million it’s still 45% of last year’s average but that could continue to erode. Expect Mad Men to face stiffer competition towards the end of its run. It’s currently bumping up against two very popular cable shows as it is: In Plain Sight — which I also watch, thank goodness for DVRs and Hulu — and Army Wives which I haven’t viewed as of yet. But later in its season two run it will compete with new programming from the broadcast networks as well.  But, I’m sure AMC is expecting that and OK with it. 

Media week did report a number that didn’t surprise me in the least: 40% of the viewing audience had household income of greater than $100,000. I’m not gonna lie, I kind of miss being in that demo myself, but I still love the show even if I’m lumped in with the 60% of the hoi polloi who watched.

I’d really like to see the data (which will be very hard to come by) for how many people are watching via on-demand. If you run across even a snippet of that data, please forward it my way.

You can see the full MediaWeek article here.