tv ratings

NBC (1.2/5, 4.39 million) easily stole Friday night in the demo with a solid installment of 'Friday Night Lights' and a two-hour repeat of 'Dateline NBC' taking the crown from CBS (0.9/4, 4.93 million). The Eye still came on top in total viewers, as the series finale of 'Miami Medical' drew more viewers than any other show, and 'Flashpoint' continued to perform well.

Slipping to third, then, was ABC (0.9/3, 3.48 million), as '20/20' saw a larger than expected drop from their post-Michael Jackson episode, and they found out the hard way that people aren't celebrating Independence Day on July 2nd. That left Fox (0.7/3, 2.2 million) and The CW (0.4/2, .97 million) to bring up the rear as even 'House' can't bring viewers to Fox Fridays.

Check out the full breakdowns and further analysis after the jump.

'Wipeout' and new series 'Boston Med' were both up week-to-week, helping push ABC (2.0/7, 6.950 million) to the win for the night. Scripted series 'Rookie Blue' was down, but still performing better than the network's other new summer scripted fare. FOX (1.7/6, 4.698 million) didn't fare nearly as well, as 'So You Think You Can Dance' continued to decline, hitting a new season low.

CBS (1.3/4, 7.138 million) took the total viewers crown by sandwiching their 'CSI: Crime Scene Investigation' repeat between two reruns of 'The Mentalist.' The network's procedurals continue to bring in huge numbers of viewers, but they're not performing nearly as well with the advertiser's coveted 18-49 year old demographic. All three shows scored in the top five for total viewers, but they only came in 4th, 7th and 10th in the demo.

Maybe 'So You Think You Can Dance' executive producer Nigel Lythgoe will blame 'Twilight' fever for last night's 12 percent drop in the coveted 18-49 demo. 'Eclipse' set a new record for a Wednesday movie premiere, which may have pulled some viewers away from 'SYTYCD,' but that doesn't explain the 11 percent drop the week before.

Welcome to the Ratings Race. Each day, we'll take a look at the previous night's overnight ratings report from Nielsen and see if we can make sense of some of the numbers. There's a lot to pay attention to, and the numbers can get confusing. 'America's Got Talent' scored a 3.4 in the demo, with an 11 share. That's even with last week's ratings, despite a 5 percent increase in total viewers. Why is that? What does it mean?

Love her or hate her, nobody can deny that Kate Gosselin draws a crowd wherever she goes. The latest proof of this 21st Century truism: 'Dancing With the Stars,' which according to Entertainment Weekly has seen a significant ratings drop since she was voted off the show last week.

Of course, just how much of that drop is due to the departure of Gosselin is hard to guess. Last night's performance episode drew a 4.3 rating and a 12 share in the key 18-49 demographic, which is down 10 percent from last week and 20 percent from the average for prior weeks (5.4/15).

Flash forward to 2011 and you'll probably see that 'FlashForward' isn't on ABC's schedule. That's the only thing that one can think after last night's episode. The show returned after several months off the air and was greeted by a huge yawn from viewers. It got the lowest ratings yet, down 10% from the last episode that aired.

In happier news (well, for NBC, not ABC), 'The Marriage Ref' is actually getting better ratings-wise. It was up 8%. I watched last night's episode with Jason Alexander, Martha Stewart, and Cedric The Entertainer and I didn't hate it. I see now what they're going for, and it's entertaining to a point (depending on the celebs they get and the marriage problems presented). It just doesn't seem like a show I can watch every week, and I bet a lot of viewers have that feeling.

How can a show that is as freakin' entertaining and fun as 'Chuck' get low ratings like this? Sure, the switch to Daylight Savings Time means that shows see a bit of a ratings slide, but I'm not convinced that's the only reason that 'Chuck' got its lowest ratings ever for last night's episode.

I don't know what we can do to save the show, but creator Josh Schwartz says that "it's time to get organized." Subway subs again? I think Chuck and Morgan have been eating their food on the show again lately so maybe they knew something we didn't.

The funny thing is, with the recent plot developments on the show (Morgan finding out about the spy stuff, the revelations about Casey's real identity, the fact that Chuck is becoming more independent), this might be a logical season to end the show. But I want the show to continue. It's massive fun, and those very same points are also reasons for the show to continue for another season.

You can probably guess that Fox News dominated the ratings in 2009. In fact, thirteen of their shows made it to the top fifteen of the year. The other seven spots of the top 20 are made up of various MSNBC and CNN shows, with only Countdown with Keith Olbermann and Larry King Live cracking the top fifteen.

After the jump, the top fifteen (and here's the whole list).

We're talking ratings here, not quality of the shows. Nielsen has the top ten rated shows for 2009 and also has a couple of other categories, including the top ten single telecasts and the top ten time-shifted shows of the year (you might not guess that).

Speaking of not guessing what something is, you're never going to believe what the number ten show is on the top ten rated shows of the year list. The Live Feed was surprised and I'm not sure I'm convinced either. The full list of the ten highest-rated shows is after the jump.

This is the kind of TV ratings news that warms my heart: last night's airing of Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer on CBS was the most-watched show of the entire night on any of the other networks, including Christmas in Rockefeller Center, So You Think You Can Dance, The Middle, The Grammy Nominations Concert, and Glee.

The Rankin/Bass Christmas special with the dentist elf and random misfit toys grabbed an impressive 10.7 million viewers.

That's pretty good for a 45 year-old animated special that we've all seen 97 times (and probably own on DVD), no? There's something amazingly comforting about that: the same Christmas specials (Rudolph, Santa Claus Is Coming To Town, It's A Wonderful Life, A Charlie Brown Christmas, etc) are pulled out every single year and we still watch them. It's the sort of television comfort food that we can't resist.

The ratings for the first Monday of the fall TV season are in, and it's not looking good at all for Heroes.

The NBC show dropped 46% from last season's one hour season opener. Which reminds me, Heroes should never be two hours long. Last night's first hour was boring as hell, and then the second hour was more interesting but still muddy, frustrating, and all over the place.

In other ratings news, House did really well, CBS came in second, and Dancing with the Stars didn't do as well as people thought it would (or it usually does).

Everyone is always up in arms about the Nielsen ratings, saying they don't accurately represent the shows that a lot of people like or aren't measured correctly or simply don't matter in this age of DVRs, iTunes, network web sites, and DVDs.

Now it looks like the networks are giving a thought to providing an alternative. CBS, NBC, Disney, News Corp, Discovery, Time Warner, and Viacom are getting together and hope to have some sort of plan on what the "consortium" will do by the end of September. A VP at Starcom MediaVest, one of the companies involved, says that they don't necessarily want to replace Nielsen but there's no reason why another company can't "come in and do both [TV measurement and digital measurement]"

[via TV Tattle]

I have to admit, I'm a lover of game shows but even I'm not watching the 10th anniversary edition of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire on ABC. I keep forgetting it's even on, but if I remembered at 8PM I'd still skip it. Maybe it's the daytime version or the fact that it's on GSN several times a day.

The ratings haven't been too great in general (though they could be worse). Are you watching it?

To put it bluntly, it seems no one cares about The Sarah Connor Chronicles anymore, and people continue to not care about the new show Dollhouse.

The TV Addict has the ratings for last night's show, and both of these FOX action dramas just don't seem to have a future. In the 8pm hour, Ghost Whisperer, Wife Swap, and Howie Do It all beat The Sarah Connor Chronicles. The FOX show did beat Everybody Hates Chris by a wide margin, if that's any consolation (answer: it's not). In the 9pm hour, Flashpoint, Supernanny, and Friday Night Lights all came in ahead of Joss Whedon's Dollhouse. FOX didn't have a show at 10pm, but if it did, it would have been beaten by Numb3rs, 20/20, and several local cable access shows.

I'll admit that I'm not too thrilled with TNT's new drama Trust Me yet. I want it to be much better than it is.

Of course, the key word there is "yet," because we all know that TV shows can get better as they go along in their first season, and even into their second. Unfortunately, we now live in a fast-paced TV world where shows have to pretty much be a hit from the get-go. Sure, shows on premium cable networks like HBO andf Showtime often get a longer honeymoon because there's less ratings pressure, but for the most part, shows either have to be a big hit early, show growth over the weeks (in general or in a certain demographic), or have to have a lot of "buzz" that cancels out (at least temporarily) any notions of a cancellation (like Gossip Girl).

But Trust Me? The ratings are in free fall.

You would think that the highest-rated Comedy Central show of all-time would either be an episode of South Park or one of the nightly news satire programs, The Daily Show or The Colbert Report. It's actually none of those. The biggest audience-getter was a Christmas special featuring various puppets.

The Sunday debut of Jeff Dunham's Very Special Christmas Special grabbed 6. 6 million viewers. South Park held the record before and is now in second place.