| Scoreboard for Weds. June 4, 2008 |  |
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| Total Viewers (million) | 9.31 | 8.14 | 7.02 | 5.46 | 1.61 |
| Rating/Share: Adults 18-49 | 3.5/11 | 1.7/5 | 3.0/9 | 1.7/5 | 0.6/2 |
FOX won the night with a two hour installment of So You Think You Can Dance taking both most viewers and the best 18-49 year old age demographic performance. CBS was second in viewers but tied for third with ABC in the 18-49 demo. NBC which was third in total viewing came in second in the age demo with 3.0/9 with over 7 million people tuning into game six of the NHL Stanley Cup Finals. If you're not a hockey fan, skip directly to the numbers...
The Detroit Red Wings beat the Pittsburgh Penguins 3-2 to win the best of seven series four games to two. Seven million people though! Last year the finals averaged LESS THAN two million viewers per game and they had not averaged above five million since 2002.
I know I've said it several times but I'll say it again. Last June when TVbytheNumbers.com was just but a glimmer in our eyes, I wound up basically sending a chart similar to this one to Ted Leonsis, the owner of the Washington Capitals NHL franchise. I knew Ted back from my days writing a newsletter about the online/Internet world in the 1990s.
Ted and I wound up having an extremely spirited and engaging discussion about the ratings and it did nothing but fuel my interest in doing this web site. I learned a lot along the way. So it's very nice to see the ratings trend up this year versus the last several years. OK, sure, it didn't have as many viewers as So You Think You Can Dance, but last night's game had FIVE MILLION more viewers than the average for last year's finals (1.76mm). That's a nice tick up. And a 3.0 in the 18-49 demo!
Congratulations to the Detroit Red Wings who are Hockeytown USA by the only definition that really matters: where is the Stanley Cup? It's in Detroit as it has now been in like four out of the last twelve years. Some would call that a dynasty.
Nonetheless, I will be trying to dig up the local ratings, including the CBC ratings for the local Detroit market to see how Pittsburgh and Detroit viewing compared.
Wednesday night's details:
| Time | Net | Show | Viewers (Millons) | 18-49 Rating/Share |
| 8:00 | CBS | The Price is Right | 7.04 | 1.6/5 |
| NBC | Stanley Cup Finals Game 6 | 7.02 | 3.0/9 | |
| ABC | Wife Swap | 5.12 | 1.7/5 | |
| CW | America's Next Top Model ( R ) | 1.27 | 0.5/1 | |
| FOX | So You Think You Can Dance (8p-10p) | 9.31 | 3.5/111 | |
| 9:00 | CBS | Criminal Minds (Repeat) | 8.22 | 1.6/5 |
| ABC | Supernanny | 6.01 | 2.1/6 | |
| CW | Farmer Wants a Wife | 1.94 | 0.7/2 | |
| 10:00 | ABC | Men In Trees | 5.25 | 1.4/4 |
| CBS | CSI: NY (Repeat) | 9.16 | 2.2/6 |
Nielsen Ratings Source: Nielsen Media Research. Full night's results available via Marc Berman/Mediaweek.
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Your chart on NHL ratings spells out the problem loud and clear. Keep the Anahiems, Tampas and Carolinas as well as the Canadian teams out of the Finals and you’ll have decent ratings. Expansion has not done alot for the NHL. Maybe in 10 or 20 years it will but not now. The NHL needs to think long and hard about re-alignment so as to make sure that a major market US team makes the Finals every year. Another Carolina/Edmonton Final will just put ratings back in the toilet……..Excellent chart!
Wow, SYTYCD did amazing in the demo.
Kevin, I don’t really agree with you here. You have to remember that hockey in Canada is football in the US. Although those cities don’t dominate ratings, the whole point is to spread interest in hockey all around North America – there are now die hard hockey fans in the South because of this. The problem is when you have the Hurricanes and the Panthers heads up, the Panthers will win every time.
As for expansion not doing a lot for the NHL, Minnesota and Columbus are two towns that have huge interest in hockey. We don’t have numbers on their markets when the Wild and Jackets play, but I bet they’re better than most other cities. The NHL is not going to re-align? their teams so that a major market US team makes it every year. First of all, that’s unfair to the rest of the teams in the league, and also any team in Canada is more major than any city in the US. There aren’t enough hockey cities in the US (whether they have a local team or not) to compete with Canada. That’s just the reality of the sport, along with soccer.
It was great to see the numbers for the NHL increase this year and it for sure had to do with the matchup. I am interested to see the numbers for both cities and see who was watching more. I noticed that once the Pistons lost in the NBA playoffs and there was no competetion in the Detriot market the numbers saw such a large increase. Overall good for the NHL we will see next year if they can keep it up.
All I'm saying is if the NHL is cool with an Edmonton/Ottawa final don't change anything. I'll watch it but the rest of America won't. Otherwise have one conference with big market teams and the other with the remainder. That isn't being unfair to anyone. You still have to win to make the Finals.
Who are you going to put in one conference? Pittsburgh, Detroit, Columbus, Minnesota, New York, Buffalo… and who else? Are you really telling me you can divide the team into 15 exciting big market teams? and 15 not? You're saying that the NHL should change the dynamics of all of the divisions. What happens to the Rangers and Devils rivalry? We know that NJ isn't a big market team and their style of play is boring to most casual watchers. So lets just get rid of every rivalry built over the last 100 years of hockey just so that more casual people watch hockey? I don't think so.
There are some other factors which influence the overall NHL finals ratings. These would be interesting to add to get a clearer picture of where these finals ranked. First, what is the overall CBC viewership along the border and watching on a dish. This includes Buffalo, Detroit, and Seattle.
As to Seattle and other West Coast cities, the NHL wasn't carried on the local NBC affiliates. How much did that hurt the ratings and what was the clearance for the games?
Johnny, we won't get that clear of a picture. The game was on in Seattle, though it was bounced from the main NBC affiliate to a sister station. Why? Because they didn't think the numbers would be very high! While CBC is available in Seattle, Seattle is not exactly a border city in the way Detroit or Buffalo is. It's around 100 miles from the border.
The comparisons to past years measuring US viewership will be fairly valid regardless.
I know everyone says more people in Detroit watch via CBC, but if that's true *NOBODY* in Detroit watched anything else since NBC had almost a 50% share of TVs there. I would like to see the numbers for Detroit anyway.
In Buffalo CBC viewing would've been insignificant, and all of the CBC viewing would be relatively insignificant to the national viewing totals anyway (Buffalo is the 50th biggest market) and the NBC affiliate in Seattle didn't think it would draw well enough to put it on the main network affiliate. We're not talking big numbers.
Johnny, we won't get that clear of a picture. The game was on in Seattle, though it was bounced from the main NBC affiliate to a sister station. Why? Because they didn't think the numbers would be very high! While CBC is available in Seattle, Seattle is not exactly a border city in the way Detroit or Buffalo is. It's around 100 miles from the border.
The comparisons to past years measuring US viewership will be fairly valid regardless.
I know everyone says more people in Detroit watch via CBC, but if that's true *NOBODY* in Detroit watched anything else since NBC had almost a 50% share of TVs there. I would like to see the numbers for Detroit anyway.
In Buffalo CBC viewing would've been insignificant, and all of the CBC viewing would be relatively insignificant to the national viewing totals anyway (Buffalo is the 50th biggest market) and the NBC affiliate in Seattle didn't think it would draw well enough to put it on the main network affiliate. We're not talking big numbers.