Comments on: Sunday Night Ratings: NFL, World Series and Desperate Housewives Take the Night

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 05:54:40 +0000

I bet the CW network would love to have its sitcom lineup back on Sundays again. That’s the strongest lineup they’ve ever had on that night.

Hey ABCFanatic, I saw the Extreme Home Makeover show. A truly inspirational, and heartwarming show. One minute into it and my girl is crying her eyes out. Those carpenters do alot of good for families on the brink of ruin.

By: Raymond

Raymond — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 04:00:21 +0000

Having sampled Valentine I really like it and think it is compatible with the rest of the CW’s lineup. That being said I definitely think the bar was much higher – at least as good as last year, and the repeat ratings this year, so I would have thought 1.8mil+ and 0.7/0.8+ in the demo which all shows have drastically fallen short of. I know they have Fat City and Surviving Surburbia for mid-season – if they truly want any sort of success they must promote! These shows had so little promotion – the opposite of what was required for a night that viewers had not been accustomed to tuning into in the past! If I had been MRC I would have wanted to cross-promote with other CW shows – highlight the cast, especially the younger appealing Autumn Reeser to perhaps capture some of the OC viewers, and also some of the more critically praised stars eg Laurie Metcalf (in fact both shows have OC stars in the them, the actor who plays Metcalf’s son had a stint in one of the latter seasons for 8 or so episodes). Really if I can see the cross-promotion/promotion potential the people launching this line-up should have easily! As it stands I think two quality shows that could have succeeded (particularly Valentine) failed due to this marketing failure.

By: RJ

RJ — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 00:24:31 +0000

The only sport The CW would take would be female gymnastics or males surfing (female teens would like to see these males i bet)

By: Holly

Holly — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 00:22:57 +0000

tim, The rights to air sporting events are generally very expensive. And sports aren’t going to bring in the audience that The CW wants. If they wanted a sports audience, they would have kept Smackdown.

By: tim

tim — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 23:51:21 +0000

just a thought… would The CW be able to put a sproting event on sunday nights? like a college football game or a basketball game or even a hockey game? i mean, i feel like that could work decently.

By: Bill Gorman

Bill Gorman — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 22:37:38 +0000

Johnthemon, you’ll see in January!

By: Johnthemon

Johnthemon — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 22:28:22 +0000

I wonder how the Fox toons would have done with no football.

By: Robert Seidman

Robert Seidman — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 22:02:13 +0000

Not sure, it’s up against a potentially very good Monday Night Football game, so my guess is that outside of Philly and Tampa/St. Pete it fares worse than last night. We’ll see…

By: JT

JT — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 21:59:28 +0000

Pleasanton DMV? Hmm….imagine that. It’s a small world after all!

What kind of numbers do you think the World Series will pull in tonight?

By: Shane

Shane — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 21:39:02 +0000

I’m kind of surprised at how CBS isn’t ready to re-tool its Sunday lineup yet. I know it skews older viewers, but I could see THE EX-LIST fitting on the night after Cold Case–anything’s worth a try to save a show that CBS obviously has expressed a lot of interest in. It could be a trial run–as with Gary Unmarried going to Mondays for one week only.

By: Julia

Julia — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 21:27:33 +0000

I wonder how doable it would be to put together a “retro” night. It obviously wouldn’t be free, since there are royalties and such to be paid, and there’s the whole CBS half of the partnership, but it does seem like an interesting idea.

By: Gleebo

Gleebo — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 21:16:37 +0000

Yeah, the CW should definitely be putting repeats of their original programming on Sunday nights. Im not sure what they were getting for ratings before MRC took over when they were doing that but I can’t imagine it gets any worse than these shows are getting.

Heck, they could probably get better ratings with reruns of 10 year old shows from the WB like 7th Heaven, Buffy, and Dawson’s Creek.

By: Rhuw Morgan

Rhuw Morgan — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 21:13:22 +0000

I think the MRC’s block main stumbling block was that there was no promotion whatsoever. Even on the internet there were no promos for the block, apart from the horrible Bob Saget “Behind the scenes” things where he kept doing air quotations everytime he said a show title. There were no posters or magazine advertisments for the shows, and even The CW didn’t really trail the shows on their channel. Four weeks in I actually pretty like Valentine, it’s very much like a more romantic version of Charmed and actually fits in with the rest of the CW shows.

By: Julia

Julia — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 21:06:38 +0000

Sam, I don’t think CW has had any negative press regarding the MRC deal. Everything I’ve read has been along the lines of “Well, that’s an idea. We’ll see how it goes.”

As for what would be acceptable, I think after last season CW would have liked to see something in the 2 mil range and above .5 in the demo. Yeah, their expectations are very very low.

By: Robert Seidman

Robert Seidman — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 21:05:08 +0000

My bar is pretty low for the CW and Sunday nights. But I think from MRC’s perspective, they were thinking they could do *better* than CW did last year (I could be wrong about that, it’s pure speculation on my part). It’s doing noticeably worse than last year.

I would put respectable for the time being at “as good as last year”.

By: Sam

Sam — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 20:58:00 +0000

Hey guys, looking back to the beginning of the season, what do you think would’ve been respectably good while reasonable ratings for the CW sunday night?

On another note, it seemed to me that they got a lot of negative press for selling off their sunday nights to MRC and it just snowballed from there. On the merits, the two scripted shows didn’t do that badly with the critics. Having watched both shows a time or two, it certainly seemed to be fairly well produced with some decent TV talent (everyone was raving about Jamie Murray after her turn on Dexter and certainly Laurie Metcalf is a TV vet) so I can’t fully attribute the horrible failure of the evening to the poor quality programming. What does everyone else think?

By: Julia

Julia — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:44:15 +0000

Robert, CW’s first season, after they switched the comedies to Monday and had Reba and 7th Heaven on Sunday, they did okay. Nothing great, but certainly not LOOK AWAY! LOOK AWAY! numbers.

By: Tyler

Tyler — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:38:40 +0000

CW Sundays… wow.

Also, if it weren’t for these NFL and baseball games, FOX would be less than dead.

By: tom

tom — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:29:31 +0000

why does it matter if dh beats csi or vice versa? it’s not like the world series… winner and loser. they are both winners.

by the way: dh was fantastic last night… great way to fill in the 5 year gap.

By: Robert Seidman

Robert Seidman — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:21:39 +0000

I think it’s likely been that way even longer, Bill. This year, the sum total of all the CW minutes may be completely a function of active remote controls and channel changing from other channels during commercials!

I think the repeats of GG, OTH, etc would certainly pull better numbers than the MRC lineup, and probably be on par with last year, though I admit, that’s not saying much.

By: Bill Gorman

Bill Gorman — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:16:28 +0000

I’ve got to believe from a process standpoint that a night of reruns is all that’s really possible at this point for the rest of this season, unless they have a lot more in development right now for replacements than I’ve read of.

They might decide to give it back to affiliates starting next season, but forcing the affiliates to scramble and line up the shows at this point for early 2009 doesn’t seem workable.

Regardless, for two years now viewers have been taught to not watch the CW on Sunday nights. Last year it was elementary education. This year they’re giving a graduate level course. It’s going to get even harder to get them back now.

By: Robert Seidman

Robert Seidman — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:15:34 +0000

@Julia — I’m not sure. I doubt they will give it up this year though. It’s also possible that they could move EHC and The Game back to Sundays and run repeats on Fridays, but the repeats on Sunday to promote it’s suite of shows aimed at young women that air Mon-Wed seems seems more likely.

By: Robert Seidman

Robert Seidman — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:10:47 +0000

@Cool, I know that the “n” in the show has a tilde, but my keyboard isn’t very multi-lingual friendly. That’s why I typed it as “Sangre di Mi Sangre” to begin with, but took abuse for that as well!

By: Julia

Julia — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:10:04 +0000

Could they do #2 mid season? I can see it as being a very appealing choice for next season, but they may not be able to get away with it right now.

By: Robert Seidman

Robert Seidman — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:08:39 +0000

But the real question is what will CW do with the time once the 13 episodes are up? Just more repeats?

There are only a few choices:

1. repeats of Gossip Girl, OTH, 90210, Privileged (ANTM already repeats on Fridays now)
2. Give it back to the affiliates like Saturday night
3. program it with new shows themselves

I don’t see three as a possibility given the performance last year and the MRC’s results so far. The first one seems the most likely.

By: Robert Seidman

Robert Seidman — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:01:09 +0000

Cool, DH routinely beats CSI in the demos:

http://tvbythenumbers.com/category/top-broadcast-by-age

p.s., the CSI premiere beat it, but it pulled supersized (even for CSI) numbers.

By: Robert Seidman

Robert Seidman — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:59:38 +0000

JT, I was at the Pleasanton DMV. It lives up to the name as it was (at least as the DMV goes) quite pleasant. Total time inside the DMV was less than 25 minutes, which considering I didn’t have an appt was pretty good.

One of these days I’ll binge on DH from the beginning. I’ve never watched, but it’s on the “to do” list.

By: Cool

Cool — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:59:34 +0000

DH beat CSI in 18-49 (5.7 vs 5.5) and 18-34 (4.7 vs 3.4).

By: JT

JT — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:52:28 +0000

Another East Bay resident here….I live in Pleasanton. I’m glad to know that DH ratings have stablized so far this season. Last nights episode was really good. Too bad ABC always ruins its spring run by shoving in too many repeats. It wouldn’t kill them to produce a few extra episodes.

By: Julia

Julia — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:44:06 +0000

Ah, thanks, Holly. I didn’t notice that.

By: Steven

Steven — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:43:22 +0000

The repeats of OTH etc. did better than the MRC program now. Maybe they should show repeats of older series, such as Friends, Gilmore Girls or even Charmed.

By: Jason Clinkscales

Jason Clinkscales — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:39:54 +0000

Tonight will be an interesting night for the World Series. Unless the heart of the Rays’ lineup picks it up, it’ll have a real tough time going against the Monday night slate.

Am I the only person with that fish song still in my head from the start of Game 3? Very clever from Philly.

By: Holly

Holly — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:38:50 +0000

Julia, CSI definitely beat DH in viewers, but DH will just barely beat CSI in the demo (5.5 to 5.7).

By: Julia

Julia — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:26:29 +0000

Cool, only if you don’t count CSI.

By: Cool

Cool — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:18:07 +0000

Is not “Show de los Seunos”, the correct way is “Show de los sueños” btw.

and DH was very good last night. Will be the #1 scripted show in the week.

By: R.G.

R.G. — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:10:23 +0000

Arrghh – No Sarah Connor tonight – and more of the goofy looking Circus With the (pretend) Stars…

….looks like another night to get some late errands accomplished and then a DVD tonight…yea sounds good…ooohh…maybe a Terminator DVD at that- Hmmm?!

By: Julia

Julia — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:08:45 +0000

Robert, I’m still waiting for the 0 rating in the demo for CW/MRC. That will be when the real fun starts.

But the real question is what will CW do with the time once the 13 episodes are up? Just more repeats?

By: ABCFanatic

ABCFanatic — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:48:59 +0000

Sunday is a good day for ABC

Can’t believe 10 million people watch Extreme Makeover and Brothers & Sisters, Brothers & Sisters is sometimes annoying

NBC is going to be the next CW if the ratings continue to go down

By: Harry

Harry — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:36:44 +0000

Well guess who’s doing well against the World Series? Older skewing shows on CBS. Leslie Moonves is a pure genius when it comes to show developmentand programming. They might be old-ish skewing shows but they get the job done. Unlike Ben Silverman’s sorry slate of schedule on NBC

By: Robert Seidman

Robert Seidman — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:31:05 +0000

Richard, I was not clear — I *did* move to the East Bay — fairly close to San Ramon. The sun is breaking out, and I’ll still likely lie and claim San Francisco as home

I thought the non NBC channels would have more of a pickup without SNF, I too was wrong.

By: Bill Gorman

Bill Gorman — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:30:10 +0000

Richard, he did! Yet the fog followed him today!

By: richard

richard — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:28:13 +0000

Robert; if you want to feel a little less “Blah” maybe its time to consider moving to the “East Bay” Walnut Creek, Lafayette, San Ramon….but then you won’t be able to call one of the greatest citys home!
Thought TAR would do a little better, ratings wise sans football…wrong again.

By: Bill Gorman

Bill Gorman — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:20:38 +0000

hookedonmick, for all the networks but CW, likely 18-49.

By: hookedonmick

hookedonmick — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:19:06 +0000

Which demo is the most important…..the 18-49 or 18-34? I haven’t watched Cold Case this year because I lost interest half way through last year but are the ratings lower than usual?

By: Robert Seidman

Robert Seidman — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:17:24 +0000

~~Valentine~~ Easy Money (all the MRC shows look alike to me?) was rounded to a zero share in the report I saw to compile the above, but it seems to be a rounding error in the report as in the half hour data each half hour was a .2/1

By: Julia

Julia — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:05:55 +0000

I’m feeling your blah, Robert. These seem like very boring numbers all around. The only fun part left to Sunday is seeing how low CW can sink in the demo. Think they’ll be getting 0s soon?

By: Bill Gorman

Bill Gorman — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:51:58 +0000

That WS game number follows the pattern for this year of viewership being about 3/4 of what each game in sequence was last year (except for the crazy Sat. rain delay numbers).

By: Shawn

Shawn — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:42:18 +0000

I see that The Unit is still getting decent ratings even without any overrun. I thought for sure that the move to Sunday would kill the show. Guess not.