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Sunday Ratings: NFL, 60 Minutes, Housewives and Hallmark Movie

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December 8th, 2008

Scoreboard CBS FOX ABC NBC CW
Total Viewers (million) 11.99 11.17 10.70 9.84 1.45
Rating/Share: Adults 18-49 2.8/7 4.6/11 3.7/9 3.6/9 0.5/1

CBS took the night's top honors in viewers with Fox winning the 18-49 year old demographic on the strength of a little over 30 minutes of NFL overrun featuring the Dallas Cowboys vs. Pittsburgh Steelers. The Hallmark Hall of Fame Movie Front of the Class performed solidly in terms of total viewers but 18-49 year olds preferred Desperate Housewives (the most watched program outside of the NFL overrun), Sunday Night Football and Brothers & Sisters. A rerun of Family Guy bested the movie in the demo as well (though it also bested an original airing of The Simpsons at 8:30p).

It's no big surprise that viewing for the BCS Selection Show dropped steadily from the overrun and the OT (everyone already knew who was playing for the championship), but the relative "paucity" of viewers for the overrun from 7p-7:30p end of the Dallas Cowboys vs. Pittsburgh Steelers game surprises me. That's less than CBS had last week for an overrun game I can't even remember. While all live events data is subject to massive change, it still surprises me.

But I wasn't surprised at the below average performance of Sunday Night Football. I'm sticking to my theory that NBC would've been better off (ratings-wise) keeping the original game of the New England Patriots vs. Seattle Seahawks rather than using flexible scheduling to replace it with the Washington Redskins vs. Baltimore Ravens.

I'm not sure there will be any 18-34 info for the day and it could be that until after the holidays we don't receive the reports we normally get in a timely fashion (or perhaps, at all). Sorry!

Last Sunday's overnight report.

Full details:

Time Net Show Viewers (Millons) 18-49 Rating/Share
7:00 FOX NFL Football Overrun 23.45 9.0/24
CBS 60 Minutes 13.85 2.6/7
ABC Ty Pennington: Behind the Scenes 5.77 1.7/5
NBC Football Night in America 4.73 1.6/4
CW Jericho (R) 1.13 0.4/1
7:30 FOX The OT 15.95 6.26
8:00 CBS The Amazing Race 10.57 3.1/7
ABC Extreme Makeover: Home Edition 10.34 3.3/8
NBC Football Night in America/Game 10.05 4.6/11
FOX BCS Selection Show 9.61 3.9/10
CW Movie: The Cutting Edge (R) 8p-10p 1.61 0.6/1
8:30 NBC Sunday Night Football 8:30-11p 12.56 4.5/11
Fox The Simpsons 6.19 2.8/7
9:00 ABC Desperate Housewives 16.00 5.9/13
CBS Hallmark Movie: Front of the Class 11.02 2.6/6
FOX Family Guy (R) 6.54 3.1/7
9:30 FOX American Dad (R) 5.27 2.4/5
10:00 CBS Hallmark Movie: Front of the Class 12.52 3.1/8
ABC Brothers & Sisters 10.66 3.9/10

Shows are sorted by viewers in each time slot.

Nielsen TV Ratings: ©2008 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved. Source Marc Berman/Mediaweek.

Definitions:

Fast Affiliate Ratings: These first national ratings, including demographics, are available at approximately 11 AM (ET) the day after telecast, and are released to subscribing customers daily. These data, from the National People Meter sample, are strictly time-period information, based on the normal broadcast network feed, and include all programming on the affiliated stations, sometimes including network programming, sometimes not. The figures may include stations that did not air the entire network feed, as well as local news breaks or cutaways for local coverage or other programming. Fast Affiliate ratings are not as useful for live programs and are likely to differ significantly from the final results, because the data reflect normal broadcast feed patterns. For example, with a World Series game, Fast Affiliate Ratings would include whatever aired from 8-11PM on affiliates in the Pacific Time Zone, following the live football game, but not game coverage that begins at 5PM PT. The same would be true of Presidential debates as well as live award shows and breaking news reports.

Rating: Estimated percentage of the universe of TV households (or other specified group) tuned to a program in the average minute. Ratings are expressed as a percent.

Share (of Audience): The percent of households (or persons) using television who are tuned to a specific program, station or network in a specific area at a specific time. (See also, Rating, which represents tuning or viewing as a percent of the entire population being measured.)

Time Shifted Viewing – Program ratings for national sources are produced in three streams of data – Live, Live+Same Day (Live+SD) and Live+7 Day. Time shifted figures account for incremental viewing that takes place with DVRs which are currently in approximately 24.4% of all U.S. TV households. Live+Same Day (Live+SD) include viewing during the same broadcast day as the original telecast, with a cut-off of 3:00AM local time when meters transmit daily viewing to Nielsen for processing. Live+7 Day ratings include incremental viewing that takes place during the 7 days following a telecast.

For more information see Numbers 101.

(70) Comments - Add Yours!

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  1. Must. Resist. Corrections.

  2. eh, knock yourself out, especially if it’s the numbers. I know the NBC 18-49 number was wrong and corrected it, but the incorrect version could still be cached for some — it should be 3.6/9.

  3. tom

    Kind of sad to see no scripted series at 8pm.

    Simpsons really took a hit not being in it’s regular slot. People had to think it wasn’t on when they found that BCS show. That was a bad idea. Should not have wasted a new Simpsons after that thing. Those are rerun numbers.

    Nice to see Housewives at the higher end of of their range. It will be interesting to see if they suffer the typical drop when they come back in January against the football playoffs unless ABC avoids that this year.

  4. Desperat Housewives.

  5. cool

    the good thing with ABC Sundays that they dont depend of football and after the Superbowl, CBS/NBC (especially NBC) will have weaker numbers as well ABC but with minor impact.

  6. Tom, I agree. Last year Fox did air a rerun of the Simpsons after the BCS show (it outperformed last night, but so did last year’s BCS show).

  7. @Julia…yikes. Sadly, no automatic spell check within the data tables. Fixed.

  8. cool

    Interesting that The Mentalist will be the #1 scripted show in viewers but is #15 in the demo (#1 is Desperate Housewives)

  9. R.G.

    haaaa! More people watch a 20 year old movie than Jericho – you know CW must at least be making money – having nearly 2 million people watch CUTTING EDGE is hilarious…I mean there must be minimal costs to CW to air “THAT” movie…

    …still a guilty pleasure of hearing that movie soundtrack.

  10. tom

    R.G. small point but i don’t know if i’d call 1.6 million close to 2 million for cutting egde. you’re adding 25%. that’s a hefty nudge.

    that’s the equivalent of housewives getting 16 million this week and saying they almost had 20 :-)

  11. clutz12001

    Of all the movies on the CW slate from now through Christmas, I think “The Cutting Edge” was the best fit. Figure-skating theme is good for the holidays. Terry O’Quinn, of LOST fame, is in the movie. D.B. Sweeney of poor Jericho is also in the movie. Recognizable names + winter themes = 1.6 million viewers ;) .

  12. Fin

    Simpsons…. thats not a good demo for them 2.7/7. But only 6.19 million veiwers but puts salt on the wound more than like 2.6mil below seasonal current average, plus this week the competition wasn’t really that hard: but it did have a bad lead-in (different audiences).

  13. Cameron

    Have you seen this about NBC potentially cutting back on hours and/or days that they broadcast?

    http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3i686368ba4cd6a88c1ba37d99bf187003

    Talk abut throwing in the towel.

  14. Bella

    I loved the Hallmark Movie “Front of the Class” and I buy Hallmark Cards
    so I guess they got the viewer they wanted even if I just turned 50.

  15. Paul

    Robert,

    Do you publish cable numbers? I wanted to know how Leverage did last night.

  16. From the article Cameron linked:

    “Can we continue to broadcast 22 hours in primetime? Three of our competitors don’t,” Zucker said during Monday’s keynote at the annual UBS Global Media and Communications Conference. “Can we continue to broadcast seven days a week? One of our competitors doesn’t.”

    Which three “competitors” don’t program 22 hours a week? CW, MNTV and Univision? Does Zucker really think that comparing NBC to CW and MNTV is a good idea? And since when do they care about Univision?

  17. there’s no way to publish cable numbers in the overnight report as there’s no comprehensive cable overnight reporting produced via Nielsen. we publish cable numbers weekly, so unless TNT issues a press release today, we won’t see the data for Leverage until tomorrow (weekly data runs Monday through Sunday and is usually received on Tuesdays).

  18. Julia — the only one that matters (to the Zuck) is the one you left out. Fox… And UNI actually does program 22 hours.

  19. Fin

    Wow a family guy repeat beats simpsons in veiwership and demos: not a good week for the simposons

  20. Alex S.

    That was a good football game last night on FOX between the Steelers and the Cowboys.

    That was the match up that should have been in Primetime.

    It’s great to see so many people watched the CBS Hallmark movie.

    It was really inspiring and heartwarming…

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