| Scoreboard |  |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total Viewers (million) | 24.62 | 11.02 | 6.43 | 5.88 | 4.79 | 1.01 |
| Rating/Share: Adults 18-49 | 9.4/23 | 2.9/7 | 2.6/7 | 1.6/4 | 2.1/5 | 0.4/1 |
| Rating/Share: Adults 18-34 | 8.0/22 | 1.8/5 | 2.6/7 | 1.3/4 | 2.4/7 | 0.6/2 |
Two hours of American Idol dominated the night. In the shows I love but won't be back department, first off, NBC's Life. If it was on the USA Network with such numbers it still wouldn't be the greatest, but at least it would stick around. It isn't on USA network though.
Next up, Life on Mars which will go down in the finals even further once a minute or so of LOST is stripped out of it. Check out LOMs second half hour. Then have a good cry. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaah. Update: thankfully the ABC PR team is much more skilled at finding silver linings than I am! Life on Mars won the 10pm hour among men 18-34.
On the plus side, at least one show I watched (and really enjoyed) last night is holding up in the demos -- ABC's LOST.
Things also didn't get any better for The New Adventures of Old Christine and Gary Unmarried, but at least Criminal Minds and CSI: NY had solid outings for CBS allowing CBS to finish second for the night.
Knight Rider fans might try to comfort themselves in the knowledge that,"hey, wow, did you see Life's numbers?!" But, sadly, that isn't very comforting.
Last Wednesday's ratings if you want to compare.
Full details:
| Time | Net | Show | Viewers (Millons) | 18-49 Rating/Share | 18-34 Rating/Share |
| 8:00 | FOX | American Idol | 23.20 | 8.5/23 | 7.4/22 |
| CBS | The New Adventures of Old Christine | 7.06 | 1.9/5 | 1.2/4 | |
| NBC | Knight Rider | 5.29 | 1.3/3 | 1.1/3 | |
| UNI | Soccer: USA vs. Mexico | 4.98 | 2.2/6 | 2.2/8 | |
| ABC | LOST (R) | 4.21 | 1.4/4 | 1.4/4 | |
| CW | Privileged (R) | 1.20 | 0.5/1 | 0.6/2 | |
| 8:30 | FOX | American Idol | 25.37 | 9.4/24 | 8.0/23 |
| CBS | Gary Unmarried | 6.86 | 2.1/5 | 1.3/4 | |
| UNI | Soccer: USA vs. Mexico | 5.53 | 2.5/6 | 3.0/8 | |
| NBC | Knight Rider | 5.51 | 1.3/3 | 1.1/3 | |
| ABC | LOST (R) | 4.58 | 1.8/5 | 1.8/5 | |
| CW | Privileged (R) | 0.97 | 0.4/1 | 0.5/1 | |
| 9:00 | FOX | American Idol | 25.09 | 9.8/23 | 8.2/22 |
| CBS | Criminal Minds | 12.92 | 3.1/7 | 1.7/5 | |
| ABC | LOST | 9.70 | 4.3/10 | 4.4/11 | |
| UNI | Cuidado con el Angel | 5.09 | 2.1/5 | 2.4/6 | |
| NBC | Life | 4.77 | 1.4/3 | 1.2/3 | |
| CW | 90210 (R) | 0.89 | 0.4/1 | 0.6/1 | |
| 9:30 | FOX | American Idol | 24.84 | 9.9/23 | 8.4/21 |
| CBS | Criminal Minds | 13.60 | 3.4/8 | 2.0/5 | |
| ABC | LOST | 9.83 | 4.4/10 | 4.4/11 | |
| UNI | Cuidado con el Angel | 4.90 | 2.0/5 | 2.3/6 | |
| NBC | Life | 4.66 | 1.4/3 | 1.2/3 | |
| CW | 90210 (R) | 0.98 | 0.5/1 | 0.6/2 | |
| 10:00 | CBS | CSI: NY | 12.91 | 3.4/9 | 2.2/6 |
| NBC | Law & Order | 7.29 | 2.1/5 | 1.6/4 | |
| ABC | Life on Mars | 5.63 | 2.2/6 | 2.0/6 | |
| UNI | Fuego en la Sangre | 4.32 | 1.8/5 | 2.1/6 | |
| 10:30 | CBS | CSI: NY | 12.78 | 3.5/9 | 2.3/6 |
| NBC | Law & Order | 7.76 | 2.2/6 | 1.7/5 | |
| ABC | Life on Mars | 4.66 | 1.7/5 | 1.4/4 | |
| UNI | Fuego en la Sangre | 3.91 | 1.8/5 | 2.0/6 |
Shows are sorted by viewers in each time slot. Timeslot demo winners are in bold.
Nielsen TV Ratings: ©2009 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.
lost did OK, imho. in the demos especially. I just hope there wont be many 2 hour AI episodes..
If it was on the USA Network with such numbers it still wouldn’t be the greatest, but at least it would stick around. It isn’t on USA network though.
Now we’re going to hear about how it should be picked up by USA all day.
as if anyone will read the prose!
Life on Mars has a terrible lead in. Sucks for that show.
Well, the only thing I can say about Life on USA is that it would meet their “Characters Welcome” slogan……
I am a fan of the show and it will be missed, especially Doc Reese.
Wow! Lost under 10 million viewers. Is this the first time Lost has been under 10 million viewers for a new episode? I wouldn’t be surprised if Lost gets The Office’s type ratings for the rest of the series – great demos but okay numbers in total viewers.
jesus_stick, there won’t be too many more 2 hour Idols on Wednesday, but from now it is going to air at 9pm, rather than 8. So LOST will have to go up against it every week.
Criminal Minds is taking a much more significant Idol hit than NCIS ever does. I would have thought it would hold up somewhere nearly as well.
Lost is sinking slower than last season, but that’s about the best that can be said about that.
Yeah, Life’s goose is cooked.
Poor Christine and Gary. Their sister sitcoms on Mondays do explosively well in the demo and these two can barely muster a 2.0 rating (if AT ALL). While I find both hilarious, and it pains me to say this, but one of these has to go and the other should settle for mid-season run.
During the fall, Wednesdays at 8 are not a competitive slot. CBS needs to stuff a procedural here and forget about a second comedy block.
My prediction is that both Gary and Worst Week will be dumped and Christine will get slotted after Two and a Half Men next winter. Or if CBS is going in a totally different direction, they seek a young ensemble cast to be paired with HIMYM/BBT in the fall (this is also assuming one of the Monday openers rescues the 9:30 slot).
Julia: well that’s not good news. Ok, sure, the show does have an end date but still, I hope Lost won’t lose many more viewers, although it’s still pretty damn strong in the demos.
Everything on NBC is turning to dust… And everything on CBS is turning to gold…
Jocor…..are you kidding me?!? A terrible lead-in is the reason why Life on Mars is doing so badly? It had Grey’s Anatomy as its lead-in and didn’t do squat. Maybe the reason it gets terrible ratings is because A) ABC doesn’t advertised the show enough B)its bad time-slot
Too bad for Knight Rider and Life cause I really like those shows. Maybe NBC should try Knight Rider on Friday’s?
Life took a hard fall. With this numbers it won’t be back for sure. It’s a pity because I love the show. Lost was also awesome.
I think “Lost” will pick up viewers from DVR this week. Was the best episode so far this season. This whole season so far has been great. As far as story and flow goes, “Lost” has never been better, perhaps because they’re finally answering more questions than they’re asking.
It’s too bad ABC killed off so many viewers with there ridiculous scheduling antics in previous seasons. Here are the three things that has caused the ratings decline for “Lost” over the last few seasons:
#1 Too many repeats in season two. This was so frustrating. This season viewership peaked at 22 million viewers, for crying out loud, and ABC managed to blow it! Viewers complained about the new-repeat on and off that spring, and ABC’s brilliant idea brings us to #2.
#2 So in response to no repeats, they bring back a mini 6 episode fall season, put it on hiatus for three months, and then when it finally returns they move it to 10pm. Hmm…sounds just a little confusing.
#3 Creatively, “Lost” was stalling bigtime in season 3, which was also ABC’s fault. Instead of listening to the creators of the show, who said from day one they had a 5 year plan, ABC refused to announce an end date to the series. As the season kept sucking along with episodes that were clearly stalling, viewers began to flee. Finally ABC gets it in their thick skull to announce an end date. By then it was too late, and millions of viewers had fled.
While seasons 4 was excellent, and thus far so is season 5, viewers have continued to flee, which I really can’t explain other than the fact that there is too many months in between seasons. Perhaps ABC should consider bumping the final season 6 into the Fall where there’s less competition.
At any rate, I think I’m done watching ABC shows. I’m sick and tired of seeing them kill off decent quality shows with stupid programming mistakes. While Grey’s and DH are far from dead, give them another year or two and they’ll be out of the top 30.
Robert, openly taunting desperate fans today, woo hoo!
Sam, Gary Unmarried, Old Christine, not gold.
The Zip Code for 90210 looks more like 000.98
OMG poor life. another wonderful show to be axed this yr. bad enough pushing daisies is gone and now life and on friday TSCC will prob be gone. its been a hard tv yr for me.
Hey I read the prose – because it was quoted in the comments