A new episode of Disney's Hannah Montana with 6.9 million average viewers beat out The Closer with 6.3 million to top all prime time cable show average viewership for the week ending July 5, 2009. Hannah also had two other airings in the top 20 for the week.
With Jon & Kate Plus 8 dropping down past #100 for the week, WWE Raw moved up into spots 3 and 4, but lost viewership compared to the recent Trump "ownership" episodes. The NASCAR race and its post race show on TNT were #5 and 6 for the week. Lifetime's Army Wives managed to squeeze in between SpongeBobs at #16.
Those predicting (hoping for?) the demise of the yellow, porous one (I'm looking at you, Holly), were dealt a setback as SpongeBob had 7 of the second 10 shows in the cable top 20, and 30 of the top 100 (out of about 14,000) cable shows for the week.
All of USA's top scripted shows were in repeats for the week, so they were well down the list.
Although we don't get HBO numbers with our regular cable data, I will post the True Blood numbers when I see them.
Robert is on hiatus until late July, I am on my own till then, so we will not be handling Twitter (or other) requests for ala carte show numbers.
Top 20 cable network television shows for the week ending July 5, 2009:
| Rank | Programs | Net | Day | Time |
Viewers (Live+SD) (000s) |
| 1 | Hannah Montana | DSNY | Sun | 08:00P-09:00P | 6,901 |
| 2 | The Closer | TNT | Mon | 09:00P-10:00P | 6,295 |
| 3 | WWE Entertainment | USA | Mon | 10:00P-11:09P | 6,241 |
| 4 | WWE Entertainment | USA | Mon | 09:00P-10:00P | 5,682 |
| 5 | NASCAR POST RACE SHOW | TNT | Sat | 11:15P-11:27P | 5,475 |
| 6 | SPRINT CUP RACING/DAYTONA | TNT | Sat | 08:05P-11:15P | 5,277 |
| 7 | Sonny with a Chance | DSNY | Sun | 09:00P-09:30P | 5,167 |
| 8 | NCIS | USA | Mon | 08:00P-09:00P | 4,406 |
| 9 | Hannah Montana | DSNY | Sun | 07:30P-08:00P | 4,096 |
| 10 | JONAS | DSNY | Sun | 09:30P-10:00P | 4,034 |
| 11 | SpongeBob | NICK | Wed | 01:00P-01:30P | 3,669 |
| 12 | SpongeBob | NICK | Mon | 01:30P-02:00P | 3,646 |
| 13 | Hannah Montana | DSNY | Sun | 07:00P-07:30P | 3,636 |
| 14 | SpongeBob | NICK | Mon | 01:00P-01:30P | 3,632 |
| 15 | SpongeBob | NICK | Wed | 01:30P-02:00P | 3,622 |
| 16 | Army Wives | LIFE | Sun | 10:00P-11:00P | 3,622 |
| 17 | SpongeBob | NICK | Mon | 12:30P-01:00P | 3,614 |
| 18 | SpongeBob | NICK | Fri | 01:30P-02:00P | 3,602 |
| 19 | Wizards of Waverly Place | DSNY | Sun | 10:00P-10:30P | 3,587 |
| 20 | SpongeBob | NICK | Fri | 01:00P-01:30P | 3,541 |
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Nielsen Ratings Data: ©2009 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved
Wow. Kids shows on Nick and Disney rule the cable top 20!
Wow at the complete oversaturation of kids shows on this list.
True Blood was off for July 4th this week, so no new numbers.
How could someone not like Spongebob?
Now NCIS has taken a dive…did all the watchers switch over to SpongeBob?
BTW, I don’t dislike Sponge Bob or hope for his demise. I just find the back-and-forth between NCIS and Sponge Bob for cable top-20 dominance amusing.
Wow, Secret Life must have really collapsed this week.
This is what happens when you let Jon and Kate divorce.
Personally I can’t believe HM beat TC, I like watching TC, ugh….
Hannah Montana was some big hour episode on Sunday that they promoted for at least two weeks. So the big numbers were expected.
I can’t believe I know this but…Didn’t Jon & Kate go on hiatus? So those numbers would be from a rerun.
It was a retrospective from the past 10 years of their marriage.
It’s funny that RJ mentioned The Secret Life. I have been really enjoying this second season, but I think the death storyline, which has slightly un-exaggerated the character’s personalities and made them remotely realistic, and while it’s made the show much better for me, probably turned off a lot of the younger viewers.
USA Today’s ratings chart says Secret Life got 3.3 million viewers. I think they try to omit repeats from their top 15 cable shows list.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/nielsens-charts.htm
Secret Life had the same sharp drop in week 2 last January as well. In January, episode 2 followed a Kyle XY rerun; and this time, episode 2 followed the 4th airing in a week of the Make It Or Break It pilot. Episode 3 last January rebounded by half a million, so the ratings for this week’s episode might be more telling about the show’s ratings trajectory.
Cruncher, the rule that USA Today uses to come up with that list isn’t “no repeats” since they left off the NASCAR post race show as well, and included a couple Hannah Montana repeats, and at least one Wizards repeat. It seems to be “here are the top cable shows minus some we selected at our whim”.
Or viewed more sinisterly, “No SpongeBobs”. If so, the absorbent one will deal with them in his own time.
It really does seem like that Bill but I couldn’t find another word or phrase for it other than just posting their list as it truly is and not what they want it to be. USA Today really does pick and choose shows at their whim and they have the most bizarre top 10/15/20/25/etc cable list (I actually do know of a couple sites that post a top 25 and a top 40 cable list but they don’t post it in total viewers) that I see on a regular basis.
Run, USA Today, RUN!!!
I know that CI wasn’t on last week, but does anyone know if that show is getting renewed. I wish it would’ve been on cause it would’ve probably gotten into the top 20 or the top 10.
^I’d say chances are good that it will be renewed (depending on cast negotiations, etc), but on 6/21 it only got 3.4 million, which would still put it out of the top 20
That’s kind of sad Raising The Bar isn’t even making the Top 20 how disappointing. I’d love to see the numbers whenever you guys get them for Warehouse 13 as it’s doing a 2 hour premiere tonight and I’ve been looking forward to it for months since I first heard about it.