Boosted by the addition of Big Brother to its lineup, it was a strong week for CBS saw them take not only the viewership and adults 25-54 wins, but also tie Fox for the adults 18-49 ratings win for the week of July 6-12. Fox was well ahead of its English competitors, but only a tick ahead of Univision, in the adults 18-34 demo.
Among tiny networks, MyNetworkTV was again ahead of the CW across the board for the week.
Note that the chart includes RATINGS not VIEWERSHIP as was typical in most of our weekly network ratings posts in the past.
You can see past week's broadcast network primetime weekly TV ratings results here.
(click chart for full sized image)
Each rating point is a percentage of the US TV population in that demographic group and equals: 2.90 million viewers, 1.32 million adults 18-49, 0.68 million adults 18-34 and 1.24 million adults 25-54.
Nielsen TV Ratings Data: ©2009 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved.
Hey at least NBC is now second place! LOL.
Sucks that ABC is 4th in the summer, they have good summer shows like Wipeout.
They’re only second in viewership. In 18-34 and 18-49, they’re tied for third. Since they like to brag about being the youngest network (average age is younger, not that more young people actually watch), that’s probably not making them all that happy.
And note that this was just for a single week. I’m not continuing the “season to date” posts during the summer.
Will you do a complete season post at the end of the season?
Holly, yes I will do “full year” posts for broadcast networks and broadcast primetime shows in late September.
Thank you
Why don’t great shows like Mental on Fox and The Philanthropist on NBC get better marketing. During the fall the networks are all over the radio promoting their shows. How do they ever expect these shows to breakout into summer hits that can compete with cable when they treat them like the trash they forgot to dump out. I get that they run spots on their own networks. But what is the point if no one is watching? It wasn’t that long ago that Fox aired a new show in the summer called American Idol. We know what happened with that show. But it was being promoted on the network during the entire May sweeps period. I just don’t get it. If you are not going to try and be the best, why not just shut down for the summer?
How do they ever expect these shows to breakout into summer hits that can compete with cable when they treat them like the trash they forgot to dump out.
You hit the nail on the head there…The Listner, Merlin, The Philanthropist, and Mental aren’t airing during the summer because NBC and FOX are making a real effort at year-round scripted programming. They’re running during the summer because the shows are cheap and they figure they could make more money burning off these shows than with reruns of their regular-season shows.
Jr4092 I saw commercials for Mental way too often in May sweeps programming on Fox. Of course I said, “oh a new doctor show, I’ll fast forward through the rest of the commercial” but it’s not their fault for lack of on-air promotion. I think I only heard about the NBC shows on this site though, so I’ll agree part way.
Holly mentioned the cheapness factor, and it’s a great idea for summer programming. Put all the quirky stuff in summer so if something radically different takes off in the summer, you’ll know you have a winner. If it fails, summer viewership is lower anyway so there was a considerably lower price for experimentation with different programming.