TNT's The Closer held off new episodes of USA favorites Royal Pains and Burn Notice to move into the top spot for the week's most viewed cable show. While CNN's Tuesday coverage of the Michael Jackson Memorial put 5 shows (of various lengths) in the top 20, nearly squeezing SpongeBob off the list entirely.
I've got to admit I thought that with 10 new episodes for his 10th anniversary celebration that SpongeBob would put more shows in the top 20, but clearly for TV ratings the gloved one > the absorbent one.
Update: or I was confused about the timing of the SpongeBob episodes and they are 7/17 not 7/10.
WWE Raw saw both its viewership and rankings fall this week down to #5 and #10. The NASCAR race and its post race show on TNT were #10 and #13 for the week. Once again, Lifetime's Army Wives managed to squeeze onto the list at #19.
Here are the HBO numbers from Sunday night, although I didn't include them in the table below: Entourage: 3.4 million, Hung: 3.6 million, True Blood: 3.9 million.
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 advertising supported cable network television shows for the week ending July 12, 2009:
| Rank | Programs | Net | Day | Time | Viewers (Live+SD) (000s) |
| 1 | The Closer | TNT | Mon | 09:00P-10:00P | 6,053 |
| 2 | Royal Pains | USA | Thu | 10:00P-11:00P | 5,733 |
| 3 | JACKSON MEMORIAL SERVICE | CNN | Tue | 03:00P-03:48P | 5,720 |
| 4 | Burn Notice | USA | Thu | 09:00P-10:00P | 5,505 |
| 5 | WWE Entertainment | USA | Mon | 10:00P-11:06P | 5,399 |
| 6 | JACKSON MEMORIAL SERVICE | CNN | Tue | 02:00P-03:00P | 5,386 |
| 7 | iCarly | NICK | Sat | 08:00P-08:30P | 5,226 |
| 8 | JACKSON MEMORIAL SERVICE | CNN | Tue | 01:33P-02:00P | 5,125 |
| 9 | M JACKSON MEMORIAL CVG | CNN | Tue | 03:48P-04:00P | 4,967 |
| 10 | WWE Entertainment | USA | Mon | 09:00P-10:00P | 4,891 |
| 11 | SPRINT CUP RACING/CHICAGO | TNT | Sat | 07:59P-11:22P | 4,814 |
| 12 | M JACKSON MEMORIAL CVG | CNN | Tue | 01:00P-01:33P | 4,709 |
| 13 | NASCAR POST RACE SHOW | TNT | Sat | 11:22P-11:33P | 4,408 |
| 14 | PARENT TRAP, THE (1998) | DSNY | Sun | 09:00P-11:20P | 4,314 |
| 15 | NCIS | USA | Mon | 08:00P-09:00P | 4,238 |
| 16 | HARRY POTTER/GOBLET | FAM | Sun | 07:30P-11:00P | 4,089 |
| 17 | IN PLAIN SIGHT | USA | Sun | 10:00P-11:00P | 3,915 |
| 18 | Situation Room | CNN | Tue | 04:00P-05:00P | 3,851 |
| 19 | Army Wives | LIFE | Sun | 10:00P-11:00P | 3,829 |
| 20 | SpongeBob | NICK | Wed | 01:30P-02:00P | 3,728 |
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Nielsen Ratings Data: ©2009 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved
Surprised Real World Cancun didn’t make Top 20. Wonder where it landed.
so I take it that Criminal Intent’s at about 3.5 million or less.
Bill, as far as I understand, the ten new SpongeBob episodes and marathon are not until this week.
Red, you may well be correct, and I may have been confused by that NY Times article.
Really Red, are you surprised? That show probably pulls in about 1-1.5 million viewers a week. Not enough to make the top 20, probably not even the top 40. This season of The Real World is super lame. Bring back the days of Coral, Pedro, Robin, CT and Adam, the people who made The Real World a household name
Law & Order: CI drew 3.473 million, #35 by viewership.
Does anyone know what CI did on Sunday? God that show is getting crushed now.
I am writing from a household that has an actor on JONAS and an actor on HawthoRNe. I know you’re busy, but you seem to have lots of info. Any chance you could put up their viewer numbers for the week?
John, anything for family
Top JONAS 3.029 million, Tues 8:30p
Top Hawthorne 2.631, Tues 9p
You are sooo lazy! You can’t put True blood in the top 20??? It’s ONE show!
Does anyone know how “True Jackson, VP” and “Wizards of Waverly Place” did?
what happened to NCIS? only one spot in the top 20?
A lot of people watched TV on Sunday night.
Re: ddaaaaeee,
If Bill puts (awesome) True Blood on there, it’ll push Spongebob off the list, and this site fears the Almighty Porous One.
Wasn’t really surprised, was just trying to find out how it did.
Does you know how ECW, TNA Impact and WWE Superstars did?
I wish Nickelodeon does a better job with their scheduling of iCarly but I was surprised to see it get 5.2 million viewers on Saturday Night as I was expecting less.
Good to see Sunday Night staples Army Wives and In Plain Sight make the list.
Michael Jackson dominated Tuesday afternoon and b/c it was spreaded on more than 10 networks, its numbers on the individual networks were split. I wish I could see NBC, ABC, CBS, and FOX’s numbers on the service.
WWE has had a good run since Memorial Day and with Seth Green on there last night, I wouldn’t be surprised to see if boost up even more even though the Home Run Derby was on ESPN.
From what I heard TNA got around 1.7 million viewers, ECW was under a million viewers b/c of the timeslot change, and WWE Superstars a little over a million viewers.
BN and RP on USA are just Thursday Night hits always doubling NBC’s Thursday numbers. By it being an aggressively scheduled summer for cablers, we won’t see NCIS pop up on the list too much until the fall.
Honestly as far as TNT goes, The Closer is starting to fall flat and they’ll fall out of first place real soon. TNT’s Hawthorne and Saving Grace are growing on Tuesdays and Dark Blue and Leverage will do the same.
Um… @ddaaaaeee, what part of “Top 20 advertising supported cable network television shows” do you not understand? HBO is not an ad supported network. Perhaps you’re the “lazy” one, not taking the time to understand what kind of chart you’re looking at??
Hey Bill since you mentioned CNN in this article I guess the gag order on Cable News comments is temporarily lifted eh? Hehe.
Don’t worry no partisan comments here. It is worth noting that in addition the memorial coverage July cable ratings so far for CNN have shown a strong uptick, especially with Larry King (no surprise there) and AC 360. Larry’s up about 50% so far for July vs. June according to my calcs. AC’s up about 40%. It will be interesting to see if starting this week now that the MJ coverage is dying down whether they can sustain any momentum from this bounce.
Donna, already posted look up ^