Sorry haters, but the viewer numbers for VH1's T.O. Show just aren't that bad

Update August 13, 2009: I've added a little more perspective on cable ratings and rankings here.

I've seen and heard some commentary about how awful Terrell Owen's The T.O. Show on VH1 is doing.  I've received a few e-mails about it as well, one mentioning that Jim Rome had trashed the show's ratings on his radio show.

At least based on viewer numbers, considering it's summer, and considering it's on VH1, the numbers aren't that bad.  Last week, the initial airing (they run about 24 repeats of it a week) of The T.O. Show averaged 1.836 million viewers and trailed only the season two premiere of Real Chance of Love (2.518M) and an encore broadcast of the Real Chance of Love season premiere (1.854 million).  So it was VH1's third-most watched show for the week.

So it didn't do as well as Lifetime's Drop Dead Diva on Sunday night (2.44 million), but it did better than every show on Comedy Central last week other than the Comedy Central Roast of Joan Rivers on Sunday night (2.8 million) and Tuesday night's The Daily Show (1.848).  And it was very close to the best airing of the The Daily Show.

I don't hear a lot of noise about how bad the numbers suck for The Daily Show. Sure, T.O. didn't light it up like an iCarly special, but neither did any other show last week. 

VH1 repeats T.O. Show an additional 24 times (at least last week), so they wind up getting over 12 hours of programming out of it.  I doubt the folks at VH1 are jumping up and down over the show's performance, but nobody at VH1 is slicing their wrists over it either.

I'm not  a huge T.O. fan, and I like Jim Rome a lot, but let's face it, Rome is not going to provide me with any tearful "He's my quarterback" moments.  I admit that like most of the world, I haven't watched T.O. Show either, but I might get around to checking it out.     As it happens, Jim Rome also has a TV show on cable on ESPN at 4:30pm ET every Monday through Friday,  Jim Rome is Burning. I probably watch it at least a few times a month. It comes on before Around the Horn and Pardon The Interruption, both of which I watch about 100% of the time.

T.O had much better results than any of those show's,  Rome Is Burning included.

Below is a table of last week's performance of  T.O. Show, I've also included the Monday through Friday initial broadcasts of Jim Rome is Burning,  Around the Horn and PTI.

Disclaimer #1: for all I know Rome was on vacation last week and didn't host himself, but the numbers are consistent with numbers I've seen when  he was definitely hosting.

Disclaimer #2: viewer numbers generally don't really mean much beyond press releases,  it's the demographic info that's important.  But I don't have any of the demographic data...

Disclaimer #3 At 4:30PM, the percentage of  people who were watching any TV at all was 19.8 percent on average last Monday-Friday.  At 5:00pm it was 21.3 percent and at 5:30pm it was 22.2 percent.  Not surprisingly more people are watching TV at 5:30pm than 4:30pm, but not a whole lot more.   Also not surprising.  A lot more people are watching TV at 10pm.  At 10pm on Monday night (8/3), 37.3 percent of people in the USA were watching TV.

For the week ending August 9, 2009 (NOT the premiere, but the third episode of the show):

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Nielsen TV Ratings: ©2009 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved.