Due to the nature of live sports programming the ratings for NBC (Sunday Night Football) and CBS & Fox (football overruns) are approximate and subject to significant revisions in the final numbers. See below for more information on these Fast Affiliate Ratings.
| Scoreboard |  |
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 |
 |
 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adults 18-49: Rating/Share | 4.9/13 | 3.7/10 | 3.3/9 | 3.2/8 | 0.8/2 |
| Adults 18-34: Rating/Share | 4.5/13 | 4.1/12 | 2.2/6 | 2.6/7 | 0.8/2 |
| Total Viewers (million) | 12.761 | 7.485 | 11.717 | 10.087 | 2.036 |
NBC's Sunday Night Football topped the night, but Fox's The Cleveland Show opened large, and its whole animation block was strong. The Desperate Housewives premiere finished down 37% in the demo from last seaon's premiere, indicating trouble on Wisteria Lane.
NBC’s Sunday Night Football Game 3: Colts vs. Cardinals delivered a (5.6/14) from 830-11p, down from the record from last week's Cowboys/Giants game which did an (8.7/22) in the fast nationals.
Fox has to be pleased with the series premiere of The Cleveland Show. It is the highest rated new scripted series opener so far this season among Adults 18-49, posting a 4.9/12 among Adults 18-49. It outperformed last year’s season premiere of King Of The Hill by +44% among Adults 18-49.
In the rest of Fox's animation block, The Simpsons season premiere delivered a 4.2/12 among Adults 18-49, down from last year’s premiere (4.5/12). The season premiere of Family Guy hit a 5.2/12 among Adults 18-49 and outperformed last year’s premiere by +16% among Adults 18-49. The season opener of American Dad at 9:30p posted a 3.6/9 among Adults 18-49 and outperformed last year’s premiere by +13% among Adults 18-49.
ABC, so cheered by Wednesday and Thursday's results, was brought back to earth on Sunday with all its shows hitting their lowest premiere ratings ever. Extreme Makeover: Home Edition at 7p (2.1/6) and 8p (3.1/8) fell 5% and 16% from its premiere hours last fall (2.2/7, 3.7/10). Desperate Housewives (4.5/11) crashed down 37% from last fall's premiere (7.1/16). Brothers & Sisters (3.0/8) was down 35% from its 2008 premiere (4.6/11).
Because of a football overrun until 7:16pm Eastern, CBS results in the table below are a jumble. At 7:30p, the season’s premiere of 60 Minutes posted a 3.1/9. From 8-10p, the end of 60 Minutes and the Amazing Race 15 premiere combined to deliver a 3.4/8, which is on par with last fall’s debut (3.2/8 on 9/28/08) and up from spring’s (2.6/7 for Amazing Race 14 on 2/15/09). The last 16 minutes of Amazing Race combined with the Cold Case opener for a 2.2/6, -19% below the 2008/09 Cold Case premiere (2.7/6 on 9/28/08).
Note that The CW no longer programs Sunday night on a national network basis. All programming is the responsibility of the local affiliates.
| Time | Net | Show | 18-49 Rating | 18-49 Share | Viewers Live+SD (million) |
| 7:00 | CBS | Football Overrun/60 Minutes | 5.2 | 16 | 17.50 |
| NBC | Football Night In America | 2.8 | 9 | 7.71 | |
| FOX | Football Overrun/Brothers (repeat) | 2.5 | 8 | 6.26 | |
| ABC | Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (premiere) | 1.9 | 6 | 6.74 | |
| 7:30 | NBC | Football Night In America | 3.9 | 12 | 9.55 |
| CBS | 60 Minutes | 3.1 | 9 | 14.95 | |
| ABC | Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (premiere) | 2.3 | 7 | 7.85 | |
| FOX | Brothers (repeat) | 1.7 | 5 | 3.73 | |
| 8:00 | NBC | Football Night In America | 4.6 | 13 | 11.96 |
| FOX | The Simpsons (premiere) | 4.2 | 12 | 8.21 | |
| CBS | 60 Minutes / The Amazing Race (premiere) | 3.4 | 9 | 12.97 | |
| ABC | Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (premiere) | 2.3 | 7 | 9.87 | |
| 8:30 | NBC | Sunday Night Football: Colts v. Cardinals | 5.5 | 14 | 14.67 |
| FOX | The Cleveland Show (series premiere) | 4.9 | 12 | 9.42 | |
| ABC | Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (premiere) | 3.3 | 8 | 11.09 | |
| CBS | The Amazing Race (premiere) | 3.3 | 8 | 10.35 | |
| 9:00 | NBC | Sunday Night Football: Colts v. Cardinals | 5.6 | 13 | 15.24 |
| FOX | Family Guy (premiere) | 5.2 | 12 | 10.17 | |
| ABC | Desperate Housewives (premiere) | 4.6 | 11 | 13.35 | |
| CBS | The Amazing Race (premiere) | 3.3 | 8 | 9.98 | |
| 9:30 | NBC | Sunday Night Football: Colts v. Cardinals | 5.9 | 14 | 15.68 |
| ABC | Desperate Housewives (premiere) | 4.5 | 11 | 13.13 | |
| FOX | American Dad (premiere) | 3.6 | 9 | 7.12 | |
| CBS | The Amazing Race (premiere) | 3.3 | 8 | 9.89 | |
| 10:00 | NBC | Sunday Night Football: Colts v. Cardinals | 5.5 | 14 | 13.90 |
| ABC | Brothers & Sisters (premiere) | 3.1 | 8 | 9.66 | |
| CBS | Amazing Race / Cold Case (premiere) | 2.6 | 7 | 9.71 | |
| 10:30 | NBC | Sunday Night Football: Colts v. Cardinals | 5.5 | 15 | 13.38 |
| ABC | Brothers & Sisters (premiere) | 2.9 | 8 | 9.00 | |
| CBS | Cold Case (premiere) | 1.9 | 5 | 8.38 |
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You can see TV ratings from other recent Overnight ratings reports here.
Nielsen TV Ratings: ©2009 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved.
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 and Numbers 102.
It seems a lot of people were watching Cleveland in good anticipation for Family Guy. Anyway did anyone notice that the Brothers repeat did better than the premiere. That just shows how bad fridays are. Cold Case premiering to only 8.38 million proves that the show is in its final season.
The Cleveland Show has a large portion of the Family Guy audience and probably a larger black audience than Family Guy had, so it’s setup to win.
Nice for the Cleveland Show. Ouch for Cold Case…
Brothers & Sisters, Poor ABC after a good week so far as well hopefully things might change for the better next week!
Good Animation Domination’s Numbers! Especially Cleveland.
“Anyway did anyone notice that the Brothers repeat did better than the premiere. That just shows how bad fridays are.”
I just noticed that. I wonder if it will help them gain a few more viewers for Fridays show.
How can Desperate Housewives be in trouble with a 4.6 and 13 million viewers?
In fact, Desperate Housewives was a bit down, but there was football in this night so I hope next week the ratings will be better. The show definetively deserves that!
CC got killed in that demo, its a goner.
TAR did better in viewers and in demos then its last season opener (also with a sports overrun of 15 minutes). And its 2nd hour certainly did better then what Cold Case managed in the Last year.
All in all, the DH numbers aren’t bad – but they’re down substantially from last fall (must be over 30-35% I’m guessing).
Oh, and Brothers & Sisters is probably done after this year too I’m assuming.
JS there will be Football for the next 16 weeks on Sunday night, and perhaps during playoffs.
Desperate Housewives, Brother & Sisters both down 35% in demo from the previous year (with very similar competition).
Yeah, its funny because series at 7 had a lot more competition than fridays at 8. Maybe it will help the show. All I can say is that NBC’s foot ball crushed, FOX’s animation did great, ABC is down and so is CBS.
They should’ve cancelled CC last season, it was so logical… CBS is definitely blind.
BJ
Part of how you judge a shows performance is how it compared to las t year.
Last year with Football, and the help of a sports overrun on CBS, it managed 18.44 million viewers and a 7.0 in adults 18-49.
That is a huge, huge drop.
ABC cannot be happy about those numbers. Everything was down significantly.
CBS set themselves up for failure on Sundays and are reaping the results with Cold Case, but at least 60 Minutes and Race are holding steady.
On the other hand, there’s no real downside for Fox last night. Brothers got a reasonable sampling and Cleveland did great.
thats disapoingting for desperate housewives, thanks to the football
I was hoping for about 16 million for the premiere
but i guess the show is now not going to be getting higher than 14million anymore. BUT it’s still the best show on TV which deserves strong ratings
all because of the stupid football
I’m not very good at reading what makes these numbers a flop or a success.
Can someone advise me if The Amazing Race’s ratings would be considered a failure or a success? It’s my favorite show and I’ve watched it since day 1 and I’m always hoping that it’s a success. Can someone “translate” this for me?
How did the FOX animated shows do with 18-34?
Actually CBS did better based on these numbers in the 18-49 for its first three hours, it did do significantly worse with Cold Case (then what the Unit managed also again with a 15 minute overrun).
So CBS will be happy.
But, next week. Without an overrun CBS is in serious trouble. I only expect TAR to have any traction in the 18-49 demo. ANd that, that isn’t good.
Lu – It was either Cold Case or Without a Trace, and CBS axed the older and more expensive show. Though Trace got higher ratings and the best for Tuesdays at 10, numbers still got lower and lower each season. Cold Case is doing even worse, and Three Rivers wont help the show. CBS should axe Three Rivers in a few weeks and move Cold Case back to 9, and air Flashpoint at 10. It seems obvious that Cold Case is doen after this season.