via press release:
DISCOVERY’S ‘Mythbusters’ SURPASSES SEVERAL BROADCASTERS IN WEDNESDAY NIGHT’S PREMIERE IN KEY DEMOS
October 14 Premiere Second Best Men 25-54 Audience on Record
(Silver Spring, Md) – Record-setting ratings for Wednesday night’s Mythbusters premiere at 9PM e/p and the double-digit growth for the return of TIME WARP at 10PM e/p led Discovery Channel to rank as primetime’s #3 cable network for M18-49 and #4 for M25-54.
Mythbusters was the #1 non-sports primetime cable telecast for M25-54, surpassing broadcast programs NBC (Mercy) and ABC (Eastwick). The premiere scored the largest M25-54 audience since September 2006 and its second best M25-54 audience on record. Among the M25-54 demo, the episode was third behind sports College Football (ESPN) and Ultimate Fighter (SPK). For M18-49 it was the third best on record and also the best since September 2006. More than 2.7 million people 2+ tuned into the premiere.
TIME WARP attracted 1.2 million people 2+, 19% more than the October 2008 time slot average. Gains were posted for P18-49 (+12%), P25-54 (+16%) and most key demos. The premiere also ranked as the time slot's #8 cable program for M25-54 delivery and was in the top ten for M18-34 (#10).
Source: Nielsen. Live+SD.
I’m curious…
With the so called boycott of Glenn Beck, FNC said they did not lose advertising dollars because the commercials were switched to other programs. I am very unsure of how the advertising firms work.
Robert, can you please tell me how the great ratings they receive really matter besides being picked up. If a company pays x amount of cash at the beginning of the season for ad revues then the ratings for this season really only matters until the next ad buys for the corporations who advertise on the shows?
FNC basically was saying that they didn’t lose advertisers who committed money and so no money was pulled off the table, they just gave them advertising time elsewhere. The slots they vacated on Beck were sold to other advertisers.
How much money they made on the ads airing on Beck, and what the real impact is, is something we’ll likely never find out. In general the ratings of shows really matter, in the current season. The more ratings points you have to sell, the better off you are. How much Beck’s relatively great ratings at 5pm matter is another question, and unfortunately not one I know the answer to.
This was the duct tape episode, right? That was a really fun episode. But why does it air so irregularly? I have a website that holds the schedule so I can manage to pick it up at all…
This is another sign that the once mighty networks are eroding away. Another show on cable getting “record-setting ratings” in some demo or another against network competition. Granted, Eastwick (and probably Mercy) aren’t exactly targeted toward men but, still, there was a time that didn’t matter — networks simply gobbled everything up and scraps were left for the cable channels. Not so much these days.
Lest someone interpret my comments above as negative toward Mythbusters, please don’t — I like this little show. It’s a fun time with something new to learn every time an episode airs. Wish they would make more of them
Another aspect are make-goods, Roland. If an advertizer pays a network, at the upfronts, for a certain number of ads in the upcoming season, the network guarantees them a certain rating. If the show fails to produce that rating, the network has to give them free advertizing, or at a reduced cost, to make up the difference.
This is why all new series have low ad rates, sometimes despite their time slots. Networks can’t really guarantee that a new series is going to do X rating anymore because there are no more “plum” timeslots, like NBC used to have on Thursdays at 8:30 and 9:30.
Right, but Mythbusters as a whole also scored 2.7 total million viewers in a fairly competitive night (Wednesday) in prime-time. Pretty freaking good ratings for an educational show that airs in prime-time. (Yes, I know they do a lot of antics and Hollywood stuff on the show, but at its core, they cover a LOT of hard science and engineering concepts such that it’s entirely fair to characterize it as educational programming).
Time Warp clearly rode the coat tails of MB. Lost more than half the viewers and as the show continued thru the time slot the viewer numbers dropped and dropped.
The show should have been cancelled along time ago. Season one was good but from that point on the show lost it.
I have little doubt that the season kick off show was nothing more than last season left overs that reworked and reworked.
Dump it.