As with the week before, football unsurprisingly dominated another holiday week.
Those of you looking for Men of a Certain Age, it didn't make the top 25, and was tied for 131st (yes, one hundred and thirty-first!) based on viewers with 3.123 million. Hard to say how much of that was because there was no new episode of The Closer as a lead-in last night, how much was due to the holidays and how much of that was due to Brett Favre and the Minnesota Vikings trying to stage an overtime comeback that fell just short on ESPN.
Sneaking into the top 25 between all the sports, NCIS and SpongeBob, and despite Scripps pulling Food Network off of Cablevision when negotiations for a new contract turned sour, was two hours worth of Iron Chef America on Sunday averaging 4.57 million for the two hours.
Sadly, I've made the decision to no longer field requests. We always post whatever data we see via press release or other trade publications already. You can subscribe to our RSS feed and you can also follow @TravisYanan on Twitter. During the week he usually posts some (not all) cable results for each weekday, usually late in the afternoon on the east coast (and Friday night data isn't posted until Monday) and he posts the links to that info on his Twitter account to the info on Marc Berman's PI Forums. You should also follow @TVBill (it's not Bill Gorman, but he is a TV ratings junkie and sometimes posts cable ratings info. You can also follow me on Twitter, sometimes I will post some cable ratings, though I am not taking requests there either...
Update: top 25 list updated to include shows that were left off the initial list I had (if you're interested in why, see comments in the comment section).
Top 25 cable shows for the week ending January 3, 2009:
| Rank | Shows | NET | DAY(S) | Time | Viewers Live+SD (000)2 |
| 1 | VIKINGS/BEARS | ESPN | Mon | 08:30P-12:07A | 17,006 |
| 2 | MICHIGAN STATE/TEXAS TECH | ESPN | Sat | 09:08P-01:10A | 7,829 |
| 3 | VIRGINIA TECH/TENNESSEE | ESPN | Thu | 07:30P-10:58P | 7,513 |
| 4 | ARKANSAS/EAST CAROLINA | ESPN | Sat | 05:30P-09:08P | 6,449 |
| 5 | MIAMI (FL)/WISCONSIN | ESPN | Tue | 08:00P-11:21P | 6,217 |
| 6 | ARIZONA/NEBRASKA | ESPN | Wed | 08:13P-11:25P | 6,138 |
| 7 | NORTHWESTERN/AUBURN | ESPN | Fri | 11:01A-03:10P | 5,685 |
| 8 | WWE Entertainment | USA | Mon | 10:00P-11:08P | 5,608 |
| 9 | WWE Entertainment | USA | Mon | 09:00P-10:00P | 5,337 |
| 10 | SpongeBob | NICK | Thu | 11:00A-11:30A | 5,105 |
| 11 | SpongeBob | NICK | Wed | 10:30A-11:00A | 5,077 |
| 12 | SpongeBob | NICK | Thu | 11:30A-12:00P | 5,054 |
| 13 | NCIS | USA | Sat | 10:00P-11:00P | 4,992 |
| 14 | NCIS | USA | Sat | 08:00P-09:00P | 4,956 |
| 15 | SpongeBob | NICK | Thu | 12:30P-01:00P | 4,974 |
| 16 | SpongeBob | NICK | Thu | 12:00P-12:30P | 4,946 |
| 17 | NCIS | USA | Sat | 03:00P-04:00P | 4,892 |
| 18 | NCIS | USA | Sat | 05:00P-06:00P | 4,781 |
| 19 | SpongeBob | NICK | Thu | 01:00P-01:30P | 4,777 |
| 20 | SpongeBob | NICK | Thu | 10:30A-11:00A | 4,741 |
| 21 | NCIS | USA | Sat | 09:00P-10:00P | 4,699 |
| 22 | NCIS | USA | Sat | 04:00P-05:00P | 4,607 |
| 23 | Iron Chef America (2 HRS) | FOOD | Sun | 08:00P-10:00P | 4,567 |
| 24 | NCIS | USA | Mon | 08:00P-09:00P | 4,535 |
| 25 | SpongeBob TRUTH OR SQUARE | NICK | Fri | 11:00A-12:00P | 4,514 |
Nielsen Ratings Data: ©2010 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved. All ratings above Live+SD (live viewing plus same day DVR viewing)
go wwe raw put a smackdown on tna
I was very impressed by TNA wrestling it was great to see them go against WWE. That is what I miss about wrestling competion between two different wrestling brands. I guess just watching WWE has become boring with the same old stuff.I would not want to watch The Cowboys play every night and I dont want to see the same old wrestlers everynight.So go TNA im watching and i love it.True wrestling is back..
I agree let Monday Night War II begin
@Joe says: –I agree let Monday Night War II begin
This was a one time Monday broadcast for TNA, or so I thought..thought it would be fun to see a repeat ofthe Mon night wrestling wars. That was a fun time.
TNA did very well to hold 2.2-2.5 Million fans against WWE and Football game. TNA did very good with a 1.5 rating on a different night against two heavy hitters. The show was excellent in every way as well. I wasn’t expecting to see Jeff Hardy, Ric Flair, or the Nasty Boys in TNA anytime soon. Ha Val Venis, Shannon Moore, Orlando Jordan were also there. Its great. Likely many of them will show up next Thursday as well. As most have contracts. Hall, Nash, Hogan, Waltman are all there as well with Eric. So we have NWO 2 it seems. Hope Hall stays away from the bars this time around. Hope TNA knows the right way to go with this whole NWO thing this time around things should work out better. This rating is solid enough for Spike TV to consider shifting the program to Monday Night I believe. By end 2010 Monday Night Wars 2 should be here.
WWE should be worried that Bret Hart didn’t push their ratings further than it did. They typically only draw in 4 million or so and that number is down a bit from last few years. Bret did draw in over a half a million more people though. Raw only did a 3. something rating. Its typically for RAW to get low 3. something ratings now. Sometimes upper 2. something ratings.
Monday Night Wars II is not happening. I can bet you mcmahon was watching the 1st hour of TNA and laughing. Hall and Nash will be good for 2 weeks. At the beginning of the TNA show they were outside talking to people and everyone was saying how TNA is going to take over, isn’t that the exact same thing WCW people said, and it did not work out. WWE has faced this once, and they know how to face it. TNA is no where near what WCW was. Yes TNA got hogan, just like WCW, but Hogan could still wrestle back then, and same with Flair. The only way TNA does it is if they can get some young talent going and find a Bill Goldberg figure
Why is everybody talking about TNA vs WWE in here? Those two went head to head on the 4th and this data ends at the 3rd. Anyway, I heard that TNA got a 1.5 cable rating, which could put it over 3 million viewers.
wwe has more viewers than tna. people know more about wwe than tna. besides wwe has john cena, randy orton, undertaker, triple h, shawn michaels, batista, rey mysterio, edge, chris jericho, big show, and kane. tna only has a few good wrestlers like aj styles, kurt angle, and jeff hardy
In response to Chris, On the TNA Roster you forgot: Sting, Kevin Nash, Jeff Jarrett, Samoa Joe, Daniels, Rhino, Team 3D, Bobby Lashley, Mick Foley, Abyss, and a ton of young guys that do things in the ring that astound me!
Now if you add to that the possibilities of Scott Hall, Sean Waltman recurring.
I used to watch WWE, but frankly they diluted the brand by splitting it up so much (ECW, Smackdown, Raw, etc.). TNA gives me two hours of entertainment and I get to see all my favorites. To do that I have to watch 5+ hours of WWE and suffer through 3+ hours of filler.
Plus, I love seeing those old school guys mix it up with the young hotshots, brings me back to those old days and the Monday Night Wars!
Do you have 18-49 demo ratings for the MNF? Also, any viewer #s and 18-49 demos for Mythbusters, which premiered on a Mon.? If so, much appreciated!
TNA wrestling you mean ex WWE wrestlers or do you mean wrestlers who
were thrown out of wwe for drugs and or alcohol. TNA will never be
relevent. Hulk [BAD HIP AND ALL] Hogan PLEASE
at least the WWE has younger stars
This is the a hilariously worthless argument. Soap opera for men, I guess.
I couldn’t even force myself to watch any more of TNA than I had to. I switched to Mythbusters during the RAW commercial breaks. The people at TNA need to understand that the formula that they are pushing didn’t work last time and people just are not going to go for that (same old song and dance) on the same scale as WWE.