American Idol was all Fox needed to take the adults 18-49 and 18-34 ratings crown for the week. CBS placed a strong second in adults 18-49 and topped adults 25-54 with a week of mostly repeats plus a big Sunday night with The Grammys. It was a pretty grim week for both NBC and ABC. ABC's likely to pick up this week with the season premiere of Lost. NBC can look forward to two weeks of the Winter Olympics, after that they're going to do their best to stay ahead of Univision in the weekly ratings. CBS, as is typical, topped the average viewership for the week.
Note that the chart includes RATINGS not VIEWERS as was typical in our weekly network ratings posts prior to July, 2009.
Each rating point is a percentage of the US TV population in that demographic group and equals: 2.90 million viewers, 1.32 million adults 18-49, 0.68 million adults 18-34 and 1.24 million adults 25-54.
You can see past week's broadcast network primetime weekly TV ratings results here.
Nielsen TV Ratings Data: ©2009 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved.
Wow, NBC really tanked!
Without The Biggest Lost, NBC would have been at a 1.32 rating in 18-49 for the week. Wow.
I think NBC will rise with their regular programming once Leno is gone. It will not be as pathetic. ABC had stronger than usual competition for females on Sunday and the strong duo of Greys and PP were repeats. Add LOST and regular Weds programs, and they will be up too.
You know for all the talk of cbs watchers being so old to be right behind fox in the 18-49 demo for the week with no on else even close and when they have two nights of Idol getting over a 7 on the demo it takes a lot of wind out of the argument