Ratings Increase / Decrease: 2009-10 Season vs. 2008-9 Season
The ratings losses at NBC vs. last season are looking increasingly grim, much worse than in the fall when the TV media were all over them for the Lenopocalypse. But now that NBC has issued a Leno mea culpa the bashing has ended, yet NBC's ratings are comparatively worse! Of course, the Winter Olympics will boost NBC's averages tremendously, but I'll separate the Olympics ratings out as best I can and report "with" and "without" results here. Don't expect the rest of the TV media to do that.
Fox's season ratings comparisons vs. last season will likely continue to slip back towards even, but not as fast as I might have expected. American Idol is down just 5% in adults 18-49 ratings vs. last season so far. That's good news for Fox and bad news for Idol haters.
CBS, ABC continue down across the board vs. last season. The Super Bowl will give CBS' numbers a big boost, likely into the positive range vs. last season. Count on the credulous TV media to ignore that and write "CBS is doing just fine" stories without looking at the numbers closely.
The CW's ratings averages are mostly flat compared to last season, but they would be about 20% ahead of last season across the board if they'd just kept their Monday-Friday numbers steady because of the automatic boost to their ratings averages just by dumping Sunday nights. Compared to last season, the CW's Monday-Friday ratings averages are down, but don't be surprised if the CW's crack PR troops can pull one over on the credulous TV media.
Season To Date Ratings
Fox remains in a season tie with CBS for adults 25-54 and widened its leads for adults 18-49 and 18-34 , while CBS seized the season to date viewership lead and my guess is will not let it go before the end of the season.
If it weren't for the boosts that the Winter Olympics will give NBC and the Super Bowl will give CBS, Fox's clean sweep of the main adult viewing demos would be all but assured. As it is, we'll have to see how those big sporting events reshape the averages going forward. The Super Bowl will boost CBS's season averages by about 10% from a single night.
You can see past week's broadcast network primetime season to date average TV ratings results here.
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.
Note that the chart includes RATINGS not VIEWERSHIP as was typical in our weekly network ratings posts prior to July, 2009.
Nielsen TV Ratings Data: ©2010 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved.
Lots of stuff to worry about here for CBS.
Acey @ CBS? Are you kidding me?
acey, I think your monitor is upsidedown
No joke, they need a young skewing drama. Criminal Minds is the best thing they have in that regard right now. The best attack is a balanced attack; surely being last in 18-34 is somewhat worrysome for CBS. Not sure why they haven’t been more proactive in experimenting with said dramas since they have such a stable lineup to fall back on.
RE: the credulous TV media.
It does seem they have mostly abandoned looking into things with any sort of eye for detail and analysis, doesn’t it? Sadly, between the “rush-rush-rush to get it out first” mentality and the failure (in most cases) to tell the difference between analysis and publicity spin, this is not going to change anytime soon. Little wonder so much information has to be double-checked these days to make sure there is something of a truth to it.
NBC is heading to the center of the earth with those declines. The Winter Olympics may help but that’s probably going to be like finding a ledge about 500 feet down, just large enough to sit on, but not stable enough to remain on, before falling the rest of the way into the abyss. Comcast, if they do end up with the ownership papers to NBC, is going to have a lot of work to do (and over more than one year) to reverse this mess. Good luck to them on that.
With them ditching the Leno experiment, NBC can’t even brag about the margins.
surely being last in 18-34 is somewhat worrysome for CBS.
Yes, being 0.1 behind second place has to have them in a tizzy.
RE: CBS, seeking younger audiences.
Well, the story about not finding what isn’t broke comes to mind and, in CBS’s mind, apparently nothing is broke… yet.
They’re only 0.1, at this moment, back in 4th place on the 18-34 and they are 2nd in the 18-49 range. They’re not that far off of the previous year, they have the Super Bowl coming up to help with their numbers across the board (although this site will factor that out to get a fairly close approximate on the real story in regard to numbers), and as noted, there is a stable line-up of shows.
So, for now, CBS is thinking “What, me worry?” They could try to build up some new shows that might interest younger viewers, but I doubt they see any real urgency to it yet.
Seems like id going to win this year again and NBC will soon be at CW level
Hi, Bill,
I’m wondering if there is an error in the numbers. In last week’s analysis, you reported that NBC was down 10 percent in the 18-49 demo with a rating of 2.6. In this week’s charts, you have NBC as being down 16 percent but the 18-49 demo is unchanged at 2.6. Other numbers on the NBC line don’t seem quite right either, in that they are drastic drops from the previous report that would not seem possible in just one week. Am I missing something here, or are the numbers incorrect?
Fair enough, Nightstar. And yes Holly I was looking at the fact that they’re 1.3 behind FOX, not that they are 0.1 back of ABC and NBC who don’t matter as far as the other 3 graphs are concerned.
Diane, the % differences in the first chart are vs. last seasons average at the same week in the season, not comparisons to last week’s ratings from this season.
To Diane’s question, which is a good one despite Bill’s explanation…
the versus last year chart compares this season’s s-t-d average through Sunday, January 31 to the s-t-d average last season for the same week. But last year that week ended February 1 and last year the Super Bowl was on February 1. So, while this year’s average didn’t drop week over week, the percentage decrease versus last year dropped considerably in just one week because this year, no Super Bowl.
@Acey
The graph’s are fine for CBS at the moment but they don’t bode well for its long term future. The majority of its audience appears to be somewhere between 34-49 so sometime in the next 10-15 years CBS ratings will probably face a heavy decline.
I assume this is limited to prime-time ratings? Should there be any correction to account for FOX having one fewer programmed hour during primetime compared to CBS? What would be a fair comparison? Neglect CBS’s worst performing prime-time hour each day?
Lurker, you could assume it is for primetime, or you could just look at the titles of the charts and be certain!
This just reports ratings for the duration of shows aired in primetime (typically 15 hours a week for FOX, 10 for the CW and 22 for the rest). the value to the networks with 22 hours is higher, since they can sell ads nationally for more hours, but in terms of figuring out who has the better ratings, I think the way Nielsen (and Bill) report it, is the way to go.
“not fixing what isn’t broke”, that is…
@Cullen One could expect a full turnover of programming for all the networks in 10-15 years, unlikely NBC will even be broadcast by then. You may be right, but it really is impossible to predict.
Robert’s explanation to Diane > Bill’s explanation.
I understand that, what I didn’t know is if what is considered primetime had been truncated to a common denominator for apples-to-apples comparison. Ultimately, is it fair or even informative to compare FOX 8-10 with NBC 8-11 instead of NBC 8-10? FOX the network (not the affiliates) scores a zero in the 11pm hour which is lower than The Jay Leno Show, but NBC’s average is penalized while FOX’s average is not.