TV Ratings Friday: 'Kitchen Nightmares' Tops Night; 'Supernatural' Ends Down; Flashpoint Tumbles; Friday Night Lights Edges Up

Scoreboard
rating/Share: Adults 18-49	1.5/6	1.3/4	1.1/4	1.0/3	0.8/3
Total Viewers (million)	3.666	4.535	4.649	6.325	2.138

Fox won the night with adults 18-49 as the 8p original Kitchen Nightmares topped all programming on the night with a 1.6 adults 18-49 rating.  The rerun at 9pm didn't fare badly either, scoring a 1.4 adults 18-49 rating.

ABC was second for the night led by its unscripted fare.

NBC was third on the night with a mix of scripted and unscripted fare.  Friday Night Lights was up a tenth from last week's final numbers and up two tenths from last week's preliminaries to a 0.9 adults 18-49 rating. Its possible local preemptions played a role.

CBS was fourth for the night with adults 18-49, though it was tops in total viewers. With no other scripted originals behind it, Flashpoint tumbled 31%  from last week to a 0.9 adults 18-49 rating.

The two hour season finale of Supernatural finished with a 0.8 adults 18-49 rating,  down 20% versus its last original one hour episode two weeks ago.  Supernatural was preempted in Chicago for the first Cubs game in Fenway Park in over 90 years.  Presumably this should've have inflated the local numbers in Chicago since in the preliminary numbers viewing of the Cubs/Red Sox game is included below from 8-10p for Supernatural.

Overnight broadcast primetime ratings for Friday, May 20, 2011:

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NOTE: All ratings are "live plus same day" from Nielsen Media Research unless otherwise indicated.

Nielsen TV Ratings: ©2011 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved.

Definitions:

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.  More information on ratings is available here.

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.)

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.

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. 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.