More distortions by local coverage of NFL Preseason games, especially on CBS and FOX. DEMOGRAPHIC DETAIL: For each broadcast program (or hour segment), the chart below displays preliminary live+same day key advertiser demographics (adult 18-34, 18-49 and 25-54 ratings), audience skews (women 18-49, men 18-49 and adults 50+ shares) and total viewership (thousands of people over […]

HBO’s True Blood ticked up to a 2.7 rating, its best showing since the season premiere on June 10.  So far this season, True Blood started with a 2.9, then settled into a 2.6 for four straight weeks before hitting a 2.7 this past Sunday in its 9 pm time period.   At 10 pm Sunday on HBO, The […]

  SUNDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL gave a jolt to Sunday TV. DEMOGRAPHIC DETAIL: For each broadcast program (or hour segment), the chart below displays preliminary live+same day key advertiser demographics (adult 18-34, 18-49 and 25-54 ratings), audience skews (women 18-49, men 18-49 and adults 50+ shares) and total viewership (thousands of people over the age of 2). […]

  Some networks were untouched by the massive Olympics ratings being piled up by NBC, while others appeared to be hit hard. USA:  Last night’s BURN NOTICE showed the limitations of the USA house format, as what should have been a relatively serious hour following the death of a major recurring character was 90% the […]

The week heading into Labor Day is usually forgettable.  Television viewing is always very light the Thursday-Sunday before the holiday, and this past week the broadcast networks suffered through low ratings for the Republican National Convention (NBC ranged between a 0.9 and a 1.1 rating with Adults 18-49 at 10 pm Tuesday-Thursday, while ABC averaged […]

So much for the monkey. NBC:  ANIMAL PRACTICE lurched into the regular season with an awful 1.4 start, the lowest rated show in primetime (other than on CW) last night.  GUYS WITH KIDS did marginally better at 1.6, but that was still deeply in 4th place for its timeslot.  (Incidentally, in other NBC bad sitcom […]

Major League Baseball’s revised postseason format can’t be blamed for taking viewers away from the broadcast networks.  On Monday night, October 8, while The Voice posted a 4.8 rating with Adults 18-49, 2 Broke Girls managed a 3.4, and ESPN’s Monday Night Football of course hit a 5.7 rating in prime time, the main baseball playoff game of the day […]

  Advertising Age has issued its yearly survey of the actual prices (more or less) being charged by networks for 30-second national ads in their primetime programming, which allows us to do some back-of-the-envelope calculations about just how profitable each individual show and network may be.  We’ll get to the network-by-network calculus tomorrow, but today, […]