Last night’s Winter Olympic coverage from Sochi on NBC averaged a preliminary 6.4 adult 18-49 rating from 8-11 pm. Events last night included: Women’s Super Combined, Men’s Moguls, and Men’s 1500m Short Track.  If NBC excludes the 8:00 half hour (if it held national commercials until 8:30 pm), the nightly rating will be a 6.6 adult […]

  Two pieces of diametrically opposed counterprogramming did just fine against last night’s WINTER OLYMPICS Closing Ceremony. THE WALKING DEAD easily beat the Olympics in 18-49s for the 3rd week in a row with a 6.6 rating, down 0.2 from last week.  It also had 13.1M total viewers (down 200K from last week).  That doubled […]

  Ratings information for Starz’s BLACK SAILS was never particularly abundant, thanks to a combination of the show’s slow Saturday berth, Starz not being forthcoming, and a general lack of buzz.  The series finale appears to have rated in line with its first 2 episodes, with 0.28 in 18-49 (that goes up to 0.45 with […]

  AFTERNOON UPDATE:  SVU’s 0.1 upward adjustment meant that it, too, beat AMERICAN IDOL on Wednesday.  MIXOLOGY also came up 0.1, as did each of the reruns that preceded it on ABC. WEDNESDAY CABLE:  A very slow night on cable, as the NBA game on ESPN led with 1.0, and AMERICAN PICKERS (0.9) was behind […]

The MLK holiday will cause delays for national television ratings (live+same day cable and broadcast) for several days.  As a rule of thumb, national holidays that close banks, stock markets or post offices also impact Nielsen ratings. Expect similar delays for Presidents Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s. This […]

  AFTERNOON UPDATE:  BAD TEACHER is already on life support, down another 0.1 in adjusted numbers to 1.4.  As often happens, THE BIG BANG THEORY gained 0.1 at the expense of THE MILLERS.  THE VAMPIRE DIARIES avoided tying its low with an extra 0.1.  All else was as-is–including the series low for AMERICAN IDOL–except that […]

  MULANEY:  Sunday 9:30PM on FOX THE FACTS:  John Mulaney, in real life a stand-up comic and TV comedy writer (most notably on SNL, where his biggest claim to fame may be co-creating Bill Hader’s Stefon character), plays one in the sitcom he created for himself, too.  His TV show boss is Martin Short, and […]

  NETWORK UPDATE:  As often happens because of its 8:31PM end-time, THE BIG BANG THEORY went up 0.1 in final numbers for its season finale, while THE MILLERS lost 0.1.  GREY’S ANATOMY also gained 0.1, while REIGN (which started at 9:01PM) was on the wrong side of an 0.1 adjustment. THURSDAY CABLE:  The NBA PLAYOFFS […]