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, […]

A quick update. SEASON TO DATE through six full weeks (39 nights of official ratings and 3 nights of adjusted fast nationals), NBC is averaging a 2.77 rating in prime time (up 20% from the same period last year). CBS is back in second place with a 2.36 (down 17%). FOX is back in third place […]

Suddenly those ABC sitcoms aren’t such sure things. ABC:  For the third consecutive week, LAST MAN STANDING and MALIBU COUNTRY fell, to 1.4 and 1.3 respectively.  That’s particularly worrisome for Malibu, which dropped a big 0.4.  Both shows are still probably fine as long as they hold at their current levels (they continued to hold […]

Thanks to Nielsen delays, Chicago Fire had to wait to get some unaccustomed good news. NBC:  CHICAGO FIRE benefits by not airing against a new CSI on CBS, because their audiences, while overlapping, prefer the latter when they can get it.  (Why, you might ask, schedule the NBC show against such clearly strength-sapping competition?  Well […]

This past sports weekend was all about the Wild Card playoffs: four games arranged by the NFL in ascending order of audience appeal.  Sure enough, as the weekend progressed, the ratings steadily increased with each passing game.  The first game between the Bengals and Texans Saturday at 4:30 (16.2 HH rating in the 56 large markets with […]

  FX’s new series THE AMERICANS got off to a fast start last night, with a 1.2 in the 18-49 demo for its initial airing at 10PM, and 3.2M total viewers.  (Those numbers get bumped up to 2.0 and 4.7M when late-night re-airings are added.)  The 10PM numbers were comparable to the launches of American […]

Another night with little for the networks to cheer about. ABC:  The first 90 minutes of the night provided some good news, as THE MIDDLE rebounded a bit from last week’s low to 2.2 (up 0.3), THE NEIGHBORS was up 0.2 to 1.9 and MODERN FAMILY rose a tick to 3.9.  But the tick went […]

  Well hi, NO TOMORROW! DEMOGRAPHIC DETAIL: For each broadcast program (or hour segment), the chart below displays preliminary 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). Ratings analysis follows the chart. CBS:  The […]