Ratings: Oprah, Newlyweds, Unhitched say goodbye to viewers


ABC won the night and Oprah won her timeslot, but the above headline probably works with or without the comma. Oprah’s Big Give was off more than 20% from its debut last week and it’s not lost on me that a repeat of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition pulled in more viewers and had just about the same 18-49 rating. Oprah had a better household rating, but that suggests to me that Extreme Makeover is another show that people watch together as families.

With Extreme Makeover doing that well in reruns…wow. Here Comes the Newlyweds also was down ~20% from last week. ABC did win the night in both total viewers and the 18-49 demo. FOX came in fourth in viewers, but 2nd in the 18-49 demo. CBS was the reverse of FOX coming in second in total viewers and next to last in the demo. Bad, bad news for CBS, which could not average even a 2.0 in the demo for the night.

In fact, the only show airing on CBS last night that cracked the “mendoza line” of the 2.0 in the demo was, drumroll please: Big Brother (with a 2.2). You remember the 162 posts I did slamming CBS for airing BB in premium timeslots? Definitely leaning towards taking that back!

The 7pm-8pm hour seemed to take a hit last night, especially in the 18-49 demographic because of the early arrival of Daylight Savings Time. No show scored above a 2.0 in the demo from 7pm-8pm.

More things that have me thinking. A repeat of Family Guy outperformed an original episode of The Simpsons. The Simpsons is still strong in the demo, but that’s not the first time this has happened.

NBC ran with a two hour installment of Most Outrageous Moments, followed by repeats of Law & Order and Law & Order: SVU. Not a great showing for the peacocks, but at least it did what CBS could not and average (exactly) a 2.0 in the demo.

Things will change soon when the word “repeat” is much less used for a while.

Source: TVBythenumbers.com