The Sked: RATINGS through Sunday December 25

Christmas week is one of the least-viewed weeks of the year -- and one of the most difficult to program.  But thanks to a Sunday Night Football game, a Christmas Eve tradition of airing It's a Wonderful Life, and a Christmas-themed SNL clip special, NBC will take the week of December 19-25 and will be the only network averaging over a 2 rating for the holiday week.

      Adult 18-49 Rating
      Primetime week of
      Dec 19-25, 2011


      NBC     2.2
      FOX     1.7
      CBS     1.4
      ABC     1.2  

Last night, NBC averaged a preliminary 6.6 Adult 18-49 rating for the Chicago Bears-Green Bay Packers game, which started at 8:30 pm ET.  After time zone adjustment, we expect the official national rating for the game to rise to a 7.5 rating, a solid but not spectacular Sunday Night Football game rating (given the games have rated over a 10 rating in some weeks).  But for a Christmas night, this is an excellent performance.

On the other networks, the only other significant viewing in primetime Sunday night was on ABC from 7-8 pm ET, when the overrun of the NBA Chicago Bulls-Los Angeles Lakers averaged a preliminary 3.3 rating.  (This number should rise to a low- to mid-4 rating after LA and the rest of the West Coast is properly counted in the official  nationals.)  The classic How the Grinch Stole Christmas animated special scored a 1.7 from 8:00-8:30, while the 2000 Jim Carrey movie version of the Dr Seuss book averaged a 1.1 from 8:30-11:00.  Repeats on CBS and FOX Sunday stayed at a 1.0 rating or below.

On Saturday night, NBC's traditional Christmas Eve broadcast of Frank Capra's classic It's a Wonderful Life (from 1946) won the night with a 1.4 rating.  The movie started slowly in the 8:00 pm half hour with a 0.9 rating but continued to build throughout the night to a 1.9 rating from 10:30-11:00.  FOX was second with a two-hour Terra Nova repeat (1.0 rating) from 8-10 pm, and ABC finished third with a 0.9 rating for 1965's The Sound of Music.  CBS averaged a 0.8 rating Saturday night with repeat series and news magazines. 

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