Americans, faced with tragedy, gather around their television sets. For the death of Whitney Houston, that meant the GRAMMYS.
CBS: The sudden (and not so sudden) death of Whitney Houston turned the Grammys into An Event that transcended the usual awards-plus-glamor formula, and the result was a giant 14.1 rating, more than 2 rating points higher than last year's Academy Awards (and given this year's Oscar prospects, almost certain to be the season's highest-rated awards show). Beyond the ratings, the show will undoubtedly give a huge boost in sales to the artists (especially the night's It Girl, Adele) who performed or won awards during the broadcast. (A side note: although advertisers are guaranteed a minimum rating for their commercials, and receive compensation if those numbers aren't hit, they get the full benefit of unexpectedly high ratings, meaning that all the sponsors of last night's show received windfalls worth millions of dollars.)
ABC: Every other network suffered accordingly, and none more so than ABC, whose female-skewing lineup is geared to compete with NFL Football, but not with a colossus that attracts that same audience. ONCE UPON A TIME was down about 10% from the episodes that competed with NFL playoff games, and that was the good news. DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES hit a low that was 30% below its previous all-time bottom, and the penultimate episode of PAN AM was an embarrassing 0.7.
FOX: Young guy-skewing shows weren't immune either, and FOX hit season lows across the board. Its animated schedule was down 20% even from the weeks when CBS aired the late NFL playoff games.
NBC: The network had basically given up on this night already (it'll launch the new season of Celebrity Apprentice next week), so comparatively speaking, it had the least to lose. DATELINE and a FEAR FACTOR special did a 1.6 and 1.5, respectively, and on a cost-benefit basis that was probably the most effective competition of the night.
Tonight NBC bites its fingernails, as it waits to find out how many people will come back for a second helping of THE VOICE and, especially, SMASH. This still being sweeps, the shows face all-new competition on every network.
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