AMC's Walking Dead and MTV's Jersey Shore remain at the top of the cable ratings chart this week, although both are down a few tenths from last week. Nevertheless, each program remains the top-rated program with young adults in their respective time periods, beating all broadcast and cable competition. Sunday at 9:00: #1 Walking Dead (3.5), #2 Once Upon a Time (3.4). Thursday at 10:00: #1 Jersey Shore (2.7), #2 Awake (2.0).
Click "read more" to see the updated cable chart.
Here's some welcome if unsurprising news: F/X has renewed JUSTIFIED for a 4th season. The show, now at the midpoint of Season 3 (the finale airs April 10) drew a 0.9 last week in 18-49s, which isn't Walking Dead crazy high, but is still a very solid number for a scripted cable series (outscoring such prominent shows as Royal Pains and Psych), and up a bit from last year.
The top two programs on cable this week aired on Sunday against the not-what-it-used-to-be but still very big Academy Awards on ABC. Most notable was Walking Dead on AMC at 9:00 pm, just when the awards ceremony was getting rolling. Facing the huge entertainment special, Walking Dead actually was up over last week, from a 3.6 to a 3.8 rating this week with Adults 18-49. The zombie drama scored a very credible second place to the Oscars (11.7) and far ahead of NBC's Celebrity Apprentice original episode (1.8), FOX's Family Guy repeat (1.6) and CBS's Mentalist repeat (0.9).
Earlier in the evening, the NBA All-Star Game faced off mostly against the Red Carpet arrivals shows on ABC and E!. The offense-heavy game (final score 152-149) scored a 3.3 rating from 7:16 pm on, ahead of the first half hour of ABC's Red Carpet arrivals (2.8 from 7:00-7:30) but falling to a solid second place to ABC's 7:30 (4.0) and 8:00 (6.2) Red Carpet half hours. The 7:30 portion of the Red Carpet arrivals on E! peaked at a 1.5 rating, a very good number for the second-tier cable network but nothing close to what ABC was able to deliver at the same time.
Personally, I never understood why broadcast networks, which pay huge license fees to the movie, music and TV academies (as well as the Hollywood Foreign Press Association), don't demand exclusive rights to broadcast live from the Red Carpet. Yes, it's only a 1.5 rating that E! is delivering, but most of that rating could be added directly to the network's own arrival show. Of course, Comcast owns both NBC and E! -- so let's put the Golden Globes aside because there is a corporate interest to allow E! at the Beverly Hilton. But for what ABC pays the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, they should own the event entirely. If E! wants a live camera, let them set up on a public sidewalk on the other side of Hollywood Blvd.
Jersey Shore has bottomed out a 2.9 rating Thursday at 10, still enough to make it #1 in the time period this week (ahead of the 2.6 for The Mentalist on CBS). The 2.0 for Gold Rush on Discovery Friday at 9 pm also puts it comfortably in first place in that hour, ahead of second place Grimm on NBC (1.5). As we move down the list, the numbers start to fall behind the broadcast competition. For example, Pawn Stars on History (1.8 Monday at 10:00 and 1.9 at 10:30) falls just behind ABC's Castle (2.1) for fifth place in the hour.
AMC's Walking Dead remains the top-rated cable program with Adults 18-49 this past week, settling down from its lofty season premiere rating the week before. Jersey Shore on MTV also drifted down (losing a tenth of a rating point to a 2.9), and Teen Mom 2 (also on MTV) tumbled half a rating point to a 2.0. Still good numbers, but like the broadcast competition, even top shows are eroding this mid-season at an alarming rate, well before the more expected swoon when the weather warms up and Daylight Saving Time hits.
Click "read more" to see the updated weekly cable chart.
AMC's Walking Dead is the new king of the weekly cable ratings chart, with a terrific 4.2 Adult 18-49 rating for Sunday's season premiere. Read more on the Walking Dead premiere here. The rest of the top-rated cable programs are pretty much unchanged. While Jersey Shore continues its downward trend, the other MTV hit, Teen Mom 2, ticked up nicely. Pawn Stars (History) and Gold Rush (Discovery) continue to deliver their reliably solid audience levels.
Also, new to the chart is History's Swamp People. While a 1.9 rating is very solid for a cable show, I'm not sure it justifies advertisement in the Super Bowl. Click "read more" for the complete chart.
Previously On... THE WALKING DEAD: Our erstwhile humans spent many, many episodes on a farm owned by cranky vet Hershel (Scott Wilson), while they searched for the missing Sophia (Madison Lintz). There were lots of lengthy conversations about the meaning of life in a zombie-infected universe, and whether it was worth going on--let alone having a baby, as it turned out Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies) was going to do. Meanwhile, her husband Rick (Andrew Lincoln) revealed that he knew about the affair Lori had been having with the increasingly Travis Bickle-like Shane (Jon Bernthal) while Rick was believed dead. Glenn (Steven Yuen) found romance with Hershel's daughter Maggie (Lauren Cohan). And then it developed that Hershel had been keeping a barn full of Walkers, including Hershel's wife, and even feeding them to keep them "alive," because he believed that one day there might be a cure. When Shane found out about the Walker barn, he started with the slaughtering, and at the very end of the fall finale, we discovered that--guess what?--Sophia was in there too, and had been for all the many, many weeks we'd all been on the farm. Rick shot her in the head, so that this plotline could finally, mercifully end
Not much change at the top of the weekly cable ratings chart, with Jersey Shore, Pawn Stars and Teen Mom 2 leading the pack. However, all three shows were down from recent highs as we enter the February sweep and these shows face nothing but original episodes on the broadcast networks.
Tosh.0 returned to Comedy Central for another burst of original episodes and score a very good 1.9 rating with young adults. As it hits all-time series highs on CBS Thursd, Big Bang Theory is also performing extremely well for TBS in the 10 pm hour weeknights.
Taste, elegance and intelligence tops the weekly cable programming chart. The parade starts with the young adults of Jersey Shore, moves across the Hudson River as Kourtney & Kim Take New York, touches the LA area with Pawn Stars, and one it goes through Teen Mom, WWE wrestling, Real Housewives, etc. It's not the classiest bunch of programs, but it is what viewers are choosing to distract themselves from the real world.
Full chart available by clicking "read more".
Updated weekly cable rating chart below. More of the same, fine shows such as Jersey Shore and Pawn Stars and Storage Wars top the list.
Most shows that are highly rated on cable are found in the 10 pm hour, but it is interesting to note the success ABC Family has in the 8 pm hour on Monday. Pretty Little Liars has built to a 1.4 rating with Adults 18-49 (with most of that rating concentrated with females under 35).
Complete chart after the jump.
With the NFL and college football bowl games off cable for the season, Jersey Shore has returned to its usual spot atop the weekly cable program ratings chart. Not far behind at an impressive 2.8 rating with Adults 18-49 is BET's The Game. Both numbers are what most broadcast network programs at 10 pm can only dream about these days. At 11 pm on Tuesday after The Game, Let's Stay Together also delivers a fairly impressive 1.9 rating, creating a very solid block for BET.
Pawn Stars on History Mondays is incredibly consistent -- a 2.4 rating for three straight weeks at 10:30 pm.
Finishing just below the chart's 1.0 young adult rating cutoff, Monday's Presidential Debate on FOX News at 9 pm averaged a 0.9 18-49 rating and a very old-skewing 5.5 million viewers 2+. At the other end of the age spectrum, iCarly on Nick at 7:30 pm (also on Monday) also averaged a 0.9 with a very kid-skewing 4.3 million viewers 2+. First Lady Michelle Obama appeared in the episode as herself.
ESPN's coverage of the BCS National Championship for college football Monday tops the cable ratings chart for the week of January 3-9. This year's 8.7 rating for the title game is down from a 10.1 last year -- not surprising because LSU was shut out.
MTV's Jersey Shore season premiere was the top entertainment program for the week, while Pawn Stars and Storage Wars continue to do well one notch below. The honors for the top scripted show goes to the finale of Disney Channel's Wizards of Waverly Place, scoring a 1.9 18-49 rating and almost 10 million viewers 2+ (especially good for a Friday night).
Weekly chart is available after the jump.
New Year's week was a busy one for cable. Just as the NFL (on ESPN Monday and NFL Network Thursday) leaves the stage, BCS college football steps in to take its place at the top of the weekly cable rankings. The Rose Bowl (the "granddaddy of them all") on ESPN was the top-rated cable program of the week, with a 5.5 Adult 18-49 rating and over 17.5 million viewers of any age in an average minute of the game. Another BCS game, the Fiesta Bowl (a thrilling overtime win by Oklahoma State after Stanford missed two field goals) scored a notch below (4.7 rating) immediately following the Rose Bowl.
Not all bowls are created equal, however. A total of 35 bowl games are played in December and January, and the vast majority (not part of the Bowl Championship Series) are completely irrelevant and end up in the low-1 rating range. Compared to the best collegiate playoff system (March Madness for men's basketball), the NCAA continues to serve up the worst system for college football by hanging on to a collection of "tradition-filled" bowls and pretending the BCS is some kind of a playoff format. The ratings for a three-week, eight-team playoff for college football would be absolutely enormous. Sure, 70 teams would no longer be able to say they were in a bowl game, and some sponsors would be disappointed. (What? No more Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl? No more Franklin America Mortgage Music City Bowl?) Somehow, I think the NCAA and the football conferences would find a way to make it after they received bids for a true playoff system that would provide ratings between a 7 and 12 across several weeks.
A three-week playoff would start with eight teams in late December, four teams would play the second week around January 1, and the final game would be played around January 8, roughly the current date for the national championship. The dates could be worked around the NFL schedule (the early round games on Friday/Saturday, the Jan 1 and Jan 8 games on whatever day of the week those dates fall -- unless January 1 is a Sunday; the dates would push to Jan 2 and 9).
ESPN's Monday Night Football concluded its season with a solid 5.6 rating with Adults 18-49, the top rated program on cable this week by far. On Christmas Day Sunday, the delayed NBA season tipped off at noon ET with a very good 2.5 rating on TNT for the Boston Celtics at New York Knicks. ESPN's later games (Orlando Magic at Oklahoma City Thunder at 7:58 pm ET and Los Angeles Clippers at Golden State Warriors at 10:30 pm ET) scored a 1.0 and 1.4, respectively.
As usual, other people's junk played well on History (Pawn Stars) and A&E (Storage Wars), both hitting a 1.9 rating this week. Also, hitting that very solid rating level was the 10 am telecast of the classic movie A Christmas Story during TBS's all-day marathon. That airing was perfectly timed for family viewing after the presents had all been opened.
Click "read more" to this week's cable chart, as well as updated Monday ratings for the broadcast networks.
ESPN's Monday Night Football was back with a vengeance this week -- a 6.4 Adult 18-49 rating for the Pittsburgh Steelers at San Francisco 49ers, the highest-rated game since November 7 (6.9 rating for Chicago Bears at Philadelphia Eagles). NFL Network was not so lucky Thursday, drawing the Jacksonville Jaguars at Atlanta Falcons. The game fell well below a 2 rating and out of the top 10 for cable programs this week.
On the unscripted front, A&E's Storage Wars has been growing steadily over the past few weeks and has taken the crown of top unscripted cable program. Almost as strong -- on less-viewed Friday night no less -- Discovery's Gold Rush continues to grow.
Showtime's Dexter ended its season Sunday with a ho-hum 1.0 rating. It should have been a series finale, but Showtime wants to grind out two more seasons of the once-great series that has become marked by wooden acting, predictable stories, clunky writing, and lazy narration. Showtime can be proud of the Homeland season finale, which rose to a 0.7 (after spending most of the season in the 0.4-0.5 range).
The lack of schedule flexibility (as NBC has with its late season Sunday Night Football games) has hurt the Monday and Thursday night football franchises recently. When match-ups feature teams with little to no playoff chances, ratings drift downward (although Monday and Thursday Night Football still sit atop the weekly cable ratings chart).
Discovery's American Chopper and MTV's Teen Mom share the honor of being the top unscripted entertainment program on cable this week, with History's Pawn Stars and A&E's Storage Wars not far behind.
FX's Sons of Anarchy remains the top scripted program on cable. HBO's Boardwalk Empire concluded a terrific season with a 1.3 rating (matching last week's season high). While not True Blood or Sopranos numbers, the series features writing and acting that matches HBO's best dramas. As Mitch Salem pointed out, the preview of Luck immediately following Boardwalk crashed to a 0.4 rating (below the threshold for the weekly chart). Next week, Showtime's Dexter concludes its creaky season (mercifully) and should be able to crack a 1 rating with any luck.
Really weak ratings for both ESPN's Monday Night Football and NFL Network's Thursday Night Football this week, but both still landed at the top of the cable ratings chart with Adults 18-49. Following close behind the Thursday night NFL game were unscripted king Storage Wars and top scripted show Sons of Anarchy, both of which were up substantially from last week.
Gold Rush continues to grow on Friday nights for Discovery, while Boardwalk Empire had an exceptional (for it) rating on HBO Sunday. The series deserved it as the episode (about Jimmy's complicated, to use a nice word, relationship with his mother) was truly outstanding.
An airing of the great movie The Hangover on TBS made the chart with a very solid 1.6 rating. It continues to amaze that people will sit through a neutered version of a film (tame language, a no-longer-naked Mr Chow jumping out of the trunk?) chopped up by over a dozen long commercial breaks. Yes, movies are available on demand, on Netflix, and via streaming. But the durability of networks amid this torrent of change is also amazing. At the end of the day (literally), the mass audience still just wants to sit back and be entertained.
Once again football tops the weekly cable ratings chart. ESPN's Monday Night Football was in its usual #1 position with a solid 5.6 Adult 18-49 rating, but the big number was turned in by the NFL Network's Thursday Night Football (a very good 4.1 rating, almost double the performance of the franchise two weeks ago). The Thanksgiving night telecast featured the first NFL contest between two head coach brothers (John and Jim Harbaugh).
AMC's Walking Dead finished its season with a very good 3.5 rating, while History's Pawn Stars took the top unscripted entertainment crown this week (2.1 rating).
One of the most impressive numbers comes from Discovery's Gold Rush. A 1.7 rating does not sound extraordinary until you consider it comes on lightly-viewed Friday night, and that 1.7 also represents a continuation of a steady and sustainable build ,for the show.
This past week in cable, ESPN's Monday Night Football drifted down to a 4.9 rating with Adults 18-49, still the highest-rated cable program by far. NFL Network's Thursday Night Football rose to a 2.9 rating.
AMC's Walking Dead continues to soften but remains the top-rated scripted series on cable. About one rating point behind Walking Dead, FX's Sons of Anarchy nonetheless continues to rise slowly. Moving in completely the opposite direction, Hell on Wheels (Sundays at 10 on AMC after Walking Dead) is collapsing, from a 1.9 two weeks ago to a 1.2 this week.
A pretty typical week on cable in prime time, with ESPN's Monday Night Football leading the way (Green Bay Packers thumping the Minnesota Vikings). On the scripted front, AMC's Walking Dead is ahead by a mile. The program's lead-out, Hell on Wheels, dropped a big four tenths of a rating point, from a 1.9 last week to a 1.5.
Most of the other cable shows were well within their normal range.
It's been a good week for the sport of football (except if you happen to work at Penn State). The Sunday Night Football game on NBC averaged an 8.8 rating with Adults 18-49, the Saturday night college football game on CBS (#1 vs #2 teams) scored a 7.2 rating, and the ESPN Monday Night Football game averaged a 6.9 rating. Two NFC teams (Chicago Bears and Philadelphia Eagles) and a close, back and forth contest put MNF back on track.
Walking Dead on AMC bounced back from a weak number last Sunday, and Gold Rush on Discovery Friday grew even stronger. American Horror Story on FX Wednesday has leveled off at a very solid 1.6 rating.
