Summer TV winners and losers

from broadcasting and cable

TV's Summer Scorecard
By Anne Becker

No matter the buzz for YouTube and other Internet video sites this
summer, Americans still love the boob tube. Summer primetime viewing
was right on par with last year, according to Nielsen Media Research.
For the sixth straight summer, ad-supported cable scored with original
programming, growing its audience a full percentage point and
commanding a 62.1% share of the primetime household viewing audience.

Broadcast, on the other hand, relied on reruns and reality shows,
losing both households and viewers 18-49 and eking out its lowest
summer share ever with 31.1%. Here is a scorecard of a few of this
summer’s high and low performers.

Winners

Fox: Strong numbers for So You Think You Can Dance, Hell’s Kitchen and
reruns of House helped make Fox the only broadcast network with
summer-to-summer gains. It jumped 12% in households.

NBC: The network was flat in household ratings, but America’s Got
Talent and Last Comic Standing helped it to a 16% gain over last year
in the 18-49 demo.

USA: Wrestling, solid performances by originals, including Monk, and a
huge 7.4 million viewers for a July showing of Pirates of the
Caribbean helped the network easily top the basic-cable charts with an
average 2.9 million total viewers, up 25% from last summer.

AMC: With about 10 million viewers, the network’s first original
movie, Broken Trail, was the most viewed cable program of the summer
and boosted the network 13% over last year.

Losers

ABC: The network had a dismal summer in the ratings, down 10% in
households and 10% in 18-49s after moving last year’s hit Dancing With
the Stars to fall. New reality shows The One: Making of a Music Star
and One Ocean View were yanked before they finished, as were
low-performing Lost reruns.

Patrick Joseph Mc Namara...

I wonder why Lost did so poorly in reruns. Could it be that people
downloaded them instead?

Zombie Elvis...

Or maybe because dramas in general, and genre dramas in particular
tend to rerun poorly.

CBS: Although the network claimed the biggest share of households for
the summer, it was down 5% in 18-49s. CSI struggled, and Big Brother
disappointed on Sunday nights.

Spike: The network’s first scripted original, Blade, couldn’t hold an
audience, and Spike dropped 15% year-to-year in 18-49, to 702,000.

Casey McDonald's Guidance Counsellor, Ian J. Ball...

This is terrible news, if true - if a show like "Blade", which was the
best show of the summer, can't make in the summertime, I fear pretty
much nothing can.

down 22% from last summer to 1.5 million viewers, continuing the
audience declines that the network has seen all year.