Weekly Nielsen Ratings Report for Week Ending 8/5/07:
The weather wasn't the only thing getting hot last week-ratings issues heated up too, especially at the cable network USA. It started when WWE Raw on Monday night managed an alarmingly low (by show and network standards) 2.5 rating. Normally the show averages a 3.8 but had done 3.4 the last several weeks. It was later revealed that Nielsen had "techinical issues" that affected several cable networks last week and a revised rating would later be issued. If it has, I haven't seen it yet. Funny what heat can do.
Elsewhere, you had to love it last week: More Jerry, No More Paris. As noted a few days back, the Jerry Springer-hosted "America's Got Talent" got a 3rd season pickup after it finished #1 last week with 11 million tuning in. The better: The cable network E! dumped "The Simple Life" after it's presumed series finale this past Sunday-only 600,000 viewers tuned in. Of course those insert-term-here-for-brains dingbats at 20th Century Fox, who produces the show, reportedly were hoping another network may pick it up. As if what Fox has done in the past wasn't bad enough! On the not-so-flip side, Nicole Richie, pregnant and jail-bound (albeit for "only" 4 days), did attract about 6 million on Friday when she did "20/20" on ABC. The 4 day sentence, for those wondering, is for driving the wrong way on an L.A. freeway under influence of drugs. Who doesn't in L.A. Fox was still hot on the heels of NBC in the ratings though, with "So You Think You Can Dance" and "Hell's Kitchen" right behind the NBC shows in the ratings, Dance topping out at 9.6 million for Thursday's show, Kitchen cooking up 8.6 million Monday night. Also was one other season finale last week, "Shaq's Big Challenge" gets The Big Fate TBD tag after wrapping up it's first run with 5.5 million viewers Tuesday at 9.
One other note from cable, TNT's "The Closer" got a 4th season after nearly 8 million tuned in last week, once again cable's #1 rated program. It nearly made the overall Top 10.

The Week's Top 10 Most Watched Shows, in order: "America's Got Talent", "The Singing Bee", Thursday's "So You Think You Can Dance", "Two And A Half Men", "Without A Trace", "CSI", "60 Minutes", "CSI: Miami", "Hell's Kitchen", Wednesday's So You Think You Can Dance.

8/10 News: Mark your calendars...The Victoria's Secret Fashion Show will air December 4 at 10 PM on CBS.

This message was edited by SummonerSupreme on Aug 10 2007.

ABC has announced some schedule changes today that will affect Wednesdays, effective immediately:
Both "The Knights Of Prosperity" and "The Nine", cancelled but brought back to finish their short runs, have been cancelled again. 2 episodes of Knights are left unaired, 4 episodes of The Nine are unaired. It's not known if they'll air online. The 8 PM hour will be filled by "According To Jim" repeats, the 9 PM hour filled by "Primetime: The Outsiders" repeats, with the 10 PM hour being filled by new series "NASCAR In Primetime". It's being listed as a change but I believe NASCAR is going to be in what was already it's scheduled timeslot. The show is scheduled to run for 5 weeks.
The changes come after The Alphabet managed only a 1.8 rating with a 3 share last Wednesday with a .8 18-49 rating according to the fast nationals. Those are record lows for ABC for that night. (A 3 share means that 3% of all households watching TV in the US were watching ABC that night)

Weekly Nielsen Ratings Report for Week Ending 8/12/07:
Are you ready for some football? That's right, everyone's favorite time of the year is about upon us-football season. Where the weekends (and ratings) are all about the pigskin. The NFL returned to the airwaves with a couple of preseason games late last week. They didn't draw very well, but this isn't a surprise-preseason games are relatively meaningless and the big names only play a few plays if at all. Fox's first game Thursday night averaged about 7.4 million, CBS' first game Friday night drew about 4.4 million, and NBC's first Sunday night game, sans Football Night In America pregame, just under 6 million. These numbers, of course, will go way up in 3 weeks or so. Elsewhere, it was close to winding-down time for most of the big summer series last week-Fox's "Hell's Kitchen" wrapped up its 3rd season with just under 9 million last week, and Monday's fast overnights indicate this past Monday's finale bumped that number up to 10 million for the revealing of the winner-Rock Harper, exec. chef at B Smith's at Washington's Union Station (Represent!). I'll check him out if my budget ever allows. As for the coming, the new CBS game show "Power Of 10" debuted last Tuesday with 9.2 million viewers. Some of the Power disappeared the next night, as it's Wednesday time-slot debut only managed 7.8 million. Maybe it was because people heard about Drew Carey's injury during a Price Is Right taping, something that never happened to Bob Barker (Drew will be fine, just a hand injury). And a case of a show getting bad ratings that's not so bad-ABC left anthology series "Masters Of Science Fiction" for dead on Saturday nights. But it's not dead. Sure, 3.4 million viewers isn't much at 10 PM Saturday, but that's up 24% from the series premiere the week before and, even more shocking, up nearly 40% in that coveted 18-49 demo. As for the other Alphabet debuts this last week, "Fat March" premiered Monday with a thin 4.3 million, although these wight-loss shows do often start slow. The ABC News program "i-Caught" opened to 6.2 million Tuesday night at 10, winning the 10-10:30 timeslot. On NBC, "America's Got Talent" once again led The Peacock with about 11 million over it's 90 minutes, while "Age Of Love" called it a match for now with 7 million-no doubt helped by "The Singing Bee" giving it 8.2 million to work with.

On cable, there was plenty to talk about again, good and bad. TNT's "The Closer" extended it's winning streak to 8 weks with another strong showing of over 7.5 million. On TLC, it was a double dose of sorts-the network scored the TV rights to the Miss America pageant and will likely make a related reality show next year leading up to it...now let's not forget that the TLC is supposed to stand for The Learning Channel. I don't see much educational value there. On the other side, a falling out between one of the "Miami Ink" co-stars and her tattoo shop's co-owner led to "L.A. Ink". It opened shop last week to nearly 3 million-more than double the draw of seasons 1 & 2 in Miami. Over on Comedy Central, it was good & bad for "The Comedy Central Roast Of Flavor Flav"-overall it cooked up 3.8 million viewers. The good: It outdrew the "John In Cincinnati" finale on HBO, more on that shortly, and was the most-watched ever roast on Comedy Central among the 18-34 demo, which is really all they care about (besides the loyal South Park fans). The bad: It's only about half as many tuning in as when they roasted Jeff Foxworthy in '05 and less than the 4.3 million for Pamela Anderson's. On MTV, "The Real World" 1,243,803,574,957...actually, only #19, opened with 1.6 million. That was only the same as the debut crowd for #18, and way down from the 3-4 million #14-17 drew. A sign that #20, coming soon, could maybe be it, but we'll see. Now back to John-only about 1.3 million tuned in to the series finale Sunday night on HBO, and thus it got cancelled. This is a surprise for a couple reasons-one, a one & out is almost unheard of on HBO...this may be the first time in recent history. The premiere, for the record, only got 1.2 million. There actually were plans for 2 2-hour movies to wrap up "Deadwood", the other series by the guy who came up with this series-those might've just gotten better than 50-50. And good news is on the way anyway from HBO-the time will again soon be...Real Time. HBO, without telling anybody, renewed popular series "Real Time With Bill Maher" last month for a 6th season, just in time for the return of the series for part 2 of it's 5th season, scheduled to premiere next Friday night. New Rule-tune in and agree, disagree, and laugh at more Maher!

The Week's Top 10 Most Watched Shows, in order: "America's Got Talent", "60 Minutes", "CSI", Tuesday's "Power Of 10", "Without A Trace", Tuesday's "The Singing Bee", "Two And A Half Men", "Hell's Kitchen", "Criminal Minds", Wednesday's "Dont Forget The Lyrics".

Late edit: One midday news item-the cable network Sci Fi has cancelled new series "Painkiller Jane". It will finish it's first and now only season of 22 episodes but won't be renewed.

This message was edited by SummonerSupreme on Aug 15 2007.

More news from a busy week:
ABC announced more schedule changes today-"Primetime" has been moved to Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 10, effective immediately. "i-Caught" moves to Tuesdays at 9, "NASCAR In Primetime" moves to Wednesdays at 9. The move comes after NASCAR In Primetime opened with a very low 1.3 18-49 rating based on last night's fast overnights. The show's overall rating was 2.1. The 8 PM hour both nights remains unchanged.

NBC announced it will preview the new game show "Crosswords" on September 8 at 8:30, right after The Peacock's Fall Preview Special. The show, co-produced by Program Partners, Merv Griffin Entertainment and the William Morris Agency, then begins its syndication run September 10.

And finally, some very sad news as it relates to Merv Griffin...the Hollywood game show icon, who gave us such shows as "Wheel Of Fortune" & "Jeopardy!", died Monday after a battle with prostate cancer. He was 82. Merv started out with his own talk show in the early 1950s and hosted it for 25 years before creating his still-popular syndicated game shows, then moving on to the hospitality business (his properties are owned & operated under the Merv Griffin Resorts label) and more recently horse racing (in the past year his horses made this year's Kentucky Derby and won a Breeder's Cup race). Merv is survived by his son Tony, his daughter-in-law Tricia, two grandchildren, Donovan and Farah, a sprawling extended Irish Catholic family, and more friends and fans than anyone could possibly know-and I have always counted myself as one of those fans. A private service is planned for tomorrow.

CBS has announced a couple of schedule changes and other items today:
The Eye has ordered 4 more episodes of new game show "Power Of 10" and will expand the show to 2 nights a week. The additional airing will be Tuesdays at 8 PM, effective immediately, in addition to the regular airing Wednesdays at 8. "Big Brother 8" will air Tuesdays at 9, with "NCIS" moving into the 10 PM timeslot. The season finale of Power Of 10, which was scheduled for September 19, has been moved to Sunday, September 23, because CBS is premiering new reality series "Kid Nation" on the 19th (it's regular timeslot will be Wednesdays at 8).

CBS also announced the "castaways" and details for Season 15 of "Survivor", which will take place in China. This one will have some star power-2 names may be famililar to wrestling fans & card players: WWE Diva Ashley Massaro and Professional Poker Player Jean-Robert Bellande. More details about this go-around:

quote

SURVIVOR: CHINA will feature a cast of 16 Americans who will begin the series amid the bustle of downtown Shanghai before moving to HuangPu Mountain's Mi Tuo Temple for a Buddhist ceremony where they will be instructed to leave all of their worldly possessions behind. The castaways will then be marooned with the clothes on their back at two separate islands on Zhelin Lake (translation: the Land of 1,000 Lakes) located in the Jiangxi Province. They will split into two tribes, Fei Long (translation: Flying Dragon) and Zhan Hu (translation: Fighting Tiger), and will each be given a copy of Sun Tzu's The Art of War for tribe motivation and assistance throughout the game.

SURVIVOR: CHINA will once again afford each tribe the opportunity to obtain a Hidden Immunity Idol which may save someone from elimination at a future Tribal Council. This time, two Hidden Immunity Idols will be in plain sight (one at each camp), although the castaways will not realize this at the start of the game. Each week, the winning tribe of the Reward Challenge will be allowed to kidnap someone from the losing tribe. The person who is kidnapped will receive a note from host Jeff Probst before departing for the enemy camp and will be instructed to give it to one member of the enemy tribe (the kidnapped victim will decide who receives it) in private. The clue will inform this person of the Hidden Immunity Idol located somewhere at their camp. This person must then decide if they wish to share the information with their tribe or keep it to themselves. The kidnapped victim will return to their original tribe at the following Immunity Challenge.

Weekly Nielsen Ratings Report for Week Ending 8/19/07:
Last week might have been about the pigskin, next week might be about the pigskin, but this week was all about kids & mouse ears. As noted earlier in the week, the cable network Disney Channel's premiere of the movie "High School Musical 2" was the most-watched program ever on basic cable, as an astounding 17.24 million tuned in. That's over 6.4 million more than any other show on all of TV. Not to mention HSM2 was tops in the kids, teens, and fangirls 18-49 demos, to the tune of 81% of girls between 8-10:05. In fact, those numbers alone made Disney #3 overall among all networks for the week. Considering his fangirl-fueled movie "Hairspray" just hit $100 million at the box office too, it's good to be Zac Efron right now. Yeah, never heard of him either. But I also don't have kids and don't watch Disney. Then again, it might also be good to be Hannah Montana-HSM2 helped this show draw an estimated 10.7 million at 10:20 Friday, also good enough to make the top 10. At 10:45, another episode held on to over 8 million. Just a good night for Disney as the HSM2 lead-in, "The Suite Life Of Zach & Cody", benefitted from buildup, giving HSM2 over 8 million to start with. It's also good to be an HSM fan, and subsequently bad to be a parent with an HSM fan-a 3rd one is said to be on the way down the road. Get ready to take out that loan for all the related merchandise too. As for marathon replays, a Saturday HSM2 replay brought 8.4 million back for it. On Sunday, 7.5 million sat through it again. Elsewhere on cable, History Channel's new hit series "Ice Road Truckers" finished it's first season with a very cool 4.8 million viewers, the biggest crowd ever in History's history. Over it's initial 10 episode run, the show's average audience was a just-as-cool 3.2 million. As for the usual #1, TNT's "The Closer", all the HSM hype & Disney Friday crowd bumped it all the way down to #7, but it still managed an always-strong 7.3 million.
Back on the broadcast nets, CBS again led the way overall despite only putting "60 Minutes" in the weeks top 5 shows and only managing just under 3 million for an NFL Preseason game Saturday night (possibly hurt by some markets, including Washington, opting for coverage of local games-the CBS affiliate in Washington simulcast a cable feed of the Redskins-Steelers game instead). As the summer finales continue, most drew solid numbers last week-the "Hell's Kitchen" finale, first touched on last week, had an official final crowd of 9.7 million, the show's biggest yet. Thursday's 2 hour "So You Think You Can Dance" finale managed 9.6 million, up very slightly from last year's finale. The Eye ordered 4 more episodes of "Power Of 10", although the ratings don't seem to justify it-since it's debut on a Tuesday when it drew 9 million, it's moved to Wednesday and is now down to 7.7 million. And ABC isn't getting much love in primetime either-a clear sign that although Disney owns The Alphabet, it's focusing more on the cable mouse ears. ABC's primetime average last week was just 4.4 million, with no Top 10 shows-it's best performer, "Extreme Makeover Home Edition", managed just 7.6 million-only #18. It's new newsmagazine "NASCAR In Primetime", now headed for a 9 PM timeslot, debuted Wednesday at 10 with just 3.2 million, a very distant 3rd of 3. Also losing on cable-"Painkiller Jane" has been killed by Sci Fi. Overall it's average to date has been just 955,000 viewers but it was done in last Friday by just 880,000 viewers. It's still scheduled to finish it's only season. On TNT, the miniseries "The Company" didn't have much-just 2.3 million on average for 3 2-hour episodes, with Sunday's finale only drawing 1.9 million.

The Week's Top 10 Most Watched Shows, in order: Friday's 8 PM "High School Musical 2", "America's Got Talent", Friday's 10:20 PM "Hannah Montana", "60 Minutes", "The Singing Bee", "Hell's Kitchen", Thursday's "So You Think You Can Dance", "CSI", "Two And A Half Men", "Without A Trace".

Some Thursday news:
First up, see "Anchorwoman" last night? Miss it? No big deal, you only missed the entire series! After just one night and 2 episodes, Fox has reportedly cancelled this new show, thus proving that WWE divas who aren't named Stacy Keibler or Trish Stratus should stick to bad wrestling. According to the fast overnights, the 2 episodes only managed about 3.8 million viewers (a 2.0 rating) and a measly 1.0 rating in the 18-49 demo. If it's truly done then 3 of the 5 episodes will be left unaired. As usual no word about online streaming.

CBS has announced that the 25th season of the hit syndicated game show "Wheel Of Fortune" will kick off on Monday, September 10. Expect lots of special weeks, giveaways, and Wheel flashbacks throughout the year. The show remains TV's #1 syndicated series, a record it's held it's entire run. As far as Wheel's future, it'll stick around a while even without creator Merv Griffin-it was renewed in January for what will be through it's 29th season.

The Eye also announced that Monday, October 15 will mark Year 1 A.B. of "The Price Is Right" (A.B. being After Bob Barker). The 36th season of TV's longest-running game show will be the first for new host Drew Carey. It will continue in its regular timeslot, weekday mornings at 11 AM ET (10 AM PT).

Fox has announced that, starting today, the entire series premiere of new drama "K-Ville" will be streamed online free for a limited time. The show debuts September 17. The real draw to this might be that also included is the first 17 minutes of the 3rd season premiere of "Prison Break". Both videos air without commercials.

Edit: More details on Anchorwoman...the revised viewership estimate for the only airing is 2.7 million. Fox announced that the 3 unaired episodes will be available online through Fox On Demand. The Wednesday 8 PM hour will be filled by "'Til Death" repeats for the next 3 weeks.

This message was edited by SummonerSupreme on Aug 23 2007.

Weekly Nielsen Ratings Report for Week Ending 8/26/07:
Another streak ended last week...Fox is no longer the king of the highly coveted 18-49 demo. The streak dated back to Super Bowl week, thanks largely to summer hits and that unstoppable American Idol juggernaut. But a week without the summer shows and the "America's Got Talent" finale helped combine to put NBC on top there. The 2nd season Talent finale drew nearly 14 million over 2 hours, thanks largely to nearly 15.3 million in hour 2-more than double the other networks' draws in that hour. The only show besides Talent to reach the 10 million mark this week was "CSI". The Peacock also got good numbers for Sunday night's NFL preseason game-9.2 million who watched Philly vs. Pittsburgh is the largest crowd for any game so far this preseason. It's about that time where the men take over and kick the teens off the tube, as also evident last week-NBC's coverage of the Miss Teen USA pageant drew just 4.3 million viewers, the pageant's smallest ever and probably a smaller audience-to-be than the total viewings of the clips of Miss South Carolina botching a geography question now on P-Utube. No comment. Then on Sunday, Fox's Teen Choice Awards managed only 4 million, also a record low for the awards. Guess all the teens were too busy watching High School Musical 2 replays. And it naturally was worse for The Fox-the first and only episode of "Anchorwoman", that supposed-to-be reality series with some blonde who was a former WWE Diva (unfortunately it wasn't soon-to-be star Stacy Keibler or now-retired and unfortunately married-to-be hottie Trish Stratus, just someone named Lauren Jones...who?) did an official number of about 2.6 million viewers, only beating The CW. As for the critical ratings failure "On The Lot", which likely was only kept on to avoid making Steven Spielberg very unhappy with The Fox, the season (and hopefully series) finale drew just 2.4 million viewers, about it's average for the series. In fact, without it's reality shows Fox only won most of Monday with "TV's Funniest Moments" (it lost at 9 though) and Saturda with "Cops" and "America's Most Wanted". At least that's better than ABC-The Alphabet's top show this week, "Just For Laughs", only managed 7.7 million and the only top show in a timeslot was "20/20". But it only had to beat Miss Teen USA and NFL on CBS. Only a couple more weeks though. NBC probably can't wait either, it's reruns of hit series have just stunk. Take last week-only 3.5 million watched "Thank God You're Here", but maybe more surprising is that not even 3 million care about "Heroes" reruns. Maybe they're like me and beyond sick of all the hype and advertising about 9/24/07. Must be something happening that day that I shouldn't care about, unless it's a good Monday Night Football game.

On cable, Lifetime's record-setting new series "Army Wives" naturally set one more record in it's season finale-the crowd of 4.1 million once again reset the network's biggest original series audience ever, a record it reset in virtually every episode. And for those who missed it, Comedy Central re-upped for at least 3 more years of "South Park", guaranteeing the animated comedy series will last at least 15 seasons. Even though it's aging quite a bit, it's aging well-at the halfway point of season 11 (it's on hiatus untul October) it's still averaging 3 million viewers and has been the #1 cable series among men 18-34 for 4 years now. As the boys would say, Sweet.

The Week's Top 10 Most Watched Shows, in order: "America's Got Talent", "CSI", "Without A Trace", "Two And A Half Men", NBC's Sunday Night NFL coverage, "60 Minutes", "The Singing Bee", "Power Of 10", "Cold Case", "Criminal Minds".

No on-schedule report next week, the weekly ratings will be delayed due to the Labor Day holiday. Thus next week's report should appear Thursday instead of Wednesday.

This interesting news item is for those in the UK, just so you can't say I don't care about you...just kidding. But it's news worth noting-those of you that have iTunes can now, effective immediately, download nearly 30 hit TV shows to watch on your iPod, iPhone, PC/Mac (as long as you've got a 2 GHz with at least 512 MB RAM), or Apple TV from the UK iTunes Store. 28 shows are now available with more coming. Individual episodes will cost 1.89 UK (my keyboard doesn't have the pounds symbol) and are near-DVD quality downloads at resolutions of up to 640x480. The list of available shows so far:
From ABC: Lost, Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy, Ugly Betty, Commander In Chief, Night Stalker
From Disney for kids: American Dragon: Jake Long, Kim Possible, That's So Raven, The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, and Playhouse Disney titles Handy Manny, Little Einsteins, and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse
From the cable network MTV: Pimp My Ride, Barrio 19, Bam's Unholy Union, Laguna Beach, My Sweet 16
From the cable network Nickelodeon: Avatar: The Legend of Aang, Drake and Josh, Dora the Explorer, Genie in the House, and SpongeBob SquarePants
From Paramount's selection of hit comedy series: South Park, Comedy Blue, Jongleurs Unleashed: Part I, That '70s Show, and The World Stands Up...and for those wondering about South Park, the UK store currently has seasons 9 & 10-including Make Love, Not Warcraft. Happy Downloading.

Other news: NBC has announced that, effective immediately, nbc.com will begin streaming episodes of "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" online. Streams of each night's episodes will be available the same day starting at 3 PM ET.

This message was edited by SummonerSupreme on Aug 30 2007.

A couple news items today:
There are reports circulating that, effective sometime later this year, iTunes will no longer carry NBC TV shows for download. It apparently stems from a dispute over NBC wanting Apple to charge more per episode for their content to be bought from iTunes, to the tune of a ridiculous $4.99 per episode (normally TV shows are $1.99 per episode). This likely will affect shows from the cable network Sci Fi as well since it's owned by NBC Universal. And considering NBC is 4th this season in the ratings, this is only going to make it worse for them. This isn't going to make some people happy either, me among them.

It's just as bad at ABC on Wednesdays as well, as The Alphabet once again has made some schedule changes for that night...but this time it's just for the next 2 weeks. "NASCAR In Primetime, moved from 10 PM to 9 PM, is going back to 10 PM. "Primetime: The Outsiders" repeats will be dropped for "Just For Laughs" repeats. September 19 has the one-hour special "Come Rain or Come Shine: From Grey's Anatomy to Private Practice" at 9 PM with an encore of "Primetime: Medical Mysteries" at 10 PM. September 26 is when ABC's regular schedule for fall takes over. It's not clear if the aforementioned special will be simply a re-edited version of "Practice's" two-hour backdoor pilot, a behind-the-scenes look at the spin-off or a mix of both. Further details obviously will be released in the coming weeks. Ratings-wise, the fast overnights for Wednesday indicate NASCAR did a 2.4 rating with a 1.4 18-49 rating. At 10, Primetime did 2.6 and 1.2. NASCAR beat only The CW in both ratings demos. Primetime was 3rd out of 3.

Weekly Nielsen Ratings Report for Week Ending 9/2/07:
Everyone loves the week before Labor Day vacation time. Except the broadcast nets. Evident last week by a ratings wipeout across the boards-only one show reached double digits and CBS won all but just 3.5 hours of primetime last week. Said only double digit show was "Two And A Half Men" on The Eye, managing 10.3 million viewers. While CBS was the big winner, NBC was the big loser-with "America's Got Talent" done for the year, The Peacock saw its average for the week fall to 4.1 million, it's smallest weekly crowd since the late 80s. But then again, ABC managed only 4.25 million, Fox 4.38 million. CBS had 7 million. Probably didn't help that there was almost no football-the one game on the broadcast nets, Saturday's College Football primetime opener on ABC (California-Tennessee), drew about 5.3 million. ESPN's Monday night preseason game (Cincinnati-Atlanta) managed close to that, roughly 5.22 million. ESPN also had high numbers for Sunday night's NASCAR race at California, with nearly 6.4 million sticking with it until 12:15 AM, at least for those like me on the East Coast. Trust me, it takes a lot of Game Fuel (new Mountain Dew out until Halo 3 is released this month). Also on cable, no surprise that "The Closer" does it again. Nearly 7.8 million last week actually put it in the top 10 for the week. So far this season the show's ratings are up over 20% from last season. On TNT's sister station TBS, "The Bill Engvall Show" finished its first season with an average of 3 million viewers, earning it a second season. Said show star is one of those Blue Collar Comedy guys, or so I hear.

The Week's Top 10 Most Watched Shows, in order: "Two And A Half Men", Tuesday's "Power Of 10", "CSI: Miami", "CSI: NY", "Criminal Minds", Wednesday's Power, Tuesday's "Big Brother 8", "House", "The Closer", "CSI".

And an update from NBC on the whole iTunes fiasco-The Peacock quickly found a new home for its TV show downloads: Amazon. It's moving to the Amazon Unbox service, which also offers TV show downloads, usually the day after the shows first air, for $1.99 per episode (same as iTunes). The sticking point seemed to be this: Amazon Unbox offers nice discounts for buying seasons in full up front (you pay the full price now, save money later, new episodes can be downloaded the moment they're available). iTunes offers similar but the discounts may not be as great. Oh well, I think I can wait until 2009 or 2010 to get the final season of Battlestar Galactica on DVD. NBC, along with the related NBC Universal Networks shows (including USA and Sci Fi), accounted for about 30% of all TV show downloads on iTunes.

Weekly Nielsen Ratings Report for Week Ending 9/9/07:
It's that time of the year again-the ratings now are all about the pigskin. And laundry. And some yard work. But mainly, it's about the pigskin. And maybe you should check out a true-life wreckage while you're at it. Let's start with said wreckage, which came in the form of this year's MTV Video Music Awards Sunday, namely the opening from the walking talking wreckage herself-Britney Spears. 9 million watched the start of the show, where she gave her new single the Milli Vanilli treatment and danced in way too little clothing. For Britney, anyway. It wound up with 7 million overall, steadily losing viewers after said everything malfunction. On to football, the NFL regular season kicked off and big ratings came back with it-Thursday's opener on NBC between New Orleans, led by Reggie No Relation To That Bush and Drew Passing Brees, and Indianapolis, led by Mr. MasterCard Peyton Manning, drew 17.8 million viewers to NBC. Sunday night's primetime game featuring Eli Lilly Manning and Tony Romo Is Burning, aka NY Giants vs. Dallas, averaged 18.2 million. Said games gave The Peacock it's first weekly win since January. Elsewhere ratings generally were still down but started to show some slight increases-especially at Fox where "Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?" and "Don't Forget The Lyrics" got an early start on their fall seasons. 5th Grader returned with about 8.2 million, Lyrics 8.1 million-both opposite football. ABC's biggest crowd this week also came from sports-over 7 million tuned into Saturday night's NASCAR racing, which might be the biggest it gets the rest of the season-the playoffs in the series are going on without its biggest name, some kid named Dale Earnhardt Jr. Adios, large female crowds. A mixed bag at CBS-The Eye ordered 6 more episodes of "Power Of 10" after it won both its timeslots again with an average of about 8 million (the episodes debut in midseason, it goes on hiatus for "Kid Nation"-assuming it even makes it to the air) but the experiment of putting the US Open Women's Final in primetime backfired. No Venus or Serena means no interest-only about 3 million watched. We also might've seen the last of CBS' "Fashion Rocks"-only 3.2 million rocked along Friday.
Elsewhere on cable, the Monday night doubleheader on ESPN averaged about 9.7 million viewers-just over 11 million for Baltimore-Cincinnati and 8.5 million for Arizona-San Francisco. On TNT, "The Closer" finished up its season doing what it does best-this past Monday's finale drew 9.2 million viewers-its biggest crowd ever yet again and ad-supported cable's biggest crowd ever for a single series telecast. On Saturday night, Spike aired UFC 75: Champion vs. Champion, a PPV that we got for free (but those across the Atlantic had to pay to watch) and drew nearly 5 million from 9 PM on, which may be a record crowd for the UFC franchise (if it's not a record, it'll be extremely close to it, short by only a few viewers to an airing of a show headlined by Tito Ortiz vs. Ken Shamrock). On Wednesday night, Fox News Channel drew 3.1 million for the Republican Presidential Debate in New Hampshire, the most-watched of the 11 debates aired so far. A Democratic debate Sunday on Spanish-language Univision drew 2.1 million.

The Week's Top 10 Most Watched Shows, in order: NBC's Thursday Night NFL coverage, NBC's Sunday Night NFL coverage, Fox's Sunday Night NFL overrun/postgame show (7-8 PM), "60 Minutes", "Without A Trace", "CSI", "Two And A Half Men", "CSI: Miami", "Extreme Makeover Home Edition", "Big Brother 8".

President Bush's Address to the nation Thursday night (9/13) has just forced some schedule changes to be made for tomorrow night as all the major broadcast networks likely will carry the speech, starting at 9 PM ET and expected to last 15 minutes. Details:
Fox: The previously announced new episode of Don't Forget The Lyrics will be replaced by a repeat of the premiere episode. In the Eastern and Central time zones, said repeat will be joined in progress after the speech. In the Mountain and Pacific time zones, the speech will be followed by a new Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader? then said repeat of Lyrics.

NBC: In the Eastern & Central time zones, the planned repeat of The Office at 9 will probably be shifted to 9:30 and replace a planned Scrubs repeat. In Mountain & Pacific time zones, both episodes likely will air as scheduled.

CBS & ABC: Plans are expected to be announced later today. Main question is what will be done with CSI & Grey's Anatomy on the respective networks, namely if they'll go to in-progress episodes or go for a revised schedule.

The CW and MyNetworkTV: Likely the usual Thursday night programming, meaning no address coverage unless local affiliates opt for simulcasts of broadcast/cable news network coverage. This obviously will vary depending on the market. It's more likely to be the case with MyNetworkTV possibly simulcasting coverage from Fox News Channel, as both are owned by News Corp.
More as it becomes available.

9/13 news: While this isn't official yet, it seems like the only new half-hour comedy NBC picked up for this season, "The IT Crowd", may wind up being cancelled before it even airs. 6 episodes were ordered by then-NBC boss Kevin Reilly, but he's out and the new guy apparently isn't too big on it. Plus there's only a couple scripts to work with, the lead actress cast before is gone, and the show hasn't gone into production yet. NBC might still have some midseason new comedy options, but it sounds like IT will not be the place to be this season.

9/15 Edit: For those who can't wait for Wednesday, the first ratings for this season's new shows are in: Fox's "Nashville" debuted last night, and the fast national rating was...brace yourself...1.7. It only did a 1.0 in the key 18-49 demo. In fact, the rating was worse than any 9 PM broadcast for Fox during all of last season. The only programming Nashville "beat"? A Bones repeat on 5/4, which did a 1.1. Nashville also lost about half it's Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader? Lead-in overall and about 1/3 of its 18-49 lead. Sounds like Nashville could be the first official cancellation of the new season...stay tuned.

This message was edited by SummonerSupreme on Sep 15 2007.

A couple news items that just hit the wire:
NBC has made a couple schedule changes for Tuesdays: The season 2 premiere of "The Singing Bee", originally set for 9/25, has been pushed back to 10/2 at 8. It will be followed by 90 minute episodes of "The Biggest Loser" at 8:30. The Singing Bee originally was to air Tuesdays at 9:30 starting on the 25th. No reason given for the change.

The CW has announced it's Sunday encore schedule, to air from 5-7 PM Sundays. It will be repeats of "Girlfriends" at 5, "The Game" at 5:30, and "Gossip Girl" at 6.

Early ratings report: The fast overnights for Monday are out and it appears that Fox's new cop drama "K-Ville" is off to a good start. The premiere episode drew a 5.7 overnight rating, which translates to an estimate of about 10.8 million viewers-that would put it 2nd out of 5 in the 9 PM timeslot (CBS did about a 6.1 for sitcoms). More significantly, the ratings also show it gained about 1.5 million viewers over it's "Prison Break" lead-in: The season 3 premiere of Prison Break did a 4.9 for Fox (about 9.3 million, a distant 2nd to the "Deal Or No Deal" season 3 premiere, which did a 7.5 or about 14.2 million, good but one area of major concern for Deal-it's 3.1 18-49 number was down a whopping 29.55% from season 2's premiere, which did a 4.4). As for the key 18-49 numbers, K-Ville managed a 3.4, #1 on the night. Prison Break did a 3.3 for #2 but that was down over 13% from last season's debut. Said overall numbers for K-Ville also marked Fox's best performance in the 9 PM Monday timeslot compared to all of last season, excluding "24".
Next week's numbers will tell a better tale but with regards to K-Ville, considering it was up against the CBS sitcoms, NFL on ESPN, and reality on ABC & NBC, it's reason to be optimistic about the future of this show.

This message was edited by SummonerSupreme on Sep 18 2007.

Weekly Nielsen Ratings Report for Week Ending 9/16/07:
Another classic week of bad number-spinning it was. Just ask Fox: Monday they put out a news release calling the week "another quiet end-of-summer week for all networks". Truth: The Fox is coming off the 2nd-lowest-rated Emmy Awards ever and the 2nd-lowest-rated fall premiere on a Big 4 Network in people-meter history (that's about 20 years). Said Emmys Sunday drew less than 13 million viewers Sunday night, getting sacked by the NFL on NBC and the obligatory Yanks-SAWX matchup on ESPN. It's also said to be the lowest-rated ever in the all-important 18-49 demo. Overall, only 1990's show drew lower. Then there's "Nashville", Fox's newest reality series blessed with the TV Touch Of Death-Friday night. That did the trick-only 2.7 million watched, losing half of it's "Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?" lead-in and finishing last of 5 at 9. Let's see how stubborn The Fox is with this one (remember "On the Lot"?). But as noted yesterday, Fox likely will get solid numbers for Monday's "K-Ville" premiere, so there is hope. Said football game on NBC led the way this week, with over 15 million tuning in for the first post-Spygate game involving the guilty party, New England, vs. San Diego. NBC's "The Biggest Loser" also returned this week, drawing 8 million over 2 hours Thursday. That doesn't sound too big, but it is beefy enough-it's about 11% more than last season's opener, which drew 7.2 million. And it won the 2 hour timeslot (although 8 PM was a 3-way tie). 2 ABC newsmagazines likely headed to potential cancellation in their season finales last week: "i-Caught" finishe da brief run with about 3.6 million Tuesday at 9, and "NASCAR In Primetime" drove off with 2.7 million Wednesday at 10. Both were a distant last, not counting The CW shows. As for Thursday, the Presidential Address did seem to cut into the audiences somewhat-actual numbers weren't recorded (Dubya isn't cut off for ads so Nielsen doesn't track actual numbers) but the estimates came out like this: CBS had 6.9 million, ABC 5 million, Fox 4.5 million, NBC 4.3 million. The Eye then gained viewers for a delayed "CSI", as did Fox for "Don't Forget The Lyrics".

On cable, one final record for TNT's "The Closer", it signed off for the season with over 9 million, yet another all-time high for an ad-supported cable series broadcast. On sister station TBS, the new sitcom "My Boys" got a second season pickup despite only drawing 1.3 million viewers last week. It must be funny enough for the "Very Funny" network. USA's "Psych" went to fall hiatus with 4 million (it and lead-in "Monk" both are now on a planned hiatus, they will return in January), and that was enough to earn it a 3rd season pickup. Finally, FX brought back acclaimed sitcom "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia" for a 3rd season and while 2.3 million at 10 PM Thursday doesn't sound too sunny, that's an almost 50% improvement over season 2's debut crowd of 1.6 million.

The Week's Top 10 Most Watched Shows, in order: NBC's Sunday Night NFL coverage, The Primetime Emmy Awards, "60 Minutes", ESPN's 7 PM Monday Night Football game (Cincinnati-Baltimore), "Two And A Half Men", "Without A Trace", "The Closer", Thursday's "Big Brother 8", "CSI: NY", ESPN's 10:15 PM Monday Night Football game (San Francisco-Arizona).