• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

ABC Answers 2 Big Fall-Season Questions

Posted on: Tuesday, 17 October 2006, 18:00 CDT

By DAVID BAUDER

NEW YORK - A month into the new television season and ABC is on the way to answering its two most pressing questions entering the fall: Would the move of "Grey's Anatomy" to Thursdays work? How badly would the network miss the departed "Monday Night Football"?

The answers: Yes and not very much.

ABC had four of the nation's five most-popular programs last week, according to Nielsen Media Research. On top was "Grey's Anatomy," whose fans faithfully followed Dr. McDreamy to his new television home.

Coupled with the unexpected success of "Ugly Betty," which has just received a full year's order of episodes, it has suddenly made ABC a player on Thursday, the night advertisers pay most dearly to exhibit their wares.

ABC has managed to increase its average weekly prime-time audience from last year by 500,000 viewers, a feat considering how painful the loss of "Monday Night Football" was perceived to be. It has been the most popular network for the advertiser-desired 18-to-49-year-old age group for all four weeks of the season - the first time that's happened in at least 15 years, the network said.

Much of that is due to "Dancing with the Stars," which wasn't on last fall and dominates two nights of prime time this year. With "American Idol" still in hibernation, it is now television's most popular reality show.

One disappointment so far has been the performance of "Lost," whose average audience in its third season is 21 percent less than it was in its second, Nielsen said.

Dominant CBS, which is essentially flat compared to last year, still won the week by averaging 13.4 million viewers (8.6 rating, 14 share). ABC had 11.5 million viewers (7.5, 12), NBC had 10.3 million (6.6, 11), Fox had 8.2 million (5.6, 9), the CW had 3.5 million (2.2, 4) and the i network had 620,000 (0.4, 1).

Among the Spanish-language networks, Univision averaged 3.1 million viewers (1.8, 3), Telemundo had 840,000 (0.5, 1) and TeleFutura had 640,000 (0.4, 1).

Katie Couric's "CBS Evening News" seems to have settled into third place with its third week in a row there, although CBS points out it is the only network evening newscast to gain viewers from last year. Last week, NBC's "Nightly News" averaged 8.8 million viewers (6.1, 12), ABC's "World News" had 8 million viewers (5.7, 12) and CBS had 7.3 million (5.2, 11).

In cable, VH1 recorded the biggest audience in the history of the network Sunday when 7.5 million people tuned in to the second-season finale of "Flavor of Love."

A ratings point represents 1,114,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation's estimated 111.4 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.

For the week of Oct. 9-15, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: "Grey's Anatomy," ABC, 22.88 million; "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," CBS, 21.85 million; "Desperate Housewives," ABC, 20.64 million; "Dancing with the Stars," ABC, 20.1 million; "Dancing with the Stars Results," ABC, 18.2 million; "CSI: NY," CBS, 17.97 million; "NFL Post Game Show," CBS, 17.96 million; "CSI: Miami," 17.6 million; "60 Minutes, CBS, 17.28 million; "Lost," ABC, 16.89 million.

---

ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Co. CBS is a division of CBS Corp. Fox is a unit of News Corp. NBC is owned by General Electric Co. Telemundo is owned by General Electric. TeleFutura is a division of Univision. The i network is owned by ION Media Networks.

---

On the Net:

http://www.nielsenmedia.com

Source: Associated Press/AP Online

More News in this Category