Tuesday, September 12, 2006

"The Path To 9/11" -- Wins Monday Night With Modest Ratings

According to Mediaweek's Marc Berman, the overnight ratings for "The Path To 9/11 were almost identical to Sunday's. It scored an 8.1 rating, just a sliver behind the 8.2 overnight rating it scored for Part One. Unlike Sunday, when it was trounced by football, Monday's edition was the #1 program for the night. Except for Fox -- which had new episodes of "Prison Break" and "Vanished" -- the docudrama was facing repeats. (The new fall season begins for most networks next week.) In short, a preseason TV movie like this wouldn't be expected to score big ratings. Still, with all the hype, not a lot of people tuned in on Sunday. But everyone that did came back Monday night, so they liked what they saw. President Bush gave his speech at 9 p.m. -- and more people watched it on ABC than any other network.

In the UK, "The Path To 9/11" did poorly. On Sunday, it drew 2 million viewers to BBC2 -- falling way behind other shows like "Where The Heart Is" (6.4 mil viewers), a docudrama about the pirate Blackbeard (4.6 mil viewers) and even a rerun of the Farrelly Brothers' movie "Shallow Hal" (2.4 mil viewers). But again, the people who watched it liked what they saw. Monday's showing of Part Two on BBC2 grew to an average of 2.2 mil viewers. Still, this was far behind other shows like BBC1's "Dalziel and Pascoe" (6.6 mil viewers) and ITV's "Life Begins" (5.4 mil viewers).

No comments: