Overnight TV Ratings -- The Sweeps That Never Was

Here are the Sunday overnight ratings from Marc Berman of MediaWeek. "Desperate Housewives" did great; it looks to be firmly back on track, at least commercially. Sunday was also the final big night of the November sweeps. (More people watch TV on Sunday nights than any other day.) Did anyone notice? February, May and November used to be the all-important sweeps months: the ratings of the networks on those three months set the ad rates for the rest of the year and they were always flooded with specials and miniseries and stunt programming. Happily, with constant rating measurements now available, sweeps are becoming a thing of the past. Networks need to program year-round, instead of saving their best goodies for 12 weeks and inevitably airing them opposite something you want to see on another network. By the way, "Day Break" was a flop on Wednesday, as was Madonna's concert sans crucifix. She only reached a miniscule 4.78 million viewers on the night before Thanksgiving. Tony Bennett didn't do much better on last Tuesday, when he reached only 6.4 million viewers. And "Gilmore Girls" -- which I now watch only to yell back at the TV and bitch about the writers -- hit 4.3 million viewers, almost TWO MILLION VIEWERS lower than the year before. That is DISASTROUS.