Thursday, March 22, 2007

Overnight TV Ratings -- "Friday Night Lights" Struggles

Go to MediaWeek's Marc Berman for a complete ratings breakdown. All I'll mention is that "Idol" seems to have finally plateaued. If the show increases its viewership overall this season, it will be very a very slim margin.

And poor "Friday Night Lights" had another tough week. This show had a rock steady audience whether seen on Tuesdays or Mondays. Then the show was moved again to Wednesdays and actually increased its viewership to the highest levels since the show debuted. So what did NBC do? It panicked when the following week (opposite "Idol," mind you) the show hit a new low of 5+ million, rather than mid 6 million. So they yanked the show for two weeks in favor of Dateline reruns. Last night, after two weeks of being on hiatus, the show rebounded somewhat from February 28th's 5.1 million to last night's 5.4 million. Despite NBC's best efforts to kill the show by moving it twice, airing it opposite "Idol" and then hiding it for a few weeks, the audience might actually find the show again. Typically, it was another terrific episode.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Actually, it was a three-week hiatus, which doesn't help. Then it came back against the season opener of Survivor.

This is a show that a lot of people DVR or watch on line or on Itunes.

Michael in New York said...

An original episode aired Feb 28, and then it was off the air March 7 and March 14 and an original episode aired March 21. So it had been three weeks since the last original episode aired or you could say it had two weeks off. To me, the two weeks off is clearer since it lets you know there were two Wednesdays when the show DIDN'T run as opposed to three Weds. Hmm, I wonder what the best way is to phrase that? Probably, "the last two weeks, "FNL" had been off the air" or something like that. And you're certainly right that it is highly DVR'd, but Nielsen is starting to track that, though those figures aren't included in the overnights.