Interesting night in the ratings. While there was no surprise at 8 o'clock with AMERICAN IDOL taking over the top slot against former Thursday heavy weight SURVIVOR and MY NAME IS EARL. When nine o'clock rolled around the medical team at GREYS resuscitated ABC and pulled way ahead of AI numbers actually bringing ABC to the top spot of the night .It's the first time this season FOX was not in the top slot on an AMERICAN IDOL night.
For the complete Nielsen from last night, stick around after the jump . . .
How do I read these ratings?
A Nielsen rating may look like this:
8pm - NBC - TVgasm The TV Show - 10.0/18
Focus on the 10.0/18. The RATING, 10.0, on the left represents the actual number of households that watched a show. One rating point equals 1,102,000 households. The SHARE, 18, on the right represents the show's proportion of the total households watching television at that time.
For example, TVgasms TV Show has a 10 rating/18 share. That means 11,020,000 households are tuned in to the show and 18% of all the households with a TV turned on are watching that show.
Ratings and Share are customarily broken down for various DEMOs -- a demographic grouping of viewers, like 18-49 adults or 2-12 children or 18-34 women, etc. Advertisers, and therefore networks, covet the 18-49 adult demo, and so tend to concentrate on that number.