Nielsen Ratings Overnights — May 4-5, 2007

Happy Cinco de Mayo weekend to all and especially to the winners. CBS comes in first with Ghost Whisperer having 2.8/10. NBC had Law & Order coming in second with 2.7/9. Not far behind in third was ABC’s 20/20 having 2.4/8. And rounding out forth place was CBS’s Close to Home having 2.3/8

For Saturday, ABC comes in first and Second with Meet the Fockers having 2.3/8 in the 10 o’clock hour and 2.0/7 in the 9 o’clock hour. FOX had Nascar racing rain delay special coming in third with 1.5/6.

For Sunday, CBS came in first with 18. ABC comes in second with Desperate Housewives having 17. CBS had 60 Minutes coming in third with 16. CBS’s Cold Case coming in forth with 15.

My Two Cents:

With the NBA playoffs going on, I would expect that the ratings for the regular shows on the weekend would be down, but I guess people would rather watch people who act like criminals rather than the real thing.

For the complete ratings from last night and who won the night (in key demos), stick around after the jump. . .

Nielsen Fast Nationals

From Friday, May 4, 2007

* Signifies repeat

Who Won The Night

Nielsen Fast Nationals

From Saturday, May 5, 2007

* Signifies repeat

Who Won The Night

Nielsen Fast Nationals

From Sunday, May 5, 2007

* Signifies repeat

Who Won The Night

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.