Mr. Nielson Loves Football

The road to the Super Bowl is great for ratings. The AFC Championship game between the Baltimore Ravens & the Pittsburgh Steelers grabbed a whopping 40.6 million viewers & the #1 place in the ‘Top Twenty’ for the week of Jan.12-18. Can you imagine what the Super Bowl will bring in this year. Those commercial time slots are going to be worth gold for advertisers and I’m sure the price of a 30-second spot will be at an all-time high. As for the rest of the week, American Idol’s season premiere grabbed over 30 million viewers two nights in a row. CBS, however, had 15 shows on the list, dominating the ratings once again. Here’re the numbers according to Mr. Nielson….

1. AFC Game: Steelers v.Ravens CBS (40.6mil) Steelers won their spot in the Super Bowl against the Cardinals.

2. American Idol Fox (30.4mil) Tuesday premiere 1/13

3. American Idol Fox (30.3mil) Wednesday 1/14

4. CSI CBS (24.2mil) Grissom’s farewell pt.2

5. NCIS CBS (18.6mil)

6. The Mentalist CBS (18.1mil)

7. Two and a Half Men CBS (17.1mil)

8. The Mentalist CBS (16.4mil) Special Sunday night (1/18) after football game

9. CSI: Miami CBS (15.8mil)

10. CSI CBS (15.5mil) Grissom’s farewell pt.1 (repeat)

11. Criminal Minds CBS (13.6mil)

12. Eleventh Hour CBS (13.2mil)

13. Desperate Housewives ABC (13.1mil)

14. Grey’s Anatomy ABC (13mil)

15. CSI: NY CBS (12.7mil)

16. Without a Trace CBS (12.4mil)

17. 24 Fox (12.3mil)

18. How I Met Your Mother CBS (11.8mil)

19. Big Bang Theory CBS (11mil)

20. NUMB3RS CBS (11mil)

Here’s the Top Ten Cable Shows for Jan.12-18.

1 WWE Wrestling USA 5.4mil

2 Another Cinderella Story ABCF 5.2mil

3 WWE Wrestling USA 5mil

4 ICARLY NICK 5mil

5 Monk USA 4.9mil

6 Pres. Bush’s Farewell Address FOXNEWS 4.8mil

7 Spongebob NICK 4.2mil

8 The O’Reily Factor FOXNEWS 4.2mil (after Bush’s Address)

9 NCIS USA 4.2mil (syndicated)

10 Real Chance of Love VH1 4.1mil

Holy Crap! Real Chance of Love made the top ten. Isn’t that surprising, at least to me.

Big Love, which isn’t an advertising-supported show had 1.2 mil viewers for it’s season premiere.

The United States of Tara had a viewership of aprox. 880,000 for it’s debut.

Here are a few others:

Top Chef BRAVO 3.2mil

Leverage TNT 2.6 mil

Real World: Brooklyn MTV 2.4mil

The Beast (premiere) A&E 2.3mil

Battlestar Galactica (season premiere) SCIFI 2.1mil

The City MTV 1.7mil

Damages FX 1.1mil

That’s it for this week. I hope your favorite show is making good numbers in the ratings. I can’t wait to see how LOST did against American Idol.