Nielsen Ratings: Thursday December 14, 2006

Twas some weeks before Christmas and all on tube, reruns rerunning, the networks nail us sans lube.

SURVIVOR and THE OFFICE shot up the ratings like guns, easy to do when up against only reruns.

At nine o’clock the reruns won the fight, beating out the crappy OC on it’s crappy new night.

Ten was a waste, won’t you put something new on please? Oh look, there’s some show called MEN IN TREE’S.

However you slice it, dice it or more. . . TV in December can be such a bore.

To the network execs, I leave you coal by the lump, and TVgasm readers the Nielsen Ratings 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.