Nielsen Ratings: Thursday February 2, 2007

The GREYS ANATOMY / CSI heads up match was last night, and a Grissomless CSI solved the case of the how-do-I-slip-into-second. Wow, these punny ratings reports are getting harder and harder. UGLY BETTY was the bell of the 830 ball beating out the always funny OFFICE after just barely losing out to MY NAME IS EARL 30 minutes prior. MEN IN TREES must have really pissed people off last night dropping nearly 30% of its viewers from one half hour to the next on last nights show. . . seriously, what happened!? Almost makes me curious enough to watch the show. . . almost.

For the complete ratings breakdown 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.