Nielsen Ratings: Tuesday January 23, 2007

IDOL is losing viewers from week to week, and if having only 34% of viewers watching your show makes you a loser. . . then FOX was a big loser last night. The only network IDOL doesn’t seem to effect too much is the CW whose numbers look to be fairly respectable when put side by side with the likes of NBC or ABC in the 8 oclock hour. Oddly enough, each network ran a new shows last night all of which were similarly titled STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS. Odd.

For the complete Nielsen ratings 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.