Nielsen Ratings: Wednesday December 14, 2006

The biggest winner last night was NBC’s BIGGEST LOSER 2 hour finale. The viewership in key demos grew every half hour completely dominating the night even beating out the most amazing, incredibly spectacular, superbly acted CRIMINAL MINDS (not that Im playing favorites) which still showed a strong second pulling in nearly twice the ratings of third place BONES. NBC continued to do well at 10pm with MEDIUM, but then again they probably saw that coming. Despite LOSERS‘ strong showing they didn’t eat up all the competition as CBS came in a very lose second place on the night averaging 4.3/12 compared to NBC’s 4.4/12 in key demos.

For the complete breakdown of last nights Nielsen ratings (18 – 49) 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.