Nielsen Ratings: Wednesday January 17, 2007

AMERICAN IDOL is bringing music to FOX’s ears dominating prime-time a second night in a row peaking at a solid 38 share. ARMED AND FAMOUS dropped to a 1.8/5 from last week and BEAUTY & THE GEEK, stumbled to a 1.4/4 (though still respectable marks for the CW). Despite being up against the unstoppable, CBS’ CRIMINAL MINDS pulled a strong 8 share in a market which is now trained not to watch anything other than Simon Cowell. CSI:NY took the top honors when AI went off the air last night, but the winning network of the night was clearly FOX who’s nearest competitor, CBS, pulled in 1/5 the ratings.

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.