Nielsen Ratings: Tuesday, December 5, 2006

CBS continued its ratings dominance last night as a repeat of NCIS powered the network to first place for the night in the overnights. The other networks got some lovin’ too, thanks to House on FOX, Law and Order: SVU on NBC, and even Boston Legal on ABC. Not faring as well was the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, which was third place at 10 PM in both the overnights and the 18-49 demos. And of course, there’s Big Day, which has been anything but. Memo to ABC: stop greenlighting shows with the word “Day” in them (citing: Big Day, Daybreak, and The Days).

All the ratings goodness after the jump…

Overnights

18-49 Year Olds

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.