Is Carrie Underwood a draw or what? Not to take anything away from Brad Paisley. ABC was the beneficiary of both hosts as the Alphabet Network powered by the ’47th Annual CMA Awards’ dominated Wednesday with 16.63 million average viewers for a 9.7/16 share, one of its highest in the season. It finished #1 in each of the six half hours of prime time. This was 11% above the year-ago telecast (8.7/14 on Thursday, 11/01/12) and translated into 13.68 million viewers. The CMA’s had their biggest audience in four years and the second biggest audience in the past years, only behind 2009’s telecast. The CMA was the only program on this evening to finish ahead of the same time slot a year previous on this Wednesday. ABC finished the night 8.5 million viewers ahead of last year on this comparable day.
CBS finished #2 with its usual strong Wednesday night lineup. At 8P, ‘Survivor’ was #2 with 9.22 million viewers while at 9P ‘Criminal Minds’ pulled in 9.63 million. At 10P, ‘CSI’ finished with 8.92 million. Each of the CBS shows finished #2 in their time slots for the evening, an unusual place for them although they did about the same as they always do. The Tiffany Network just didn’t have Underwood on its side. The network finished 1.6 million viewers less than it drew last year on this comparable day (11/07/12).
NBC was #3 with a relocated ‘Revolution’ at 8P could only draw 5.22 million and ‘Law & Order: SVU’ at 9P attracted slightly more with 5.62 million viewers while ‘Dateline’ ran at 10P with only 4.46 million, a point which was disastrous to The Peacock Network as it finished 31% below last year’s show in this time slot, ‘Chicago Fire’. For the evening, NBC finished down 4.9 million viewers compared to the same day last year.
FOX has a major case of Cowell Fever, the dreaded disease that is infecting both the U.S. and the UK. It seems like fans no longer care about seeing the guy who always turns up in a T-shirt rather than usual garments when going out in public. As they say, his ‘shine has been tarnished’ and no one wants to bring out the Brasso. Suffice to say, ‘The X Factor’ is getting old as it finished fourth in its two-hour time slot from 8P-10P drawing only 4.51 million fans and it is taking the Animal Network down with it. ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ in the UK is boxing the ears off of the British version of ‘The X Factor’. Bye bye, Simon. For the evening FOX finished down 2.48 million compared to the same day last season. That is a huge loss of viewers.
The top cable network for the evening was FX with an average of 2.413 million for the evening, headlined by ‘American Horror Story’ at 10P which drew cable’s top performance of the night with 3.799 million viewers.
‘Arrow’ at 8P was exactly where it was last week on The CW and pulled in a solid 2.74 million (FOX look out) but ‘The Tomorrow People’ slipped a bit at 9P to 1.6 million viewers. The Little Network That Could is slipping. For the night, it was down 1.85 million viewers compared to last year on this day.
In late night, ‘Leno’ was #1 with 2.7/8 while ‘Jimmy Kimmel’ finished #2 with 2.6/7. ‘Letterman’ finished #3 with 2.5/7. ABC’s ‘Nightline’ was #1 at 1235A with 1.6/6 while NBC’s ‘Jimmy Fallon’ tied with CBS’ ‘Craig Ferguson’ at #2 with 1.3/5. Late late late night one again belonged to the only program running at this hour of 135A, ‘Carson Daly’ on NBC and pulled an 0.7/3. NBC should go on a 24/7 clock and have live programming continuously and bring out a new stat that indicates them #1 24 hours a day. Hey, Suits at 30 Rock….sound like a good idea to you?
For the record, ABC was #1 with 16.630 million viewers and a 10.3 rating and a 16 share. CBS finished #2 with 9.255 million and a 5.9/9; NBC #3 drew 5.097 million and a 3.5/6; FOX#4 could only muster 4.510 million Cowellites with equates to a 2.8/4; Univision was #5 with 3.2 million viewers which represented a 1.6 rating and a 3 share of audience; FX finished #6 with 2.413 million viewers; The CW finished #7 with 2.166 million viewers and a 1.4/2; TBS #8 brought in an average of 2,081 million viewers; ESPN #9 had 2,051 million viewers while Telemundo #10 was last with 1.3 million and their usual 0.7/1.
ACROSS THE POND: ITV’s ‘Poirot’ was the #1 program on television in the UK on Wednesday evening at 8P with a solid 4.21 million viewers which represented a share of 18.3% at. An additional 365,000 (1.84%) caught it on +1. Although it easily won its time period against the likes of BBC One’s ‘Watchdog’ which was viewed by 3.92 million (17.2%) and BBC Two’s ‘Masterchef: The Professionals’ with 2.78 million (12.2%) and Channel 4’s ‘River Cottage’ with 880,000 viewers (8.5%).
But it could not match BBC One’s ‘Britain on the Fiddle’. The second episode in the three-part series was viewed by 4.82 million at 9P or 20.7% share. It was up against BBC Two’s ‘Ambassadors’ which could only pull in 900,000 viewers (4.2%)); Channel 4’s ‘Grand Designs’ with 2.01 million (8.5%); Channel 5/s ‘Too Fat To Fly’ which drew 1.12 milion (4.8%) and BBC Three’s ‘Unsafe Sex in the City’ which could only get 433,000 to view it.
At 10P, Channel 4’s ‘Gogglebox’ drew 1.56 million (8.9%). Channel 5’s ‘Step Brothers’ attracted 542,000 viewers for the comedy good for only 4.2% share. ITV2’s ‘The Only Way Is Essex’ was up a bit with 660,000 viewers (3.81%).
In the world of DIGITAL, Walt Disney Co. made a deal with Netflix to bring four new Marvel series with four of the top Marvel characters to the Internet TV leader by 2015. For broadcast and cable networks: This is NOT a drill. Man your battle stations. The world of digital and mobile is about to change everything.
As you can see, no matter where you were on Wednesday, people were…
Switching Channels!
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