“Look at those feet. Like large pizzas.” And thus one of the most famous comedic episodes ever in the history of television was off to the wine vat. Lucille Ball, in one of the great pantomime roles found her prancing around the Italian wine vat like a thoroughbred. For about two minutes, everyone was on the floor laughing and CBS had pulled out of its vault one of the funniest shows ever. At 8P, marked as the Christmas Specials, the ‘I Love Lucy’ episode where she is off to the hospital to have Little Ricky drew 3.62 million viewers and at 830P, the wine episode, drew the same. At 9P, ‘Hawaii Five-O’ brought out its version of ‘Mele Kaikimaka’ and drew 4.68 million viewers while at 10P, the third leg of CBS’ powerful Friday night line up, ‘Blue Bloods’ rerun drew 5.41 million, both programs lead in their time periods.
NBC finished second for the evening. At 8P, ‘Kelly Clarkson’s Cautionary Christmas Tale’ rerun drew 3.54 million while at 9P, ‘Michael Buble’s Third Annual Christmas Special’ rerun drew 3.36 million. At 10P, ‘Hollywood Game Night’ rerun drew 2.11 million.
ABC at 8P had ‘The Middle’ rerun and drew 3.84 million to win its time period. ‘Trophy Wife’ drew 2.62 at 830P, and did not finish in the top two. At 9P, ‘Modern Family’ drew 3.84 million while at 930P, ‘Super Fun Night’ had 2.37 million. At 10P, ‘Nashville’ attracted 1.78 million.
Univision finished #4 on Christmas.
FOX finished #5 with reruns like ‘Ice Age: A Mammoth Christmas’ at 8P pulling in 1.97 million while at 9P, ‘Dreamworks Dragons: Gift of the Night Fury’ drew 1.56 million.
The CW had ‘Kung Fu Panda Holiday Special’ rerun and drew 990,000 viewers while at 9P, ‘Merry Madagascar’ drew a network high of 1.08 million viewers.
For the record, CBS was #1 on Wednesday with 4.569 million viewers while NBC was #2 with 3.005 million. ABC drew 2.701 million while Univision finished #4 with 2.144 million. FOX was #5 with 1.432 million and The CW finished with 903,000 viewers.
ACROSS THE POND:
BBC traditionally dominates Christmas Day viewing and this Christmas was no exception. What was surprising was the #1 show as the comedy, ‘Mrs Brown’s Boys’ brought in 9.4 million viewers (35.5% share of audience). It is the first time the BBC has scheduled Mrs Brown’s Boys on Christmas Day. traditional favourite EastEnders suffering a 1.6 million viewer slump to record its lowest-rating festive edition in at least a decade. ‘Doctor Who’ was #2 bringing in an average of 8.3 million viewers, and achieved the biggest peak audience of the day, as 10.2 million bade farewell to Matt Smith and saw Capaldi’s regeneration as the 12th Time Lord. ‘Strictly Come Dancing’, following its triumphant finale, had an average of 7.3 million viewers (35% share) for its Christmas special. ‘Downton Abbey’ finished #6 drawing 7.1 million (30%).
‘The Queen’s Christmas message’ had 7.8 million viewers across BBC1, ITV1 and Sky1 at 3pm, with 5.7 million watching on BBC1.
Channel 4’s alternative Christmas message, NSA whistleblower ‘Edward Snowden’ drew 700,000 viewers.
On ITV for the first time in over a decade, ‘Coronation Street’ beat ‘EastEnders’ in the battle of the soaps, bringing in 8.3 million viewers (30.7%) at 730P.
Danny Dyer’s arrival as the new landlord of the Queen Vic failed to increase ratings for ‘EastEnders’ drew 7.8 million viewers. EastEnders traditionally dominates Christmas Day. It has been the most popular show for the past four years. It was the lowest-rating festive edition of the soap for at least a decade, partially due to it being scheduled against ITV’s ‘Downton Abbey’. EastEnders’s biggest-ever Christmas Day audience was in 2002, when 16.2 million tuned in. The previous low was 9.2 million in 2006.
As you can see, no matter where you were watching on Christmas Day, people were…
Switching Channels!
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