Prime-Time Ratings:
Sunday 2/24/08

The following results are based on the fast affiliate ratings (Live Plus Same Day data)

-Total Viewers:
ABC: 25.71 million, Fox: 9.59, CBS: 7.40, NBC: 4.73, CW: 983,000

-Adults 18-49:
ABC: 8.4 rating/20 share, Fox: 3.7/ 9, CBS: 2.0/ 5, NBC: 1.3/ 3, CW: 0.4/ 1

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Note: Any prior rating results are based on the final nationals. Also, since the level of DVR penetration has increased from 9 percent in early 2006-07 to approximately 20 percent at present, the overall results may be negatively impacted.

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-Yesterday’s Winners:
Barbara Walters Special (ABC), Oscar’s Red Carpet (ABC), The 80th Annual Academy Awards (ABC)

-Honorable Mention:
NASCAR (Fox)

-Yesterday’s Losers (Excluding Repeats)
CW Now, Big Brother 9 (CBS)

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-Ratings Breakdown:
The 80th Annual Academy Awards led ABC to enormous Sunday victory, with an advantage over the four competing networks combined. Keep in mind that fast affiliate results for any live event are always approximate. On that note, The Academy Awards averaged an approximate 29.16 million viewers and a 9.8 rating/ 23 share among adults 18-49 from 8:30-11 p.m. (results after 11 p.m. are not available yet), with the half-hour breakdown as follows:

The 80th Annual Academy Awards (ABC)
8:30 p.m. Viewers: 32.27 million, A18-49: 10.6 rating/24 share
9:00 p.m. Viewers: 30.70 million, A18-49: 10.2/23
9:30 p.m. Viewers: 30.07 million, A18-49: 10.2/23
10:00 p.m. Viewers: 27.34 million, A18-49: 9.3/23
10:30 p.m. Viewers: 25.42 million, A18-49: 8.8/23

Comparably, however, this was quite a drop from The 79th Annual Academy Awards, which averaged a stellar 40.17 million viewers and a 14.1/33 in the demo on Sunday, Feb. 25, 2007.

ABC opened the evening with its annual Academy Award-themed edition of The Barbara Walters Special (Viewers: #1, 16.49 million; A18-49: #1, 4.8/13), followed by half-hour special Oscar’s Red Carpet at 26.93 million viewers and an 8.3/20 among adults 18-49 at 8 p.m.

Second overall for the evening in both total viewers and adults 18-49 was Fox with its combination of a two-hour edition of NASCAR (Viewers: 10.70 million; A18-49: 4.0/10 from 7-9 p.m.) and two repeat episodes of The Simpsons (Viewers: avg. 7.33 million; A18-49: avg. 3.1/ 7 from 9-10 p.m.).

Next was CBS’ line-up of 60 Minutes (Viewers: #3, 10.51 million; A18-49: #3, 1.8/ 5), Big Brother 9 (Viewers: #3, 5.72 million; A18-49: #3, 2.2/ 5), a repeat of Cold Case (Viewers: #3, 6.90 million; A18-49: #3, 1.9/ 4), and a repurposed episode of Showtime drama Dexter (Viewers: #2, 6.47 million; A18-49: #2, 2.0/ 5), which fits like a glove out of Cold Case.

Four back-to-back repeat episodes of NBC’s Law & Order: Criminal Intent finished fourth overall for the evening, with an average 4.73 million viewers and a 1.3/ 3 among adults 18-49 from 7-11 p.m. And the CW was barely on the map as a result of the canceled CW Now (Viewers: 634,000; A18-49: 0.3/1), two repeat episodes of Everybody Hates Chris (Viewers: avg. 1.10 million; A18-49: avg. 0.4/ 1 from 7:30-8:30 p.m.), and repeats of Aliens in America (Viewers: 1.12 million; A18-49: 0.4/ 1), the canceled Girlfriends (Viewers: 980,000; A18-49: 0.3/ 1) and The Game (Viewers: 964,000; A18-49: 0.4/ 1).

Source: Nielsen Media Research data

quote:

The Academy Awards averaged an approximate 29.16 million viewers and a 9.8 rating/ 23 share among adults 18-49 from 8:30-11 p.m. (results after 11 p.m. are not available yet), with the half-hour breakdown as follows:

WOW, thats quite a tumble.
AI is more popular than the Oscars now.

WOW

That's a disaster for the Oscars. I never thought i'll see the day when the Oscars will be below 30 million

All I can say is OUCH!!!

I would not of dreamed it would ever get under 30 million viewers. For those who say viewers don't count for watching awards shows, it does for the Oscars.

Good numbers for the weird schedule on Fox last night.

Bad numbers for BB9. If they were smart, they would abbreviate this season as not to ruin future installments. Decent numbers for Dexter against the Oscars.

NBC a no show tonight.

Not a Winners/Losers list fan, but can the Oscars be labled a "Winner" if it lost 11 million viewers from year to year? Thats about a 27% drop.

I think it has a lot to do with no one really being passionate about the movies that were nominated this year. Aside from Juno, none of them had stellar box office. Pretty off year in general for awards shows.

quote:

Originally posted by robert:
WOW

That's a disaster for the Oscars. I never thought i'll see the day when the Oscars will be below 30 million

quote:

Originally posted by Ratings Junkee:
All I can say is OUCH!!!

I would not of dreamed it would ever get under 30 million viewers. For those who say viewers don't count for watching awards shows, it does for the Oscars.

Good numbers for the weird schedule on Fox last night.

Bad numbers for BB9. If they were smart, they would abbreviate this season as not to ruin future installments. Decent numbers for Dexter against the Oscars.

NBC a no show tonight.

You can mostly ignore the numbers from NBC and CBS last night. they were just "playing Through" with the Oscars on last night.

quote:

Originally posted by TV-aholic:
Not a Winners/Losers list fan, but can the Oscars be labled a "Winner" if it lost 11 million viewers from year to year? Thats about a 27% drop.

Yeah, i have to disagree finally with Marc. There's no way Oscars is a winner, it's a HUGE loser. You have to see everything in perspective. I mean if all it counts are the numbers than every show on CW would be a loser on Marc's list

quote:

Originally posted by TV-aholic:

quote:

The Academy Awards averaged an approximate 29.16 million viewers and a 9.8 rating/ 23 share among adults 18-49 from 8:30-11 p.m. (results after 11 p.m. are not available yet), with the half-hour breakdown as follows:

WOW, thats quite a tumble.
AI is more popular than the Oscars now.

That kind of puts AI's "drop" in percpective. Look, the Academy Awards and the pre-shows are still huge television events (and still worthy of winners status), but, like everthing on television save for the NFL, it are subject to the decline of network television.

The Oscar numbers are awful.

American Idol can beat that.

quote:

Originally posted by whatsonpop:
I think it has a lot to do with no one really being passionate about the movies that were nominated this year. Aside from Juno, none of them had stellar box office. Pretty off year in general for awards shows.

quote:

Originally posted by robert:
WOW

That's a disaster for the Oscars. I never thought i'll see the day when the Oscars will be below 30 million

Yeah, but there have been other years with movies no one really cared about but the Oscars still did very good.

The other thing is that people don't need to watch The Oscars to find out who won--they can be doing online stuff, and just hit some site that's live-blogging the event.

The only way to bring people back is to actually make the Oscar telecast entertaining and fun, something it has not been for many years, regardless of what movies were nominated.

Drop for Dexter, but it built in demo from its lead-in. We'll see how it does next week without the Oscars.

The Oscar numbers really are not all that surprising. The main reason is advertising. It had none this year. On a normal year, the Oscars will be advertised during shows like Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy and other mega-popular shows. Advertising it during According to Jim and Wife Swap simply don't have the same effect. I'm sure people were also unsure as to whether it was going to be another Golden Globes-type ceremony.

But aside from advertising (which was really out of ABC's hands this year), the only way for the Academy to increase viewership is to nominated bigger films. It's that simple.

quote:

ABC opened the evening with its annual Academy Award-themed edition of The Barbara Walters Special (Viewers: #1, 16.49 million; A18-49: #1, 4.8/13),

What are the 1/2 breakdown for this program and... which half hour was "Hanna Montana" featured in?