What a Top 150 Cable Chart Looks Like With Reruns Included: 4/4/22

I've seen a lot of discourse lately about what ShowBuzzDaily's cable rankers would look like if they included reruns. I personally do not care at all about rerun ratings - I've consistently removed them from every broadcast & cable ratings post I've ever done on this blog, but I do recognize that some people do care which is why I began including them in separate posts earlier last year. I think they unnecessarily clutter a normal cable ranker so I actually do appreciate that ShowBuzz limits their charts only to originals.

With that being said, below is just an example of what the chart would look like if reruns were included. The chart is from Monday, April 4, 2022 which is the most-recent Monday in which I have full cable data, and I think Monday is fairly representative of how the charts look like for the rest of the week. Rerun programming takes up more than half of the top 150 and on this chart, the #150-ranked program was #68 on ShowBuzz's list of the same day. I only included reruns up until #150 and then limited the list to the remainder of the 150 ShowBuzz originals with what their ranking would be in a rerun-included list.

Annoyingly, ShowBuzzDaily's data somehow mistakenly listed multiple airings of "Castle" (Lifetime) as originals even though they appear in my chart as reruns, so that was not super fun to rectify, but in the interest of making the originals here identical to their chart, they are listed as such. Additionally, this will not be a regular thing because I much prefer to do ratings on a weekly basis.

Academy Awards/Oscars Nielsen Ratings History (1953-present)

Below are the Nielsen ratings for every telecast of the Academy Awards. The ceremony was first aired on TV in 1953 after years of either being broadcast on the radio (1930-32, 1939-52) or not broadcast at all (1929, 1934-38). Household (HH) ratings are available for every telecast except for the 1961 show which aired during a Nielsen black week, 18-49 ratings are first available in 1992, and total viewership in 1974 (number of households is provided for 1953-73). Be aware that Nielsen did not introduce people-meters until 1987, so all viewership figures prior to that point are merely estimates Nielsen made at a later date. 

Note: Only one source ever reported the numbers for the 1966 awards show: a Variety article from June 1966. That show also aired during a Nielsen black week, but ABC apparently made a special request to have the telecast nationally rated, so I believe this is the reason that such a massive 56.0 rating never appears in Nielsen's top 50 highest-rated list. This was also the first Oscars telecast to air in color so that could potentially be a reason why it was so highly rated. But also, the number could just be completely wrong since it is so much higher than anything else. Take that one with a grain of salt.

Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards Ratings (1995-present)

Below are the Nielsen ratings for every SAG Awards broadcast beginning with the first one back in 1995. The awards show aired on NBC for its first 3 years where it was easily managing over 10 million viewers, but then moved to TNT beginning in 1998 where it has aired ever since. Beginning in 2006 the show was simulcast between TNT and TBS where it was regularly averaging between 5 and 6 million viewers cumulatively. The numbers started declining beginning around 2016 where for the next several years it was pulling between 2 and 3 million viewers. It hit a viewership low in 2021, logging just 957,000 viewers, but rebounded in 2022 up to 1.84 million. Note: no ratings info is known for the 1998 show, and the only ratings info available for the 1999 show was that it pulled a 2.7 cable rating which roughly translates to a 2.0-2.1 U.S. HH rating.

Season-to-Date Broadcast Median Age Data: through Feb. 6, 2022

Below is the season-to-date median age data for all of the primetime broadcast programs (excluding specials) that have aired since September 20, 2021. The column "#TC" is the total number of telecasts that are included in the median age column. Unfortunately, I don't have access to this data at a week-by-week level, and don't know of any site that posts it anymore since Programming Insider lost access to it. FOX's Sunday comedy block has, by far, the youngest-skewing shows on broadcast with 'Bob's Burgers' the youngest (median age: 46.9) and 'Family Guy' (47.0), 'Great North' (48.7), and 'The Simpsons' (49.8) just behind. 

Some Broadcast Subdemos: Week Ending February 6, 2022

These days, sub-demographic ratings data for broadcast programs is not nearly as readily available as it is for cable programs. ShowBuzzDaily obviously posts 8 different sub-demos daily for the top 50 cable programs, but for broadcast, they unfortunately only provide demographic shares for men & women 18-49. I see some of this data every so often, but only for the higher-rated programs, so here is a peak at some of the sub-demos for the most-recent week I have data for. If a particular sub-demo isn't included for a show then I don't have it. 

Ratings for the 2022 AFC & NFC Championship Games

While we await the ratings for Super Bowl LVI, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the numbers from the 2 conference championship games from 2 weeks ago. To begin, 2022 marked the third straight year of the NFC game beating the AFC game (2020, 2021, 2022) in total viewership after the AFC game dominated the previous four years (2016, 2017, 2018, 2019). Detailed breakdowns are provided for each game below:

Super Bowl Ratings (1967-present)

UPDATED FOR SUPER BOWL LVI: Below are the Nielsen ratings for every Super Bowl back to Super Bowl I in 1967. There are several columns of data in the chart below, including HH data (presented in ratings form & viewership form), average viewership, and total viewership for every game. Average viewership is the standard viewership metric while total viewership refers to the number of unique people who watched at least 6 minutes of the broadcast. Beginning with Super Bowl XX in 1986, local market ratings are included for both competing cities, and beginning with Super Bowl XXVI in 1992, 18-49 ratings are available. A second chart includes the streaming numbers beginning in 2012, as well as four sub-demos, and median age data back to 2010. I am missing some of the sub-demo data, so if anyone has that data, please let me know.

2022 Australian Open (ESPN/ESPN2/Tennis): Week 2 Ratings

Below are the full Nielsen ratings for U.S. telecasts of the 2022 'Australian Open' in the week of January 24-30, 2022. The full schedule of airings can be found here, but ESPN, ESPN2 and Tennis Channel split duties airing the tournament. Viewership is presented in thousands.

2022 Australian Open (ESPN2/Tennis Channel): Week 1 Ratings

Below are the full Nielsen ratings for U.S. telecasts of the 2022 'Australian Open' in the week of January 17-23, 2022. The full schedule of airings can be found here, but ESPN2 and Tennis Channel split duties airing the tournament with Tennis Channel covering 7am-2pm (ET) and 5pm-7pm, while ESPN2 covered 2pm-5pm and a late-night portion that usually went to around 2am or 3am. That late night portion is the live telecast while the 2pm-5pm portion is a re-airing of the previous night. Viewership is presented in thousands.

Adult Swim Full Saturday Ratings: January 15, 2022

Below are the Nielsen ratings for the full Adult Swim programming line-up from January 15th/16th, 2022. The chart below begins at 8:00pm Saturday evening and ends at 6:00am early Sunday morning. Viewership is expressed in thousands.

Adult Swim Full Saturday Ratings: January 8, 2022

Below are the Nielsen ratings for the full Adult Swim programming line-up from January 8th/9th, 2022. The chart below begins at 8:00pm Saturday evening and ends at 6:00am early Sunday morning. Viewership is expressed in thousands.

NFL Regular Season Local Market Ratings: 2021-22

Below are the full local market Nielsen ratings for all 30 NFL markets and all 18 weeks of the season. This data only accounts for households watching the NFL game featuring the team from that market.  There are two tables below: the first includes the percentage of TV homes, while the second table includes the total number of homes (in thousands). For example: 16.5% of homes in the Atlanta area (or 370,000 total households) watched the Falcons' week 1 game. New York and Los Angeles have two teams in their markets, so each market appears twice in the list with the viewership for the respective game. 

The data is in Live+1 as that is the standard that the Television Bureau of Advertising uses. This accounts for live viewing and viewing within 24 hours of the game broadcast. With sports programming specifically, there is virtually no difference between Live+Same day and timeshifted +1, +3, or +7 since the vast majority of people watch sports live. I'd obviously prefer a L+SD rating as I think using L+1 is goofy at best, but this is how the information is available. Note: I'm missing data from the New Orleans market for weeks 1 & 3. Also, I will update with week 18 when that data becomes available. I'm not going to include the data for week 18 because after looking at the report, I'm convinced that it is incorrect top-to-bottom. It shows essentially every single market being down from previous weeks which is at completely odds with the national ratings.

Futurama's Return to Adult Swim: Full Week Ratings

It totally slipped my mind that last week marked the return of Futurama to syndication on Adult Swim for the first time in nearly 14 years. A good friend of mine is huge fan of the show (and she is trying very hard to get me into it), so in honor of its return, here are the full Nielsen ratings for all of its airings from Dec. 27, 2021 through Jan. 2, 2022. I don't know how these numbers compare to what was there before, but with enough interest, I could potentially dig that up.

Ratings for NBC Sports Network's Last Day: December 31, 2021

Below are the full Nielsen ratings for the final day of NBC Sports Network which shut down at midnight on Dec. 31, 2021. The ratings begin at 12:00am on Friday (12/31), but the first several half-hours are listed as Thursday in the chart below as Nielsen's day starts and ends at 6:00am. Note: the final 8:00pm airing ended at 11:59pm.

Toonami (Adult Swim) Ratings: January 1, 2022

I still do not have full cable data for the weeks ending December 19th or 26th, but it will be posted if/when it is received.

Below are the Nielsen ratings for the Adult Swim programming line-up Toonami from January 1st/2nd, 2022. Included below are the ratings for the 11:30pm lead-in program and then the eight half-hours ending at 4am. Viewership is expressed in thousands.

Toonami (Adult Swim) Ratings: December 11, 2021

Below are the Nielsen ratings for the Adult Swim programming line-up Toonami from December 11th/12th. Included below are the ratings for the 11:30pm lead-in program and then the eight half-hours ending at 4am. Viewership is expressed in thousands.

Audience Breakdown: USA Network Programs w/e Dec. 5, 2021

I've seen some discourse the past week about USA Network's programming performance; in particular the age breakdown of certain shows, so I wanted to dig into it a bit for the week of data I just received. Below are the top 50 programs (by adults 18-49) that aired on USA in the week of Nov. 29 - Dec. 5 and an age breakdown of their viewership. Included below: the percentage of the total audience that was 18-49 and the percentage of the audience that was over 55. In the 18-49 column, the larger percentages correlate to darker green and in the 55+ column, smaller percentages correlate to darker green. I did also include the figures for 3 lower-rated USA originals this week that did not make the top 50.

Some things that immediately popped out:

• "Chucky" is doing quite well! Nearly half (155K) of its total audience (313K) was adults 18-49, and only 119K were adults over 55. And this trend can also be seen in its reruns throughout the week. The Monday 11:59pm rerun was at 55.22% 18-49, and both the 1:00am & 2:00am reruns that followed were at 50.00%. It is easily USA's youngest-skewing program.
• "WWE NXT" is skewing a bit older than Monday's "WWE Raw". "NXT" logged 191K adults 18-49 this week and 369K adults 55+. "Raw" did 593K adults 18-49 over its 3 hours and 839K adults 55+.
• "The Sinner" skews so old! This week the show managed only 82K adults 18-49, but had 320K adults 55+. Absolutely abysmal numbers, though actually not the worst on USA. That honor belongs to "Joel Osteen" (Sunday, 8:30am) which was at 8.97% in adults 18-49 and 80% in P55+.

Toonami (Adult Swim) Ratings: December 4, 2021

Below are the Nielsen ratings for the Adult Swim programming line-up Toonami from December 4th/5th. Included below are the ratings for the 11:30pm lead-in program and then the eight half-hours ending at 4am. Viewership is expressed in thousands.

Yellowstone (Paramount) Marathon Ratings: 11/1 - 11/7/2021

Below are the Nielsen ratings for every episode of Paramount Network's marathon re-airing of 'Yellowstone.' The network re-aired the full first three seasons of the program throughout the week, leading up to the much-anticipated fourth season premiere Sunday night. Unsurprisingly, the marathon saw its best numbers on Sunday in the hours leading up to the 8pm premiere with the 7pm episode ranking as the highest-rated (784,000 adults 18-49) and most-viewed (3.44 million) rerun on cable in the week. The 8pm fourth-season premiere episodes ranked second and third this week among adults 18-49 (2.114 million & 1.944 million) behind only ESPN's 'Monday Night Football' (4.335 million).

Fena: Pirate Princess (Adult Swim): Marathon Ratings Breakdown

I make a point of always including the early Sunday morning Adult Swim ratings in the weekly cable posts regardless of whether or not the programs are first-runs or reruns. I'm not familiar with the programming or the scheduling enough to provide any commentary on it, but the numbers from the most recent cable report I got caught my eye. As far as I'm aware, this early-10/31 marathon of Fena: Pirate Princess reruns is the lowest-viewed the Toonami line-up as ever been. I even went back to double check that I copied the correct column for total viewership because it was much lower than it usually is, but alas, the numbers are correct. Below is an age breakdown for each episode of the marathon. Not for any reason in particular, I suppose just to help validate that the numbers I reported yesterday are accurate.