Wednesday, August 29, 2018

This was a really big week for news – but few seemed to show up at the party!



Where did all the people go?

In the most tumultuous week of the Trump presidency as two former associates were in court, both were convicted of an array of charges having nothing to do with Trump in the case of Manafort, and very little to do with Trump in the case of Cohen and his plea bargain, all media guns were trained on bringing about the demise of Trump through impeachment.


With that kind of action, one might have expected the largest TV audiences and ratings of the Trump presidency.  Well, if you add the network prime time numbers with the cable average viewing numbers for all the stations making the Nielsen weekly report press release, a total of 28.8 million viewers had their globes glued to the screen on average each day.


So, Nielsen also says there are 304 million potential viewers over two years of age, which seems about the right starting age for the quality of television viewing content.  That means, hummm, barely NINE PERCENT of the potential American viewers watched the network and cable telly each day.


I am not sure but that could be about the fewest TV viewers since 1953 (sixty-five years ago) when there were about twenty-seven million TVs in use.  Wake up media, because the good news is very bad for you.  The good news is 275 million Americans have better things to do than watch television.  Perhaps this is the clearest sign yet that Americans are fed up with television news content and television show content.


I, for one, am quite pleased with the American boycott of non-essential news and generally stupid programming, not to mention the saturation of advertisements, served up by the broadcast media.  One can only hope the aversion of Americans to advertising saturation will slow down the spiraling increase in the digital addiction of our younger generations.
    

Facts:

According to Nielsen's National Television Household Universe Estimates, there are 119.6 million TV homes in the U.S. for the 2017-18 TV season. The number of persons age 2 and older in U.S. TV Households is estimated to be 304.5 million, which represents a 0.9% increase from last year.  Aug 25, 2017.


Here are the latest Nielsen ratings.



By David Bauder - Associated Press - Tuesday, August 28, 2018
NEW YORK — If it’s a lousy week for President Donald Trump, it’s usually a good week for Rachel Maddow.


MSNBC’s marquee personality took advantage of a busy week of bad news for the president, led by former lawyer Michael Cohen’s plea deal and former campaign manager Paul Manafort’s conviction on corruption charges.


She had the top-rated show on cable television on Tuesday with 3.89 million viewers. Maddow beat the usual cable ratings leader, Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity, for the week.


Fox News Channel led the cable networks with an average of 2.26 million viewers, taking advantage of its weekend strength. MSNBC had 2.12 million, USA had 1.42 million, HGTV had 1.39 million and CNN had 1.27 million.


Behind its summer juggernaut “America’s Got Talent,” now being shown on two nights, NBC won the week in prime-time with an average of 4.9 million viewers. CBS had 4 million viewers, ABC had 3.6 million, Fox had 2.6 million, ION Television had 1.4 million, Univision and Telemundo were tied with 1.21 million and the CW had 770,000.


ABC’s “World News Tonight” topped the evening newscasts with an average of 8 million viewers. The “NBC Nightly News” had 7.4 million and the “CBS Evening News” had 5.7 million.



For the week of Aug. 20-26, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewership:

  1. “America’s Got Talent” (Tuesday), NBC, 11.21 million;
  2. “America’s Got Talent” (Wednesday), NBC, 9.7 million;
  3. “60 Minutes,” CBS, 7.38 million;
  4. NFL Exhibition Game: Arizona at Dallas, NBC, 7.17 million;
  5. NFL Exhibition Game: Philadelphia at Cleveland,” Fox, 6.5 million;
  6. “Celebrity Family Feud,” ABC, 6.31 million;
  7. “NFL Pre-Game Show,” NBC, 6.12 million;
  8. “The Big Bang Theory,” CBS, 5.83 million;
  9. “Big Brother” (Wednesday), CBS, 5.72 million;
  10. “Big Brother” (Sunday), CBS, 5.67 million.

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