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