By Lisa de Moraes
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Take note, striking writers: With 10 hours of reality programming (out of 22 hours of prime time) and another three of football, NBC matched its best weekly average in three years among the 18-to-49-year-olds advertisers chase and won the first week of '08 among viewers of all ages.
Here's a look at the week's champagne and cider:
WINNERS
Goodbye Zoey. Pregnancy -- so luring. Before knowing "Zoey 101" star Jamie Lynn Spears was pregnant, about 3 million of you watched the third season of the Nickelodeon series. After Britbrit's 16-year-old sister revealed she was in the family way, more than 7 million of you caught the hour-long third-season wrap-up, in which our gal Z had to choose between staying at Pacific Coast Academy with her best buds, and moving to London with her mom and dad. She chose London, but then found out her best friend, Chase, is in love with her -- boy, is he in for a surprise. Nickelodeon already shot Season 4, which will debut next month.
NFL Playoff Game 2. NBC's Jacksonville-at-Pittsburgh coverage logged nearly 26 million viewers, the biggest night-long crowd for any network since Fox's "American Idol" finale last May.
"New Year's Rockin' Eve." Numbers for ABC's kitsch-athon won't be out until tomorrow but we know the prime-time portion clocked 9.2 million viewers -- its largest audience in six years.
"American Gladiator." Nearly 12.1 million viewers of all ages watched the return of the competition series Sunday, making it NBC's most watched non-sports program on a Sunday night since it carried the '06 Primetime Emmy Awards.
"Law & Order." Returning to NBC's lineup, "L&O" tallied 13.5 million viewers, the network's highest non-Olympic number in the time period in nearly two years.
"The Apprentice." Seventh edition of NBC's The Donald-athon, featuring "celebrity" apprentices, scored more than 11 million viewers, its biggest opening audience since its third.
Presidential debates. ABC's back-to-back GOP and Democratic candidate debates Saturday posted an average of just under 9 million viewers, the net's biggest non-sports audience on a Saturday night in more than a year. (CNN's replay on Sunday clocked another 1.2 million.)
LOSERS
Bowl Games. The week-long bowl-fest produced surprisingly lackluster numbers, starting with Tuesday's Rose Bowl, which snared 19 million viewers, its smallest audience since '03. Tuesday's [insurance company] Sugar Bowl copped 11.7 million viewers, its tiniest haul since '95. Wednesday's [snack chip] Fiesta Bowl bagged 12.2 million fans to tie its '05 game for puniest crowd since '97. And Thursday's [package deliverer] Orange Bowl scored just under 12 million viewers, its second smallest audience since '99.
"The Wire." The fifth and final season debut of HBO's critically acclaimed drama suffered its smallest Sunday premiere audience ever, 1.2 million viewers.
The week's 10 most watched prime-time programs, in order, were: NBC's Sunday NFL playoff game; ABC's "Desperate Housewives" and Rose Bowl coverage; CBS's "60 Minutes"; NBC's "Law & Order" and Thursday "Deal or No Deal"; CBS's "CSI"; ABC's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition"; and NBC's Law & Order: SVU" and Wednesday "Deal or No Deal."
* * *
More writers' strike fallout for NBC's broadcast of "The Golden Globes," which is now, more correctly, NBC's "Golden Globes" news conference:
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which bestows Globes on movie and TV luminaries, says Steven Spielberg will not receive the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement this year. There goes another 10 minutes of NBC's planned one-hour "press conference" coverage of the Globe trophy ceremony.
The HFPA says it will fete Spielberg next January, when, the HFPA optimistically believes, the Hollywood writers' strike will be a distant memory.
Late Monday, NBC announced it was forced to slash its annual three-hour Globe orgy of celebrity sightings down to a one-hour affair covered by NBC News because Hollywood writers had announced their intention to picket the show, which, in turn, had sent the Screen Actors Guild to canvass its members to make sure they felt as the guild did that it would be unseemly to step over the writers to accept trophies and gift baskets at the Hilton in Beverly Hills this Sunday.
Before NBC announced that the Globes had been turned into a news conference, NBC Entertainment co-chief Ben Silverman had taken his customary high road, telling E! News anchor Ryan Seacrest that while "sadly, it feels like the nerdiest, ugliest, meanest kids in the high school are trying to cancel the prom . . . NBC wants to try to keep that prom alive."
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