All that glitters?
01/15/08 02:42 PM
By ED BARK
The ongoing writers' strike so far has thrown two strikes at a pair of venerable awards shows. The diminished ratings are sharp body blows to their respective networks.
Sunday night's strikingly low-rent Golden Globes press conference, rightly ridiculed as the equivalent of a Soviet Union TV production by Jay Leno, drew a paltry 6 million viewers nationally. Last year's ceremony, also on NBC, had 20.4 million viewers.
CBS' annual People's Choice Awards show, hosted by Queen Latifah in an empty room, also fell to 6 million viewers. It had an audience of 11.3 million last year.
The Globes' 14.4 million viewer shortfall enabled Part 1 of CBS' Comanche Moon miniseries to ride much taller in the saddle than initially anticipated. It had 15.8 million viewers to rank among the week's top 10 programs, according to Nielsen Media Research. Tuesday's and Wednesday's Parts 2 & 3 will have to compete in part against Fox's American Idol, though. Good luck with that.
Fox also made a big showing Sunday night, with the Cowboys-Giants prime-time runover drawing 32.5 million viewers to take the top spot in the weekly Nielsens. The network's following premiere of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles also prospered with 18.4 million viewers.
It's always interesting to note the Big Four networks' season-to-date standings in the week before American Idol begins decimating everything in its path.
Through Jan. 13th of the 2007-08 season, CBS, ABC and NBC are tied for first place among advertiser-craved 18-to-49-year-olds, with Fox just one-tenth of a rating point behind. Next week Fox will be No. 1. And it won't be caught.
In total viewers, it's still CBS on top (11.6 million), followed by ABC (10.1 million), NBC (8.9 million) and Fox (8.8 million). This means that Fox will jump past NBC this week and likely also will catch ABC before the season ends. CBS might still be too far ahead, though.
ABC's future prospects will be significantly affected by its Feb. 24th telecast of the Academy Awards -- that is, if there is a telecast. A no-frills Oscars press conference might still draw in excess of 15 million viewers. But last year's full-dress ceremony had 39.9 million viewers.
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