Ronnie Dobbs

For Once-Hot NBC, a Week of Record Lows

By John Maynard
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 18, 2007; Page C07

You know things are bad at NBC when Howie Mandel is the main attraction.

In a week that hit a historic low for the network, the Mandel-hosted game show "Deal or No Deal" was the only NBC program to crack the 10-million-viewer mark.

NBC averaged just 6.8 million viewers for the entire week, making it the network's least watched week during the regular television season since the current Nielsen ratings system was established 20 years ago.

NBC's Thursday lineup, once dubbed "Must See TV" night in the heady "Cosby Show"/"Cheers"/"Seinfeld" days, drew only 7.1 million viewers, its lowest Thursday ever for all-original programming. The "ER" audience of 9.2 million was the hospital drama's smallest ever.

CBS won the weekly ratings race, taking four of seven nights, ceding "American Idol" nights -- Tuesday and Wednesday -- to Fox.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...041701791.html

I wonder what that will mean for SNL next season? I suspect that there will be more budget cuts. This is also doesn't bode well for the future of "30 Rock."

Giles

who watches ER anymore anyway??

NBC needs to fire all the writers of SNL and actually find one's that can write good material.

watched 30 Rock last week, didn't wow me like I thought it would.

Trelach24

Well, stop taking Heroes off the air for 8 months at a time.

Brent_MN

It doesn't help that HEROES wasn't on. Other than that, I suppose... uh oh... Chalk it up to a fluke. Now if the whole season's ratings were that low...youch.

DRG

All the hiatuses have hurt, and it's made worse by the fact that all their new spring shows have failed miserably (Black Donnellys, Andy Barker PI, Raines, Thank God You're Here). I'm still a bit baffled why Earl/Office numbers dropped so much lower than their new episode average, considering Ugly Betty (clip show) and Survivor were both down from their season averages.

Groucho

30 Rock has already been picked up for next season.

FantasticVSDoom

Yeah, its all the shows being on hiatus... Im an ER watcher and I just realized on the Wednesday before that it was going to be new so that added to that issue probably.

riley_dude

I think they had a good thing going on a few years ago until they started putting things like the Apprentice and Joey on. I think that was the beginning of the end.
That and I don't think your average viewer gets the intelligence of Scrubs or the Office or 30 Rock.

Shannon Nutt

These things are circular. Before LOST and DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES, ABC wasn't doing that great in the ratings, and a few years back - before CSI and SURVIVOR - CBS was in the ratings dumpster. Heck I remember those "Murder She Wrote" days when almost EVERYTHING on CBS was for people 40-plus. NBC will be back on top in 3 to 5 years and someone else will be struggling - that's just how it is...

kms_md

the heroes hiaitus has hurt NBC, imho. and killing pretty much every new show (with the exception of heroes) that interested me (black donnelys, andy barker, studio 60).

btw, is studio 60 done? are they planning on bringing it back to complete some story arcs? or will it be unceremoniously dumped like the donnelys?

Morf

Is TGYH doing badly? Only reference to ratings I could find was http://www.thefutoncritic.com/news.a...=20070417nbc01

mdc3000

I really hope they air the remaining studio 60's and don't just stick them on the web... I'm pissed that The Black Donnelly's remaining eps are only on nbc.com, because I can't watch that content because I live in Canada...

cracksky

I really think all networks should adopt 24's schedule of picking a start time and running through all the seasons' episodes with no breaks. Repeats are for in-between seasons not in-between shows.

fujishig

I think more networks are starting to do that, but then you get into a situation like Heroes (that some are complaining about here) where you have to take long breaks in between strings of new episodes and viewers lose interest in the time slot. Doesn't Battlestar Galactica have a similar problem, where the next season isn't until next year?

calhoun07

From the linked article...
How is that bad news? The sooner they take that crap off the air, the better.

kinetic

seriously.. you're kidding yourself if you believe a show like drive will last a full season

MrBob

For serial shows, you cannot, I repeat cannot take long breaks between them! It just kills all momentem that they have gained. I love Heros, but hell, I've gotten so use to not watching it on Monday night, and doing other things, that I don't know if I'm going to bother watching it until it comes out on dvd.

ChrisHicks

I was just coming here to ask how many people have lost interest in Heroes due to the long break.

Brent_MN

be pissed at Canada, not NBC!

Wildo1966

After this whole manifesto fiasco I hope their ratings tank even more....NBC is the lowest of the low IMO....

wm lopez

With the pictures with the NBC logo that they show of that killer of Va. tech all over the other stations do you think that will help their ratings?

chowderhead

I think many shows are down season to season and from previous weeks. I do think that the daylight savings change has caused some ratings drop for every show. Also, things like internet streaming on abc/nbc/cbs/itunes and DVRs have caused further erosion. My understanding is that office/earl is one of the most DVRed shows on the schedule. Still, regardless of what people say about office/earl ... it isn't even coming close to beating (in ratings) some of the walking the dog shows that NBC used to have on Thursday i.e. Jesse, Veronica's Closet, Suddenly Susan, Fired up, Union Square, etc. etc.

calhoun07

Yeah, the first thing I think of when I see those photos and the logo is that I really should watch Friday Night Lights more often.

nateman

It's sad that NBC can't find a main audience because they have some of the highest quality shows on tv this year.
Sure CBS has more shows that i watch but the Quality of the shows is much better on NBC. ABC the only 2 shows that i was are Lost & men in trees which isn't even coming back ti'll the fall. I don't know what it is this year but the only thing the majority of people seem to be watching is those fricken reality shows, mindless entertainment & thats why Deal or no deal does so well for NBC.
I like my shows to be smart & entertaining! thats just my opinion though and the 28 million people watching american idol disagree with me.
It's nice to see NBC give shows chances though.
I havn't said this in a long time but NBC is very underrated.

Michael Corvin

Actually, this has been a pretty solid year for ER. Better than the past 2-3.