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| What is the state of American television? Tens
of millions of people watching whatever the major
Both Bush and Hilton were beaten by CBS's beautiful-people-crime-drama Navy NCIS staring Mark Harmon, which had viewership of around 12 million people. Sadly, NBC missed out on the evenings records by showing a re-run of the show "Whoopi" which could only get 7.3 million people watching. If you add up the numbers, around 42.2 million people watched the three major networks that night. If all those people spent their time ironing their work shirts for the next day they could have been more productive. |
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 ABC
scored a major hit with the wedding of Bachelorette
star Trista Rehn's wedding to fireman Ryan Sutter. On December 10, nearly
one in 10 Americans tuned into the program. Why? Answer: "I was suckered
into it by the ABC hype." |
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 One
of the biggest winners in December, was the CBS long-running "reality"
show Survivor. This edition was called Survivor: Pearl Islands and it's
season finale on December 14 saw a staggering 25.2 million viewers. Three
days before, Survivor had 22 million viewers for its second-to-last episode.
NBC tried to compete with it's "reality" Average Joe program
and got 17.4 million people to watch the final episode a week before Survivor.
The "reality programs" continue
to dominate as Americans stare blankly at television's new entertainment
phenomenon. |
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|
December saw networks compile huge viewership numbers showing that TV viewing is not slowing down, despite some reports that time on the Internet has eroded viewership. Below are the Nielsen Media Research ratings numbers for Dec. 8-14, 2003. Listings include the week's ranking, with viewership for the week and season-to-date rankings in parentheses. An "X" in parentheses denotes a one-time-only presentation.
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 Editors
Note: I would like to mention that I have never, in my life, watched
any of the programs on the list above (with the exception being that I
probably did see "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" when
I was around 10 years old). I find it both impressive and disturbing to
see how many millions and millions and millions of people watch television
programs each night. I wonder if anyone actually remembers what they watched
the next week or next year? I can only imagine what the world would be
like if those millions of people did something more constructive with
their time rather than wasting hours and hours unthinking in front of
the TV -- lost in the sea of fake images and real advertising. When will
the unthinking millions wake up and fill their "prime time"
with reality rather than fantasy? |
Ratings
Update: December 2003 
networks
choose to broadcast. Traditional fictional shows and reality television
are the obvious winners. In December 2003, more worthless crap was put
on television than ever before -- and the networks got record viewership
numbers. On December 16, the forgettable "Navy NCIS" and "The
Simple Life" both had more viewers than Diane Sawyer's interview
with President George W. Bush, two days after the capture of former
Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
This
is not to say that Bush, a career politician, was going to say anything
important. At best, the ABC interview was another "reality"
television program. Slightly more than 11 million people tuned into
Bush's interview. Fox's The Simple Life beat out Bush with 11.9 million
people watching. According to the Fox web site, "The Simple Life
is the new, unscripted comedy series that chronicles two affluent socialites
as they struggle to make the transition from uptown to small town."
The draw was that the show stars Paris Hilton, who was recently caught
in a Tommy Lee-Pamela Anderson sex tape scandal. The show scored the
highest rating among teenagers and adults ages 18 to 49 that night.
I doubt that anyone remembers the show the next day.
