What People are Watching on Television - Cable and Broadcast By the Numbers
We take a look at the most significant ratings earners of the May 2 week according to Nielsen analytics to discover what people are watching on television. The week was dominated heavily by the NBA Playoffs (for the most part shown on TNT) and Fox’s American Idol. Notable entries include History Channel’s Pawn Stars, a reality show following a 24-hour pawn shop in Las Vegas, and WWE Raw, which, for the purposes of simplification, I categorized as “Sports” in the breakdown graphically shown below.
The Nielsen charts above display the top ratings earners based on the percentage of TV homes in the United States tuned into television. For this reason, there are slightly more entries for Cable as The O’Reilly Factor, WWE Raw, Pawn Stars and the announcement of Bin Laden’s death all ranked equally in terms of percentage shares. Despite this fact, the top Broadcast ratings earners brought in 96.7 million more views than the top Cable ratings earners.
Here are graphical breakdowns of the above data by genre and network:
CBS scored big with “Police Procedural Dramas,” NCIS, NCIS: Los Angeles and The Mentalist, though reality competitions took in the most views, accounting for the three most watched shows this week.
Analyzing the above data with careful consideration leads me to rethink creating that game show where cops and basketball players dance it off…
