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Saturday Night a Dead Zone for Ratings
Saturday night has not been a very strong evening for ratings for years. In Canada hockey gobbles up many of the viewers and remains the main draw. And W5 on CTV sometimes cracks the top 30. In the US however Saturdays have become a real black hole. Not a good night for the big four US networks. See last Saturday prime time ratings on March 27 from ShowBuzz Daily...
- Radiowiz
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Re: Saturday Night a Dead Zone for Ratings
At one point, Saturday night was the episode burn off night for cancelled shows.
RadioWiz & RadioQuiz are NOT the same person.
RadioWiz & THE Wiz are NOT the same person.
- mace
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Re: Saturday Night a Dead Zone for Ratings
At one time [1973-74] Saturday night was appointment viewing, at least on CBS. All In The Family/Mash/Mary Tyler Moore/Bob Newhart/Carol Burnett. What a lineup!
- RadioAaron
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Re: Saturday Night a Dead Zone for Ratings
You'd think the last year would have created an opportunity to make something of Saturday nights. But I guess is a 'chicken or the egg' scenario of not wanting to chance it with a show with potential, not knowing if the audience will be there.
- paterson1
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Re: Saturday Night a Dead Zone for Ratings
mace wrote:
At one time [1973-74] Saturday night was appointment viewing, at least on CBS. All In The Family/Mash/Mary Tyler Moore/Bob Newhart/Carol Burnett. What a lineup!
Yes apparently the CBS Saturday night line up was so strong, it was having an effect on "date night." Movie theatres saw a decrease with Saturday night traffic because people were staying home watching TV.
Looking at the ratings from last Saturday, some network affiliates would have next to no viewers for most shows. FOX has 227 affiliated stations. With 785,000 viewers for Game of Talents at 9pm works out to 3,548 viewers per station.
Now of course this is not how ratings are measured, and larger markets would have many more viewers for the show. But it also means that some smaller, even medium markets essentially had nobody watching. And it was really not much better for the other three networks.
Some of the smaller affiliates for NBC,CBS and ABC could have had only a couple of thousand viewers for some programs last Saturday! I noticed that Showbuzz didn't even list CW network for Saturday's prime time. Maybe they had no measurable audience?
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Re: Saturday Night a Dead Zone for Ratings
I noticed that Showbuzz didn't even list CW network for Saturday's prime time. Maybe they had no measurable audience?
This is probably because the CW doesn't actually program anything on its network Saturday nights. (WNLO in Buffalo, for example, has two hours of NCIS reruns in primetime on Saturday nights and no CW shows at all. WPIX on New York City goes retro with a line-up of Barney Miller, The Jeffersons, All In The Family and The Honeymooners from 8-10 PM that night.)
The CW is essentially a six-day-a-week entity. It seems they never even bothered with Saturday nights, knowing there's so little return there. So each affiliate is on their own.
- paterson1
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Re: Saturday Night a Dead Zone for Ratings
I did not know that, thanks. Always thought it was pretty cool that WPIX runs all New York sitcoms on Saturday evening. Looks like they are giving The Honeymooners a rest and playing Seinfeld now.
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