> This season there are 289.7 million viewers living in 114.7 million TV households in the United States, as estimated by Nielsen.  If you believe these yearly estimates (and you must if you want to trust the ratings each morning), there are five million fewer people living in one million fewer homes than there were [...]

  Breaking Bad‘s arrival was the big ratings news on Sunday night, while the launch of Political Animals wasn’t. HBO:  TRUE BLOOD, as usual, took the night with a 2.7 that was a tick higher than last week, beating the season premiere of Big Brother on CBS and for that matter everything else on broadcast [...]

  HBO:  Another wacko episode of TRUE BLOOD (Lilith!) topped the night in cable (and beat everything on broadcast TV except the Bachelorette finale/epilogue) with a 2.6 (a splendid 75% of the viewers under 50), down just slightly from last week.  And as much as THE NEWSROOM seems to infuriate at least half the people [...]

  Monday cable was dominated, as usual, by the unscripted (well, let’s pretend they’re unscripted) WWE WRESTLING on USA and LOVE & HIP-HOP ATLANTA on VH1.  (With VH1 back on DirecTV, Love & Hip-Hop had a big ratings bump from 1.5 to 2.0–it’s also notable for a tremendous 1.1 additional rating in its 10PM reairing, [...]

>The power of the NFL is in full display in this week’s top cable program chart.  ESPN’s Monday Night Football game featuring the Dallas Cowboys at the Washington Redskins scored a mammoth 7.2 Adult 18-49 rating, with over 17 million viewers 2+ watching in an average minute.  MTV’s Jersey Shore placed second with about half [...]

  On the heels of last night’s jaw-dropping episode of HOMELAND, which basically played 52 pick-up with the show’s very premise, Showtime has issued an early Season 3 renewal for what is now its flagship series.  Homeland has been nothing but good for Showtime, winning the network its first major Emmys for Best Drama, Actor [...]

  Despite strong competition in every direction on Sunday night, Showtime had a very strong start for its winter line-up, setting new records for SHAMELESS, HOUSE OF LIES and CALIFORNICATION.  Demo numbers aren’t yet available, but in total viewers for its initial airing, Shameless reached the 2M mark, up 400,000 from last season’s premiere and [...]

>ESPN’s Monday Night Football was back with a vengeance this week — a 6.4 Adult 18-49 rating for the Pittsburgh Steelers at San Francisco 49ers, the highest-rated game since November 7 (6.9 rating for Chicago Bears at Philadelphia Eagles).   NFL Network was not so lucky Thursday, drawing the Jacksonville Jaguars at Atlanta Falcons.  The game [...]