Just wondering what the most tv watched channel there is. My friend thinks its TV Land, I say its more like ABC or one of the major networks. Anyone know?
I don’t have any of the statistics in front of me, but Entertainment Weekly usually publishes the ratings for the top twenty or so TV shows every week, and sometimes they print a separate chart on the top cable TV shows.
Although the major networks are clearly losing more and more viewers every year to the cable networks (and VCRs and DVDs and game consoles, etc.) there is still no contest. The major three networks (followed by FOX and followed much further away by the WB and UPN) get many millions more viewers than any cable network.
As an example (again, I am not looking this up now so if someone has more accurate figures please correct me), I believe the most popular show on HBO, The Sopranos, gets something in the neighborhood of 2 or 3 million viewers. The top shows on the networks, like Friends or CSI or ER get something like 25 or 30 million viewers.
Everyone (who has a TV) gets broadcast television, but not everyone gets cable (or satellite TV). Those who do get cable have many more chanels to choose from, splitting the potential audience even further.
In cable, small numbers add up to great success. They don’t need the large numbers to be successfull as networks do. That’s why “niche” stations, that have a strong appeal to a small audience, do very well in cable TV economics. ALL the cable chanels have small numbers, so if your small number is higher than everywhere else, you are the most successfull. Niche stations pull in a loyal core group, and that is what succeeds. For an example, I believe that the weekly lists of the top cable shows each week have about 5 wrestling shows and 10 Spongebob Squarepants or Rugrats in the top 20 every week. The core group of WWE fans or small children consistantly make those shows the highest rated among cable shows, even if the number of viewers would probably not be enough on any major network to keep them from cancellation.
As far as which “TV channel” is the most watched, you actually mean TV network. ABC, CBS and NBC (and FOX and WB and UPN) are all on different channels in different cities. If you actually do mean the most watched single Channel, I do not know that, but I would guess it is either the ABC, CBS or NBC channel in New York City. I am not sure nationwide which is the top network this year, except I do know that ABC is in third place, so it is either NBC or CBS. NBC was number one for many, many years, but the recent resurgence of CBS shows like Survivor and CSI may have put CBS over the top. Oh, and a few years ago ABC did well with Who Wants to Be a Millionnaire on three or four times a week, but that fad has since past. I don’t remember if that put ABC over the top those couple of years or just made it more competitive even though it still didn’t win.
OK, I gave in and tried to look up some ratings online. Could not find a season comparison of the networks for this or last year, but to give you an idea of what we’re talking about, see this weeks ratings HERE.
You will see this week is very skewed and unusual: the Super Bowl had over 88 million viewers, and along with the post-game shows was numbers one, two and three this week. FOX had the premier of American Idol, which garnered the most viwers for FOX in their history, I believe. All three American Idol shows drew over 23 or 24 million viewers (numbers five, six and seven on the chart). Number 4 this week? CSI, with over 24 million viewers. of the twenty shows on the list, the lowest one had over 14 million viewers.
Then look at the cable ratings: at the top of this page, there is a blue bar that says “Weekly” on the left side. Click the tab toward the center of that blue bar that says “Cable” and you will see the top rated cable shows this week. Number one is an original movie on TNT network, “Monte Walsh,” which drew less than 5 million viewers. I couldn’t say for sure, but if every single show on all the major networks didn’t ALL get at least 5 million viewers, it probably came pretty close. Of the top 15 cable shows, 2 are WWE wrestling, and 3 are SpongeBob Squarepants. I guess I did pretty good guessing this in my first post!
If you click back to the “Weekly” tab at the top of the page, over the top 20 rating chart there is a little chart showing the ratings for the Networks as a whole, both for the week and for the season so far. For the week ABC was the winner (because of the Super Bowl), but for the season so far it’s CBS number one, NBC number two, ABC number three and FOX number four, followed a ways off by The WB and then UPN.
So to answer your OP: CBS
This is my last post, then I’ll shut up… now that I see TNT drew close to 5 million viewers for a show this past week, I will readjust my memory and now claim that the Sopranos, HBO’s top rated show, get about 7 million viewers a shot.
Yeah, 7 million…
That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. Unless someone wants to post the real numbers.
So 7 million viewers is very, very good for cable, but it would be way down on the list of broadcast TV show ratings.