Preliminary Ratings

[DanTMan]

From mediaweek.com:

"Over at the WB, the network finally has some traction on Thursday thanks to the ongoing success of Smallville, which opened with a solid 4.4/ 7 in the overnights (#5), 5.66 million viewers (#5) and a third-place 2.4/ 7 among adults 18-49 at 8 p.m. As a basis for comparison, year-ago occupants Blue Collar TV and Drew Carey’s Green Screen (remember that turkey?) averaged a 2.8/ 4 in the overnights, with 3.31 million viewers and a 1.3/ 3 among adults 18-49 on Oct. 14, 2004. At 9 p.m., Everwood followed with an also time period-improved (and fifth-place) 3.3/ 5 in the overnights, 4.35 million viewers and a 1.7/ 4 among adults 18-49. It looks like my early prediction that Everwood will move back to Monday is not coming true."

Looking good again for Smallville.

[MrsTomWelling]

Yay!

[SuperTal]

How are ratings read? 4.4/7 means??

[superhippie2000]

ya i never understood how to read the rating either. would 4.4/7 be like 4.4 million people watched smallville out of the 7 million who watched the WB or what.

[freddielm]

I really don't get it. How do they know the age range of people that watched the show? I just go by the total # of viewers, that other stuff confuses me.

[superhippie2000]

well some people get surveyed and they ask the ages of people in there house so when they watch tv they see who has that cable box and what survey they filled out and use that

[DanTMan]

Originally posted by SuperTal
How are ratings read? 4.4/7 means??

The first number is the rating, the second number is the share.

The rating is how many people watched the show. I believe to get an actual number you multiply that number by like 1.1 million. The second number (the rating) is a percentage. So in this case about 7% of all TV's in the US were tuned in to Smallville.

I believe mediaweek.com uses the Nielsen numbers for its ratings. How they gather thier information is to long to explain here. You can google Nielsen ratings and I'm sure it will explain it.

[freddielm]

Originally posted by superhippie2000
well some people get surveyed and they ask the ages of people in there house so when they watch tv they see who has that cable box and what survey they filled out and use that

Oh, but that doesn't give ya an accurate number though. I'm confusing myself even more.

[Rafael122]

So the final rating is a 5.6?

[DanTMan]

Originally posted by Rafael122
So the final rating is a 5.6?

Yes. About 5.6 million people watched Smallville last night.

[Rafael122]

That's consistent with last week's rating I think, which got a 5.7. Not bad.

[GhostRider]

Three episodes into the season and the ratings are looking great. Hidden was really good and the upcoming Aquaman episode looks to be a winner as well. If this keeps up S6 will be a lock.

[batfinx]

Maybe the ratings are easier to understand if all things are compared to the competition and broken down in their categories of ratings/share, viewers, and 18-49:

Rating/Share

#1: CBS Survivor: Guatemala 10.9/16
#2: FOX: Game 2 of the MLB National League Championship Series: 7.7/12 (this will stay 'iffy' because Media Week only lists the game as a whole, they don't break it down by hour)
#3: NBC: Will & Grace: 7.1/10
#4: NBC: Joey: 6.3/10
#5: ABC: Alias: 5.6/ 8
#6: UPN: Everybody Hates Chris: 4.7/ 7
#7: WB: Smallville: 4.4/ 7
#8: UPN: Love, Inc. : 2.8/ 4

Obviously what helps Smallville win the hour over UPN is that Love, Inc. does badly even though Everybody Hates Chris does better than Smallville's first half hour.

Viewers

#1: CBS: Survivor: 17.57 million
#2: FOX: playoffs: 8.69 million
#3: NBC: Will & Grace: 8.13
#4: NBC: Joey: 7.29 million
#5: ABC: Alias: 7.03 million
#6: UPN: Everybody Hates Chris: 6.13 million
#7: WB: Smallville: 5.66 million
#8: UPN: Love, Inc : 3.94 million

18-49 demographic

#1: CBS: Survivor: 6.4/18
#2: NBC: Will & Grace: 3.4/ 9
#3: NBC: Joey: 2.8/ 8
#4: FOX: playoffs: 2.7/ 7
#5: UPN: Everybody Hates Chris: 2.5/ 7
#6: WB: Smallville: 2.4/ 7
#7: ABC: Alias: 2.2/ 6
#8: UPN: Love Inc : 1.7/ 5

This is where Smallville went up a notch because even though more people watched Alias, the demographics for 18-49 was smaller for Alias. It's hard to say what impact the baseball playoffs had on any of the shows since sporting events often rob shows of male demographics.

This above data is all from Media Week, but they only cover what they call Fast Affiliate Ratings. They are only covering the major markets with these ratings, not the whole country.

When the whole country is covered, these are the ratings from zap2it:

The CBS sweep of the night began with "Survivor: Guatemala" posting a 10.4/17 at 8 p.m. "Joey," 5.2/9, and "Will & Grace," 5.8/9, gave NBC second for the hour, while FOX's coverage of the National League Championship Series was third. "Alias" came in at 4.8/8 for ABC to take fourth. The WB was fifth with "Smallville," 3.4/5, which finished slightly ahead of UPN's "Everybody Hates Chris" and "Love, Inc."

You'll notice that some things go up and some things go down in terms of rating/share when the whole country is covered, but the ranking order still comes out pretty much the same. They average together the ratings of 2 half-hour sitcoms rather than rating them separately and as long as Love Inc does so much worse than Everybody Loves Chris, Smallville will come out on top for the whole hour, but lose on the first half hour to Chris.

You also have to read Media Week's hype carefully:

Over at the WB, the network finally has some traction on Thursday thanks to the ongoing success of Smallville, which opened with a solid 4.4/ 7 in the overnights (#5), 5.66 million viewers (#5) and a third-place 2.4/ 7 among adults 18-49 at 8 p.m. As a basis for comparison, year-ago occupants Blue Collar TV and Drew Carey’s Green Screen (remember that turkey?) averaged a 2.8/ 4 in the overnights, with 3.31 million viewers and a 1.3/ 3 among adults 18-49 on Oct. 14, 2004

They're not saying Smallville is doing great compared to previous years of Smallville, but it is doing better than Blue Collar and Drew Carey's Green Screen from a year ago in this same Thursday time slot. Overall though, Smallville is rating about how it did last year at this time, but with a dip in overall viewers since nothing has hit the 6 million viewer mark yet. But I am not as optimistic about Aquaman as you are :lol: I'd think that wouldn't get many viewers unless there's a lot of closet Aquaman fans out there. The episode with Tom Wopat might stand a change of hitting that 6 million since it reunites the 'Duke Boys' from Dukes of Hazzard. I'm sure it'll get a lot of publicity.