Summer Viewing: Broadcast Shows Beat Cable's Best

MediaPost's MediaDailyNews by Wayne Friedman, Oct 8, 2012, 12:47 PM Despite years of growing cable TV program strength in the summer, fall broadcast TV shows continue to out-rate the best of these shows with viewers -- even when just looking at broadcast time-shifted audiences. Looking at the time-shifted portion of Nielsen's live-plus-same-day time-shifted ratings, The TVB, the broadcast TV advertising group, says many new fall prime-time shows have a higher audience than cable shows, when including live-plus-same-day ratings. When looking at a key demographic -- viewers 25-54 -- 12 broadcast TV shows ranked in the top 25 just in their same-day time-shifted viewing -- not live viewing -- versus that of cable programs' live-plus-same-day time-shifted viewing. The No. 1 show for cable in the summer was History's miniseries "Hatfields & McCoys," which had 2.8 million 25-54 viewers. But the fall premiere time-shifted same-day viewing of ABC's "Modern Family" was close behind with 2.5 million viewers. CBS' "Big Bang Theory" was next at 2.3 million, followed by TNT's "Falling Skies" at 1.9 million. Other broadcast networks that ranked well in same-day time-shifted viewing were: ABC's "Grey's Anatomy, 1.7 million; CBS' "NCIS," 1.7 million; CBS' "How I Met Your Mother," 1.5 million; CBS's "Survivor: Philippines," 1.4 million; and CBS' "2 Broke Girls," 1.3 million. Although cable has made gains, the TVB says cable on a program-by-program basis is still behind broadcast. For example, broadcast television commanded 94% of all adult 25-54 GRPs (gross rating points) among the top 100 telecasts this summer. This does not include factoring in the NBC's Summer Olympics. When comparing the top 50 summer cable originals versus summer repeats on broadcast television, repeat programming on broadcast television still had the majority of the top 100 ranked programs.