TV Ratings Friday: Hope For Haiti Now Big in Total; Conan Exits With Ratings Highs

Scoreboard
Rating/Share: Adults 18-49	1.3/4	1.3/4	0.9/3	0.6/2	0.3/1
Total Viewers (million)	5.22	4.65	4.20	1.75	.85

All the broadcast networks we track aired the Hope for Haiti Now telethon last night between 8pm-10pm. At 10pm, ABC’s 20/20 won vs Dateline NBC and a repeat of Medium on CBS.

On the five major English language broadcast networks that telecast the telethon it averaged just over 16 million viewers and a 4.3 rating with adults 18-49 between 8pm-10pm.

Hope for Haiti Now aired on a lot of cable networks (I’ve seen reports of over 50 networks between broadcast and cable, not to mention the digital distribution) and the ratings below are just for ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC and The CW. I imagine that Nielsen will issue consolidated ratings information for the benefit, but if it does it might not happen before Monday.

Those wondering how the Caprica premiere did we won’t see any cable results before Monday unless Syfy issues a press release over the weekend. If it does, we’ll post it.

In case you missed it, Conan O’Brien scored his best ratings as host of The Tonight Show in his swan song, with a preliminary 4.8 adults 18-49 rating in Nielsen’s 25 local markets with People Meters. Not only was that better than anything in primetime on Friday, it was even better than anything in primetime on Thursday night. In 55 out of the largest 56 metered markets, last night’s Tonight Show averaged a 7.0 household rating.

Details:

Time	Net	Show	18-49 Rating/Sh	Viewers (Millons)
8:00	ABC	Hope for Haiti Now Benefit	1.2/4	4.65
	NBC	Hope for Haiti Now Benefit	1.2/4	4.50
	CBS	Hope for Haiti Now Benefit	1.0/3	4.30
	FOX	Hope for Haiti Now Benefit	0.6/2	1.75
	CW	Hope for Haiti Now Benefit	0.3/1	0.85
10:00	ABC	20/20	1.6/5	6.36
	NBC	Dateline NBC (R)	1.4/4	4.96
	CBS	Medium (R)	1.0/3	4.01

=

Ratings data via Marc Berman’s PI forums.

You can see TV ratings from other recent Overnight ratings reports here.

Nielsen TV Ratings: ©2009 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved.

Definitions:
Fast Affiliate Ratings: These first national ratings, including demographics, are available at approximately 11 AM (ET) the day after telecast, and are released to subscribing customers daily. These data, from the National People Meter sample, are strictly time-period information, based on the normal broadcast network feed, and include all programming on the affiliated stations, sometimes including network programming, sometimes not. The figures may include stations that did not air the entire network feed, as well as local news breaks or cutaways for local coverage or other programming. Fast Affiliate ratings are not as useful for live programs and are likely to differ significantly from the final results, because the data reflect normal broadcast feed patterns. For example, with a World Series game, Fast Affiliate Ratings would include whatever aired from 8-11PM on affiliates in the Pacific Time Zone, following the live football game, but not game coverage that begins at 5PM PT. The same would be true of Presidential debates as well as live award shows and breaking news reports.

Rating: Estimated percentage of the universe of TV households (or other specified group) tuned to a program in the average minute. Ratings are expressed as a percent.

Share (of Audience): The percent of households (or persons) using television who are tuned to a specific program, station or network in a specific area at a specific time. (See also, Rating, which represents tuning or viewing as a percent of the entire population being measured.)

Time Shifted Viewing – Program ratings for national sources are produced in three streams of data – Live, Live+Same Day (Live+SD) and Live+7 Day. Time shifted figures account for incremental viewing that takes place with DVRs which are currently in approximately 24.4% of all U.S. TV households. Live+Same Day (Live+SD) include viewing during the same broadcast day as the original telecast, with a cut-off of 3:00AM local time when meters transmit daily viewing to Nielsen for processing. Live+7 Day ratings include incremental viewing that takes place during the 7 days following a telecast.