Big night for Grammys, continued success for pro football helps drive ratings up

Grammy Awards, pro football are ratings winners

NEW YORK — Music or football was the choice for many American television viewers on Sunday night — and each was a notable success story.

The Grammy Awards show, stuffed with performances from Lady Gaga to Lil’ Wayne, was seen by just under 26 million viewers on CBS. That’s up sharply from the 19 million who watched last year and the 17.1 million of 2008, the Nielsen Co. said.

The Grammys are now as much a performance show as an awards show, and most of the struggling industry’s big stars took advantage of the prime-time opportunity. The show eclipsed even “American Idol.”

Over on ESPN, an estimated 12.3 million people watched NFL’s Pro Bowl. Despite its migration to basic cable, football’s all-star game had its biggest audience since 2000, Nielsen said. Except for the Grammys and “60 Minutes” (also 12.3 million), the Pro Bowl had more viewers than anything else on TV Sunday night.

It follows a trend that’s been building since the fall: Pro football ratings are through the roof.

NBC’s Sunday night package this past season was up 17 percent in viewers, ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” was up 20 percent and the NFL Network is getting a toehold — its ratings up 55 percent in its fourth year. Ratings are up for both CBS and Fox, too, Nielsen said.

Compelling story lines made a difference. Brett Favre joined the Minnesota Vikings, and the Oct. 5 game in which he faced his old team, the Green Bay Packers, stands as the most-watched cable telecast ever. The New Orleans Saints drove to the franchise’s first Super Bowl appearance, and the Indianapolis Colts chased a perfect season.

Another subtle factor is the rise of high-definition television. NFL ratings were 21 percent higher in homes with high-def than in those without, Nielsen said. About one-third of the nation’s TV homes now have HDTV.

This all bodes well for CBS, which is televising next weekend’s Super Bowl between Indianapolis and New Orleans. Last year’s game was seen by 98.7 million people — the game’s biggest audience ever.

Meanwhile, TLC had a modest success story with the “Miss America” pageant on Saturday night. It was seen by 4.5 million people, or a million more than last year and above the show’s low point of 2.4 million on CMT in 2008, Nielsen said. It was, however, a far cry from the 33 million people who watched the pageant on broadcast TV in 1988.

CBS averaged 12 million viewers in prime time (7.3 rating, 12 share), for a comfortable victory over its rivals. Second-place Fox averaged 9.7 million (5.6, 9), ABC had 6.3 million (4.1, 7), NBC had 5.1 million (3.3, 5), the CW had 1.9 million (1.2, 2) and ION Television had 1.3 million (0.8, 1).

Among the Spanish-language networks, Univision led with a prime-time average of 3.5 million viewers (1.8, 3), Telemundo had 1.1 million (0.6, 1), TeleFutura had 990,000 (0.5, 1) and Azteca had 200,000 (0.1, 0).

NBC’s “Nightly News” topped the evening newscasts with an average of 10.1 million viewers (6.6, 12). ABC’s “World News” was second with 8.6 million (5.7, 10), and the “CBS Evening News” had 6.8 million viewers (4.5 8).

A ratings point represents 1,149,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation’s estimated 114.9 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.

For the week of Jan. 25-31, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: “Grammy Awards,” CBS, 25.87 million; “American Idol” (Wednesday), Fox, 25.71 million; “American Idol” (Tuesday), Fox, 24.45 million; “NCIS,” CBS, 20.22 million; “NCIS: Los Angeles,” CBS, 16.94 million; “House,” Fox, 14.21 million; “Bones,” Fox, 12.331 million; “60 Minutes,” CBS, 12.328 million; “Two and a Half Men,” CBS, 12.07 million; “The Big Bang Theory,” CBS, 11.5 million.

ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Co. CBS is owned by CBS Corp. CW is a joint venture of Warner Bros. Entertainment and CBS Corp. Fox and My Network TV are units of News Corp. NBC and Telemundo are owned by General Electric Co. ION Television is owned by ION Media Networks. TeleFutura is a division of Univision. Azteca America is a wholly owned subsidiary of TV Azteca S.A. de C.V.

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