Results tagged “ratings”

John McCain may have been more involved during his appearance on SNL, but his running mate Sarah Palin is still stealing his thunder. While she got the show its highest ratings in 14 years (15 million viewers), McCain's appearance only drew 12 million. Overall, however, the Daily News reports that Saturday's show had its "second highest audience in Nielsen's sample of major markets in 11 years" (whatever that means), and "Saturday's telecast was up 73% when compared to a year ago." Perhaps an Obama appearance would have delivered SNL its highest ratings ever, but he chose to spread the wealth with his network-spanning informercial. Meanwhile, NBC points out though McCain can take a joke, the Palin ones can bother him, which might "explain... 'frosty' chemistry between Tina Fey and McCain." Good thing they didn't refer to that prank call.

No word on how (and if) Sarah Palin's appearance on Saturday Night Live will help out the Republican's campaign, but it certainly helped out Lorne & Co. Word is that the show saw its highest household ratings in more than 14 years (to be more specific: since March 12, 1994, when Olympic skater Nancy Kerrigan hosted). To put it in a more recent perspective, ABC reports that the ratings were up 47% compared to the October 4th episode. Somewhere, Marky Mark is crediting himself for this. Meanwhile, in the D.C./Northern Virginia market, Obama aired a new television spot during Saturday's episode, targeting women and focuses on "McCain's position on women's compensation, health care, Social Security and abortion rights." McCain told a Virginia crowd on Saturday that he thought Palin and Fey were "separated at birth."

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo was unsparing in his criticism of radio ratings measuring company Arbitron, which just rolled out new measuring devices. Cuomo's statement reads, "Arbitron's decision to release its unreliable and unaccredited radio ratings system is an affront to racial and ethnic minorities in New York and around the country... Arbitron's unwillingness to defend the validity of their system on its merits proves it places its own economic incentives over the interests of minority broadcasting," and warns radio broadcasters and advertisers against using the devices. The NY Times reports the AG's office doesn't think the new system "adequately account[s] for young African-Americans and Hispanics, people who do not speak English, and cellphone-only households" and will sue Arbitron later this week.

And the winner is. . .Despite having ancient looking graphics that can be seen from across the street, a set that looks like it is from a station in Iowa, and a love of sprinkling kicker stories throughout the newscast, WABC’s Eyewitness News and the station overall is yet again at the top of the ratings among the big three for February.

Considering that most smokers pick up the nasty habit during their impressionable adolescent years, it makes sense to put off exposing the tykes to the temptation until they're old enough to poison themselves. Riding that puff of thought, the State Health Commissioner Richard F. Daines wrote an open letter earlier this month to film makers this week asking them to refrain from including smoking scenes in G, PG, and PG-13 rated movies.

Terrible 2 No More If you were to compare WCBS today with WCBS a year ago, you would definitely notice that something has changed. Sure, the graphics and music have changed, but that isn’t really it: What happened is that the station has finally gotten a clearer focus - not just because the station went HD. It's in the quality of the product they put on air and what CBS has been covering. It was...