Ratings Review: NURSE JACKIE & CALIFORNICATION (Spring 2014)

Showtime may get a lot of praise from the industry and critics, but the people realy don't care much for these two series. The proof is in the (lack of) ratings. The numbers are lower than some of the digital broadcast networks that air reruns of MR. ED, HAZEL and F-TROOP.

Most of the reported ratings for NURSE JACKIE are the Showtime averages for that night. CALIFORNICATION has the exact same numbers on most nights. So, it is hard to say 300,000 people watched an episode. It could be a little more, or a little less.

Since the series finale of CALIFORNICATION, I have seen multiple publications and websites devote entire articles on the series and the reaction to the series wrap up. More people proabbly watched the weather forecast for Cleveland, than saw the finale of CALIFORNICATION.

I am not exactly sure why Showtime continues this series. Even if viewership is spread out across the week, it still can't be a number close to a million viewers. The A18-49 ratings have viewership in just the tens of thousands.

NURSE JACKIE will, for some reason, be back for a seventh season, in 2015.  All I can figure is that CBS Corp. has enough ratings success with CBS that it uses Showtime to try and capture Emmy Awards and critical acclaim.

NURSE JACKIE & CALIFORNICATION (Sundays at 9 & 10 p.m., on Showtime)

Date	Viewers*	A18-49	L+3	L+7
04/13/14	0.30	0.1
04/20/14	0.20	0.08
04/27/14	0.21	0.08
05/04/14	0.20	0.06
05/11/14	0.40	0.16
05/18/14	0.40	0.13
05/25/14	0.32	0.12
06/01/14	0.38	0.13
06/08/14	0.37	0.12
06/15/14	0.34	0.12
06/22/14	0.40	0.17
06/29/14	0.40	0.14

* - in millions