The Watching Dead: The Worst of Friday & Saturday TV Ratings (July 7-8)

Beyond the dead is
THE WATCHING DEAD

The weekend following Independence Day was really dead. The most watch program may just be WHITNEY, however that could be a major mistake in the ratings. But, figuring out the deadest program of the weekend, look no further than a special prime time airing of a Sunday afternoon series. Yea, its dead.

The Dead of Friday Night:

It was an especially dead night on Friday. Only three programs managed to break the 1.0 demo rating. SHARK TANK (1.0 rating), 20/20 (1.2 rating) and, what has got to be a mistake or a major preemption, WHITNEY with a 1.4 demo rating.

FOX's combination of HOUSE and BONES is about as dead as it gets, for the BIG 4 networks. between the two programs, FOX averaged under two million viewers and a measly 0.5 rating in the 18-49 demographic.

Things will get better as the summer progresses. The Olympics are just 18 days away, starting on Friday, July 27th.

The Dead of Saturday Night:

Riddle me this... how do become "deader than a door nail?"
By programming a network on a Summer Saturday night.

In original programming, it rarely gets worse than THE FIRM. the freshman lame duck series pulled a very small 2.25 million viewers and a tiny 0.4 demo rating. Who ever green lit this series for 22 episodes, for NBC, must no longer work for NBC. If they still have their job, then NBC will be in trouble for many years to come.

Not to be out done by NBC, CBS is burning off TWO original episodes of NYC 22. The Robert Deniro project posted just 3.15 million viewers at 8:00pm and only 3.26 million viewers for 9:00pm. As I have said before, the only reason this project was picked up was because of Deniro being involved in the project.

ABC decided to give Sunday Afternoon series BALL BOYS a try on Saturday nights. The attempt failed miserably. The two half hour episodes, airing in the 9:00pm hour, averaged just 1.3 million viewers and a 0.4 demo rating.

To cap things of for the Watching Dead of Saturday night, the #1 program was Major League Baseball on FOX. This #1 program averaged roughly 4 million viewers and a 1.0 rating in the demo. When a #1 program is that weak, you know that only the Dead are watching.