Tv Ratings | featured news

CNN Worldwide President Jim Walton said on Friday that he was leaving the once-dominant cable news network, which has struggled in the ratings in recent years, on December 31.

Anger Management ranked as cable’s most-watched primetime scripted comedy series premiere in total viewers and 18-49, eclipsing Tyler Perry’s House Of Payne on TBS, which opened with a 5.2 million. Like House Of Payne, which grew to 5.8 million for the second episode of its two-episode premiere, Anger Management gained too, averaging 5.74 million total viewers and 2.89 million adults 18-49s for its 9:30 PM episode.

Nearly 3 million people caught the launch of Aaron Sorkin’s “The Newsroom” on Sunday. About 2.1 million of that crowd watched the show’s 10p.m. unveiling. That audience puts “The Newsroom” in company with some of HBO’s most-watched recent premieres, including those of fantasy drama “Game of Thrones” (2.2 million) in April 2011 and vampire drama “True Blood” (1.4 million) in September of ’08.

The premiere of "Dallas" — TNT's reboot of the classic series — averaged 6.8 million viewers on Wednesday, making it the No. 1 scripted series premiere on all of cable so far this year.

The Miami Heat's win over the Boston Celtics to reach the NBA finals has drawn the highest preliminary television rating for an NBA playoff game on cable since records started being kept in 2003.

Sunday’s second-season finale of HBO’s “Game of Thrones” clocked 4.2 million viewers at 9 p.m.  – 1.2 million ahead of the first-season finale crowd of 3 mil. At 4.2 million, the “GoT” episode’s 9 p.m. telecast was on par in the hour with ABC’s “Extreme Makeover: Weight Loss Edition” (4.3 million), CBS’s “The Good Wife” rerun (4.6 million), and ahead of Fox’s repeats of “Family Guy” and “American Dad” (3.6 million), while running behind NBC’s “Miss USA Pageant (5.8 million).

The season's second episode of "So You Think You Can Dance" was up from last Thursday's premiere and gave FOX a huge advantage in young viewers and a slim lead overall on Wednesday night.

CBS can call itself the country’s most-watched network for the ninth time in the past 10 years. The network won the 2011-12 television season, which ended Wednesday, by averaging nearly 12 million viewers each week. That’s about 3 million more viewers than closest-competitor Fox, the largest margin of victory of any network in more than two decades.

After NBC dropped from first among young Monday viewers last week, "The Voice" got a bit of a finale bump and helped the network reclaim that crown. ABC still easily won Monday overall, thanks to "Dancing with the Stars" and a "Castle" finale bump.

Thursday was a big day at Fox. In the morning, the network got word from Nielsen that — after Wednesday night’s Top 5 performance show — “American Idol” had regained its throne as the No. 1-rated entertainment series among younger viewers, who are the currency of broadcast TV ad sales. To accomplish that, “Idol” had to edge past NBC’s singing competition, “The Voice.”