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Week 33 of the 2002/03 Season (5/5-5/11/03)

Primetime:

In its second week of May sweeps, Cable delivered a 47.4 share, up 1.1 share points from year ago while Broadcast continued to experience erosion during its strongest programming week. Cable’s delivery grew 1.5 million homes, delivering 30.3 million viewers and its rating jumped up 1.1 share points vs year ago. Broadcast’s viewership experienced minimal gains this week while its rating and share dropped .1 and .9 points, respectively. NBC and WB were the big losers this week, experiencing significant share losses vs year ago. Conversely, CBS and Fox were the big gainers thanks greatly to “CSI”, “Everybody Loves Raymond” and “American Idol” telecasts.

In Second Quarter 2003 to date, Cable is outperforming Broadcast’s seven collective household share level by a healthy 4.7 points. Cable’s household delivery is 3.0 million above Broadcast’s and its household rating is surpassing Broadcast’s by 2.8 points. Compared to year ago, Cable is up a healthy 2.4 share points while Broadcast continues to erode. Six out of the total seven networks are down in household share with Fox being the only sole gainer this Quarter thanks to telecasts of “American Idol”.

To date this season, Cable is experiencing healthy gains vs year ago delivering 31.1 million homes, garnering a 29.1 HH rating, and earning a 47.5 share. Broadcast on the other hand is down across all audience measures. The seven networks have lost 884,000 viewers so far and are experiencing significant rating and share losses compared to last year’s levels. While four out of the seven nets are down in share, NBC is the clear driver of the share loss partly due to telecast’s of the Olympics last year.

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Total Day:

Ad Supported Cable rose to 17.4 million homes this week, an increase of 1.3 million viewers from last year on a Total Day basis. Cable’s ratings increased to a 16.3, up 1.0 point from last year and the share increased 1.2 points to finish at 50.6. Cable’s share was once again greater than that of the Broadcast Networks (4 Net.), with the difference being 12.3 points. It should be noted that although the cable news networks’ (i.e. CNN, Fox News Channel, MSNBC) coverage on the aftermath of the war in Iraq has decreased in comparison to recent weeks, it can be partly attributed to cable’s strong lead over broadcast. The broadcast networks were up in viewership and ratings compared to last year, but were down in share.

Cable, to date, in the second quarter, has a commanding lead over the broadcast networks. It ended with a 53.4 share, 17.3 points above Broadcast’s level. Ratings were up 1.9 points to finish at 17.6, and share increased 3.5 points from last year. The Broadcast Networks have experienced a slight increase in viewership, ratings have remained constant and share has declined in comparison to last year.

For this season, cable rose to 18.1 million homes, up 1.5 million homes from last year. Cable’s ratings increased by 1.2 points to end at 16.9 and its share rose to 50.3, an increase of 2.3 points from last year. The broadcast networks continued to experience declines from last year. It sustained losses across the board as impressions fell by 129,000 homes, ratings declined by 0.3 to end at 13.0 and share decreased by 1.9 points to end at 38.6.

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Source: Nielsen Galaxy.