Dancing with the Stars Season 14, Week 2 – Ratings Watch
Another week, another post on the on-going ratings saga. As I predicted last week, DWTS is sticking to the pattern and is down slightly from the premiere – but it’s still the number two show for the week in total viewers, and number 9 in the key demographic. I got all my Nielsen information from Zap2It, as usual.
If you click that link you will see that while DWTS gets beat in the key demo by the Voice, American Idol and a few others, part of the reason for it falling from number 6 to number 9 (3.5 to 3.2) is two very large basketball games. It definitely holds its own. The key demo is the 18-49 year olds which advertisers covet. The higher you are in the key demo, the more money you can earn for commercial time during your show. Hence – the continued appearance of Disney kids and beefcake in the DWTS cast each season. 🙂 Anyway, DWTS had a 3.2 share in the key demo this week versus a 5.3 for AI and a 4.5 for the Voice. The sky still isn’t falling as that difference between AI and DWTS equates to roughly 2.7 million viewers. Sounds like a lot…but when the total viewers number is over 17 million? Not so much. Yeah, yeah, yeah…the advertisers look at the key demo as being more important. Whatever. The point of these posts are to provide context to those who just say “DWTS ratings are down” while neglecting to mention that TV is down as a whole AND to show that while the ratings are down, DWTS ain’t going nowhere anytime soon. Not when they are ranked number 2 over all and number 9 in the demo.
Take a gander at the Top 25 shows on Television, Week ending April 1 (corresponding to DWTS Week 2):
AI is nipping at DWTS heels, but the real surprise is the Voice falling rather precipitously from 16 million viewers before DWTS started to not quite 12 million viewers now. I have a feeling they may tinker a bit with the battle rounds next time around. Anyway, next week will be the real test when the Voice moves to live shows where people can vote. Interestingly, the DWTS results show is ranking rather high right now. The total viewers at 15.6 may be a similar number to the old “normal”, which means it’s holding viewership better than the performance show is. Weird. I’ll have to write on that next week and see if that’s true or not.
Lastly, my little graph showing DWTS ratings this season compared to seasons past. Not to much to say about that….without looking at the chart above, it lacks context by itself. 🙂