Ratings: Oscars Up-ish, Dollhouse Down-ish

By James Poniewozik | @poniewozik | February 23, 2009 | +

Certain critics may have groused about last night’s Oscars, but preliminary ratings have the broadcast up about 6% from last year. The rise, however, comes off an all-time low last year, so the broadcast may still be among the three lowest rated ever. Still, the odds are that much higher for more show tunes next year.

Meanwhile, there was an inquiry in this morning’s While I Was Out post about Dollhouse’s second-outing ratings. Well, they were down, about 15%. On the other hand, that’s more or less typical for a second episode of a new series. On the other other hand, the first episode’s ratings were awfully weak.

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What’s interesting about the Oscar numbers is that the rest of Broadcast TV was either tied or up from last year.
(See http://tvbythenumbers.com/2009/02/23/sunday-ratings-academy-awards-up-from-last-years-record-low/13282 for the rest of the night.)
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So either cable TV was much less interesting last night compared to a year ago, or the strike managed to depress general TV viewing enough that ~4 million people didn’t know/care it was on last year.
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(And let’s be clear: this is not the rebirth of The Oscars: ABC’s 36.3 number pegs this as the third worst viewership, off 10% from even 2007.)
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And no, Dollhouse’s numbers are not good, especially when it looks like much of their viewership is the Flashpoint audience giving it a try. If those viewers swap back, it’s done. (The Whedonites can… Blame Canada!)
plukasiak

Still, the odds are that much higher for more show tunes next year.
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I’d not be so sure….
Viewership for the first half hour was 37.7 million
Viewership for the 9-10PM hour was 33.9 million
Viewership for the 10-11PM hour 31.2 million
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thats a considerable drop off (do you have historical data from the “Titanic” year?). However, I wouldn’t blame the musical numbers — instead I’d blame all the failed “innovations” and horrible Television direction.
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What is most astonishing to me is what happened to the “short attention span” audience; while the Oscars were losing 2.7 million viewers between 9-10 and 10-11, NBC’s second hour of “Top 100 Most Outrageous Moments 2″ picked up 1.7 million of those viewers.
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James Poniewozik

@p_luk: Thanks for doing my research for me. I had meant to mention, while writing the post, that I’d be curious to see the half-hour-by-half-hour numbers when available.