In going over the demographic numbers in the May ratings, I wanted to share once last area, the newscasts that are the big moneymakers for local network affiliates.
At the end of the four-week ratings periods, I always list the top finishers in the horse race for households. But advertisers make their buys based on who they're reaching. And in TV, the 25-54 demographic is the most important.
Thanks to breakdowns of Nielsen Media Research numbers provided by Channel 6, the most important time slot of the local news wars, the 10 p.m. half hour, was won in May by Channel 4 (as it was in households). But the victory is slim.
Channel 4 pulled in 41,000 viewers in the key demographic, with Channel 12 just 1,000 viewers behind. Channel 6 had 34,000 (it had scored 42,000 in its 9 p.m. newscast). Channel 58 had 22,000 viewers in the adult 25-54 demo).
In the mornings, from 5 to 7 a.m., Channel 6 averaged 32,000 viewers in the 25-54 group; Channel 4 had 27,000; Channel 12 had 19,000 and Channel 58 measured 1,000.
From 5 to 5:30 p.m., when all four stations are doing news, Channel 12 had 28,000 viewers in the key demographic; Channel 4 had 17,000; Channel 6 had 15,000; and Channel 58 had 4,000 viewers.
On TV: Fox has unveiled its fall schedule, opening Tuesday, Sept. 20 with "Glee" and Zooey Deschanel's "New Girl." It's followed with two nights and four hours of Simon Cowell's super-duper mega-hyped "X Factor." Fox has the full schedule here.
- Franklin's talented tap dancer Nick Young was among four finalists cut Thursday from Fox's "So You Think You Can Dance."
- TV Line reports that Lisa Edelstein, who's leaving Fox's "House," will do several episodes of CBS' "The Good Wife."
- Natalie Dormer, best known as saucy Anne Boleyn on Showtime's "The Tudors," has joined HBO's "Game of Thrones" for season two.
- John "The Office" Krasinski and Aaron Sorkin are working on an HBO miniseries about Hollywood's Chateau Marmont hotel. The legendary hotel may be best known as the place where John Belushi died.
- Fox News Channel gives over its 8-10 p.m. slot tonight to a look at the Casey Anthony murder trial. Judge Jeanine Pirro hosts.
"Weeds," three years later: Showtime's "Weeds" returns at 9 p.m. Monday, and here's Mary-Louise Parker updating us on a show that has skipped three years from the end of last season:
And here's a Showtime animated update of the series, thus far:
Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.
A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.
In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.
When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.
