Here & there
CBS's 'Strikeforce' tops ABC's football
By Louisa Ada Seltzer
Nov 9, 2009 - 1:01:42 AM

Saturday overnights: CBS's 'Strikeforce' beats football
Mixed martial arts delivered a body blow to football among the young men both target.

CBS’s “Strikeforce” averaged a 2.3 rating among males 18-49 from 9 to 11 p.m. Saturday, according to Nielsen overnights, finishing first in the timeslot in the demo and beating out the 2.0 ABC averaged during those hours for regional college football coverage.

Among 18-49s “Strikeforce” averaged a 1.7 overnight rating, also good for first place in the timeslot.

Still, Fox finished first for the night among 18-49s, averaging a 1.7 overnight rating and a 5 share. ABC was second at 1.5/5, CBS third at 1.4/5, NBC fourth at 1.0/3 and Univision fifth at 0.9/3.

As a reminder, all ratings are based on live-plus-same-day DVR playback. Seven-day DVR data won’t be available for several weeks. Thirty-three percent of Nielsen households have DVRs.

Also, ratings for ABC’s college football and CBS’s “Strikeforce” are approximate as fast nationals measure timeslot and not actual program data. Both aired live.

Fox was first at 8 p.m. with a 1.7 for an hour of “Cops,” followed by ABC with a 1.6 for its first hour of college football. CBS was third with a 1.0 for a repeat of “NCIS: Los Angeles,” Univision fourth with a 0.8 for the first of three hours of “Sabado Gigante” and NBC fifth with a 0.5 for a “Mercy” rerun.

At 9 p.m. Fox was first again with a 1.7 for “America’s Most Wanted,” while ABC and CBS tied for second at 1.5, ABC for football and CBS for “Strikeforce.” NBC was fourth with a 1.1 for a repeat of “Law & Order” and Univision fifth with a 0.9 for “Sabado.”

CBS took the lead at 10 p.m. with a 1.8 for “Strikeforce,” with ABC and NBC tied for second at 1.4, ABC for football and NBC for a repeat of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.” Univision was fourth that hour with a 0.9 for “Sabado.”

Fox led the night among households with a 3.2 average overnight rating and a 6 share. NBC and ABC tied for second at 3.1/6, with CBS fourth at 2.5/5 and Univision fifth at 1.4/2.

Ratings-wise, a solid debut for 'Sykes'
It's been rumored that Fox could move "The Wanda Sykes Show" to weeknights if it performs well on Saturdays this season. The program got off to a good start over the weekend, though the coming weeks will tell whether the show has staying power. "Sykes" averaged a 2.2 household rating at 11 p.m. Saturday, according to Nielsen overnights, 16 percent better than the 1.9 the now-canceled "MADtv" averaged in that slot during fourth quarter 2008. It was double the average for Spike Feresten's also-canceled show last year, which aired an hour later. Still, it was well behind longtime Saturday night leader "Saturday Night Live" on NBC, which hit a season-high 5.0 from 11:30 p.m. to 1 a.m. with host Taylor Swift. Fox had pushed "Sykes'" debut hard across multiple platforms leading up to its debut. Of course, the rumor about the network programming a weeknight talk show is an old one, which also circulated around Feresten. But with late night seeing big changes earlier this year with Jay Leno's exit and David Letterman's ascension, it could be a sign that late-night audiences are willing to try something new.

In Boston, a new Spanish-language weekly
Like so many metro regions, Boston has seen a huge influx of Hispanics in recent years, and as one expert in Spanish-language media likes to note, an influx of Hispanics is typically followed by the launch of one or more newspapers. In the case of Boston, there’s already a handful of weeklies serving some 900,000 Hispanics, and now there's another, El Tiempo de Boston, the Boston Times, which launched last week, despite the sour ad economy. And so far the weekly is more an idea than a business proposition with the staff working for free out of their homes until the paper, with a circulation of 20,000, can afford to pay them. "It wasn’t the best moment to come out in light of the current economy, but it was the best time for this community to have another option,’’ Maximo Torres, the paper's founder and a former city editor of Boston's El Mundo, tells the Boston Globe. Indeed these are hard times for all newspapers, and Spanish-language papers are suffering, though their pain is far less than those of many big-city English-language papers. One reason is they are so much smaller, and generally smaller papers are doing far better, be they English- or Spanish-language publications. They tend to be far more targeted, with less competition. Will El Tiempo make it in the crowded Boston market?  A lot will depend on just how deeps its founders' pockets are, and whether those volunteers will stick it out.

A&E Networks cuts 100 jobs after Lifetime merger
As these things so often do, the merger of A&E Television Networks and Lifetime has led to layoffs. About 10 percent of the company's employees, or roughly 100, were eliminated on Friday, ridding the newly formed company of the job redundancies that occur when similar companies merge, such as multiple VPs of the same department. The companies got together in August, with Lifetime getting folded into AETN, which already owned the History Channel and A&E. Abbe Raven is president of the company. The job cuts were expected virtually from the moment the merger happened, though exactly how many would be eliminated was unclear. AETN is jointed owned by Disney and Hearst, which each control a 42.5 percent stake, and NBC Universal, which has a 15.5 percent stake.

Viewership bump for Univision's Latin Grammys
The Latin Grammys sang a sweeter song on Univision Thursday night. The annual awards program averaged 6 million total viewers, up 2 percent from last year's 5.7 million, and saw double-digit percentage gains among adults 18-49 and 18-34, according to Nielsen. The show averaged 2 million viewers 18-34, finishing second from 8 to 11 p.m. behind on ABC and up 10 percent from last year. The Latin Grammys rose 10 percent among adults 18-49, averaging 3.5 million viewers, and jumped 13 percent among women 18-49 and 14 percent among women 18-34. The show also garnered a few local-market victories. Univision was No. 1 for the night in Los Angeles, New York City, Miami, Houston and Phoenix, all cities with large Hispanic populations, among total viewers.



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