Nielsen Media Research

NBC's average for the first three evening telecasts was a 20.3 national household rating and a 33 share, a 23 percent increase over the numbers CBS posted after the first three days of the 1998 Games at Nagano (16.5 rating/27 share). The numbers for Sunday's coverage, however, were down a bit when compared to 1998. NBC posted a 17.6/27 two nights ago, down from the 20.2/30 CBS had on its first Sunday at Nagano. As expected, there was a big drop in TV viewership from the record-setting Opening Ceremony on Friday to Saturday's first night of competition.

The city that loves you back loved Monica Lewinsky the most. More than her native Los Angeles. And way more than New York and Washington. Philadelphia gave higher ratings to Wednesday's televised Lewinsky-Barbara Walters square-off than any other city - besting (or worsting?) Boston, Dallas, San Francisco, Cincinnati and Los Angeles. New York and Washington didn't make the ratings Top 10. Nationally, it was a Lewinsky landslide. More people, on average, saw the show than watched Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon in 1969 or O.J. Simpson in his white Bronco in 1994.

"Jerry Springer" is fighting its way back to bigger audiences. After a much-publicized taming of the show led to depressed ratings, the melees returned a couple of weeks ago, and the show's ratings for that week, released Wednesday, were immediately punched up. The ratings jumped 13 percent, according to Nielsen Media Research figures for the week ending July 12. Indeed, "Jerry Springer" had its highest Nielsen ratings in five weeks....

The 2008 World Series was a home run in Philadelphia, but it scored a big, fat K in the ratings scorebook nationwide. That's the strikeout symbol, sports fans, and, undermined by Saturday's rain-delayed Game 3 marathon that didn't end until Sunday morning, this year's Phillies-Tampa Bay matchup had the lowest national ratings ever for a World Series. The margin wasn't close. Meanwhile, 33.6 million people watched Barack Obama's paid half-hour presentation on seven networks Wednesday, two million more than watched the highest-rated episode of any regular series last season, the May finale of American Idol . With 25.5 million broadcast viewers, Obama's infomercial scored higher ratings than regularly scheduled Wednesday-at-8 programming on two of the three big networks that carried it, CBS and NBC, picking up an additional eight million viewers on cable, including 3.5 million Spanish speakers on Univision.

Next year, Philadelphia will serve as a national television laboratory, when an experimental program designed to improve the ratings system begins. The experiment is being bankrolled by the big three broadcast networks. Philadelphia was chosen over New York, Chicago, Houston, and Miami to be the sole site for Systems for Measuring and Reporting Television (SMART), an experimental laboratory to be created by Statistical Research Inc., of Westfield, N.J. SMART will hook up 500 area households, beginning in the first quarter of the year and probably ending in the third quarter, to compile its ratings data.

It's 11 o'clock. Do you care where your local newscast is? Not as much as you used to. Viewership of local news is down across the country, and for the same reasons network news is hurting: the Internet, changing lifestyles, and a bottomless generation gap. "Increasingly, people find local TV news repetitive and not nutritious," says Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ). "They say the stories aren't telling them anything they don't already know.

The letter arrived on my desk a couple of weeks ago, urging me to write in support of national TV-Turnoff Week, which begins next Monday. Backed by good and smart people, the movement to break America's addiction to television finds a sympathetic ear here. There are 102 million TV homes in this nation, and 41 percent of them have three or more sets. In the average home, the TV is turned on eight hours and eight minutes every day. Women watch more than five hours a day. No wonder we can't advance the cause of feminism and motherhood.

Jeff Bagwell's $18 million option was declined yesterday by the Houston Astros, who will give their career leader in home runs and RBIs a $7 million buyout. The 38-year-old first baseman missed last season because of an arthritic right shoulder, and the Astros tried to recoup about $15.6 million in insurance. Bagwell's agent, Barry Axelrod, said Bagwell is "a long shot" to play again but isn't ready to officially retire. Twins. Righthander Carlos Silva's $4.3 million option was exercised by Minnesota, which hopes his 2006 season was an aberration.

When it comes to ranking TV shows - and deciding which ones survive in prime time and which are prematurely doomed to Nick at Nite reruns - the current state of measuring is inexact at best. So Nielsen Media Research Inc., the New York company that provides ratings to television networks and anxiety disorders to their executives, is bringing what it says is a more accurate measuring system to Philadelphia. Nielsen's Local People Meters have begun joining the less-sophisticated electronic monitoring and written diary systems used in hundreds of homes in the region.

Kim Clijsters won her third straight Seat Open title in Luxembourg with a 6-2, 7-5 victory over Chanda Rubin of the United States and will return to the top of the WTA rankings today. Clijsters has eight titles this season, as does Justine Henin-Hardenne, her Belgian countrywoman who replaced her as No. 1 a week ago but decided not to play last week. Ai Sugiyama of Japan beat Nadia Petrova of Russia, 7-5, 6-4, to win the Generali Open in Linz, Austria. Gustavo Kuerten of Brazil beat Sargis Sargsian of Armenia, 6-4, 6-3, in the St. Petersburg Open final in Russia.

The 2008 World Series was a home run in Philadelphia, but it scored a big, fat K in the ratings scorebook nationwide. That's the strikeout symbol, sports fans, and, undermined by Saturday's rain-delayed Game 3 marathon that didn't end until Sunday morning, this year's Phillies-Tampa Bay matchup had the lowest national ratings ever for a World Series. The margin wasn't close. Meanwhile, 33.6 million people watched Barack Obama's paid half-hour presentation on seven networks Wednesday, two million more than watched the highest-rated episode of any regular series last season, the May finale of American Idol . With 25.5 million broadcast viewers, Obama's infomercial scored higher ratings than regularly scheduled Wednesday-at-8 programming on two of the three big networks that carried it, CBS and NBC, picking up an additional eight million viewers on cable, including 3.5 million Spanish speakers on Univision.

It's 11 o'clock. Do you care where your local newscast is? Not as much as you used to. Viewership of local news is down across the country, and for the same reasons network news is hurting: the Internet, changing lifestyles, and a bottomless generation gap. "Increasingly, people find local TV news repetitive and not nutritious," says Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ). "They say the stories aren't telling them anything they don't already know.

Jeff Bagwell's $18 million option was declined yesterday by the Houston Astros, who will give their career leader in home runs and RBIs a $7 million buyout. The 38-year-old first baseman missed last season because of an arthritic right shoulder, and the Astros tried to recoup about $15.6 million in insurance. Bagwell's agent, Barry Axelrod, said Bagwell is "a long shot" to play again but isn't ready to officially retire. Twins. Righthander Carlos Silva's $4.3 million option was exercised by Minnesota, which hopes his 2006 season was an aberration.

When it comes to ranking TV shows - and deciding which ones survive in prime time and which are prematurely doomed to Nick at Nite reruns - the current state of measuring is inexact at best. So Nielsen Media Research Inc., the New York company that provides ratings to television networks and anxiety disorders to their executives, is bringing what it says is a more accurate measuring system to Philadelphia. Nielsen's Local People Meters have begun joining the less-sophisticated electronic monitoring and written diary systems used in hundreds of homes in the region.

Kim Clijsters won her third straight Seat Open title in Luxembourg with a 6-2, 7-5 victory over Chanda Rubin of the United States and will return to the top of the WTA rankings today. Clijsters has eight titles this season, as does Justine Henin-Hardenne, her Belgian countrywoman who replaced her as No. 1 a week ago but decided not to play last week. Ai Sugiyama of Japan beat Nadia Petrova of Russia, 7-5, 6-4, to win the Generali Open in Linz, Austria. Gustavo Kuerten of Brazil beat Sargis Sargsian of Armenia, 6-4, 6-3, in the St. Petersburg Open final in Russia.

NBC's average for the first three evening telecasts was a 20.3 national household rating and a 33 share, a 23 percent increase over the numbers CBS posted after the first three days of the 1998 Games at Nagano (16.5 rating/27 share). The numbers for Sunday's coverage, however, were down a bit when compared to 1998. NBC posted a 17.6/27 two nights ago, down from the 20.2/30 CBS had on its first Sunday at Nagano. As expected, there was a big drop in TV viewership from the record-setting Opening Ceremony on Friday to Saturday's first night of competition.

The letter arrived on my desk a couple of weeks ago, urging me to write in support of national TV-Turnoff Week, which begins next Monday. Backed by good and smart people, the movement to break America's addiction to television finds a sympathetic ear here. There are 102 million TV homes in this nation, and 41 percent of them have three or more sets. In the average home, the TV is turned on eight hours and eight minutes every day. Women watch more than five hours a day. No wonder we can't advance the cause of feminism and motherhood.

There isn't any doubt that the media - newspapers, including this one, magazines and TV - view the presumed death of John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife and sister-in-law as a big - make that HUGE - story, a matter of all-consuming interest. Some people wonder aloud if the public is as hungry for repeated pictures of little John-John at age 3, for nonstop interviews with people who knew JFK Jr. and for every other possible angle of the story as the news industry believes the public to be. "I feel bad for the guy, although it was his own fault," harrumphed WWDB-FM talk-show host Ken Voss on the air yesterday.

The city that loves you back loved Monica Lewinsky the most. More than her native Los Angeles. And way more than New York and Washington. Philadelphia gave higher ratings to Wednesday's televised Lewinsky-Barbara Walters square-off than any other city - besting (or worsting?) Boston, Dallas, San Francisco, Cincinnati and Los Angeles. New York and Washington didn't make the ratings Top 10. Nationally, it was a Lewinsky landslide. More people, on average, saw the show than watched Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon in 1969 or O.J. Simpson in his white Bronco in 1994.

"Jerry Springer" is fighting its way back to bigger audiences. After a much-publicized taming of the show led to depressed ratings, the melees returned a couple of weeks ago, and the show's ratings for that week, released Wednesday, were immediately punched up. The ratings jumped 13 percent, according to Nielsen Media Research figures for the week ending July 12. Indeed, "Jerry Springer" had its highest Nielsen ratings in five weeks....