Image Credit: Bob Mahoney/The CW; Ben Mark Holzberg/The CWA rematch of last season’s NFC Championship between the Minnesota Vikings and the New Orleans Saints on NBC blew the competition out of the water Thursday, stealing a lot of The CW’s thunder and its much-anticipated debut of Nikita. Even the return of cult fave The Vampire Diaries took a hit: The young girls clearly preferred the sight of the Vikings’ Brett Favre than a pair of handsome bloodsuckers because the football game even dominated in the young female demographics, not to mention the many other viewers across the spectrum. (Women 25-54? Teens? Infants? No problem!) It’s no surprise, then, that NBC won the night in viewers (22.9 million) and all the key demographics.
Still, Nikita’s premiere didn’t look too shabby. The sight of star Maggie Q in a tiny red bathing suit attracted an average 3.56 million viewers and actually built on the lead-in from Diaries, which averaged 3.34 million. Nikita also matched the all-time high for The CW in the Thursday 9-10 p.m. time period for original programming among women 18-34 (1.9/5). Diaries, in comparison, retained about 87% of its adults 18-34 from a year ago and about 90% of its women 18-34.
Meanwhile, part one of the of the three-night, Big Brother finale was up 9% versus last week in the adults 18-49 demographic. It averaged 7.71 million viewers. Go, Lane!
That last sentence ruined the entire article.
GO LANE
Who’s the genius who decided to debut a new show against the NFL?
Exactly. The NFL is king.
yup—NFL RULES
that is the CW for you ,Dawn is not that bright in how she sechudles her programming.I happy that Nikita did okey ,I hope it last long because I hope the actors and the crew get the money instead what the CW did to the beautiful life.
But still CW get rid of Dawn you’re stupid executive she is the worst in years.
I think it’s a surprise to all of us that the CW’s core demographic would be interested in NFL.
Especially with the Saints playing. Madness. GO SAINTS!!
Yea really—how stupid
So the first game of the new NFL season hurt the CW’s ratings, wow what a shocker.. Umm really thats like compairing the performance of a Porche to a Kia so stupid
Seriously, I highly doubt the people who planned on watching TVD, decided to watch the NFL instead.
I know a Kia isn’t as great as a Porsche, but it’s does perform pretty solidly. My mom has a Kia Sedona and it the engine is strong.
Oh and Monday night is the season premiere of Gossip Girl, but I am not going to watch it because it’s monday night football and my team the Chargers are playing. So some girls can be girly like me, but want to watch their football teams kick some ass.
I’m not sure if Dawn has been there before it became the CW, but she’s been there since the CW started (over 4 years). She obviously does not know how the hell to schedule premieres, granted she wanted them to be before the tp 4 networks, but it hurt The Vampire Diaries which was the highest rated show on the network last season. I actually was shocked that there was not as much advertising and marketing (besides tv promos) for at least Diaries, since last year they did a decent amount.
Hopefully it the ratingg will pick up more next week when CW airs their Monday and Tuesday night returns. I hope Nikita gets a chance though, its one of the better shows to come from the CW since it became the CW (besides VD).
I was disappointed in the Nikita premiere, and I won’t be back. It was something I’d been waiting to see, too. It’s on to “Undercovers” and “The Event” for me. I liked Maggie Q and Xander Berkley, though.
I don’t know about in other markets, but in mine “The Vampire Diaries” and “Nikita” didn’t even come on until 10 and 11 p.m. Our local stations jacked around with the schedules so much that they were hard to find. Very annoying. (Although I did watch the game until the shows came on, so that made it a little less annoying.)
Hey—who doesn’t love Football, especially when there is so much trashy reality shows or stupid boring shows on—Of course I would watch football over most of them-I however was clicking back and forth between Football and The Runway which is a great intelligent show with a direction
What about “Rookie Blue” season finale?!