Image Credit: CBS

The December holiday ratings slide has begun in earnest. Overall TV viewing levels were down four percent overall last night. Between the weakening audience levels and number of repeats on the air, the morning ratings will have less relevance through the end of the year. So for the next couple weeks, we’ll post the numbers when something of particular interest happens (like the upcoming X Factor and Terra Nova finales), but not necessarily every morning.

That said: Thursday night saw CBS’ Person of Interest (12.8 million viewers, 2.8 adults 18-49 rating) and Fox’s The X Factor (9.7 million, 2.8) — along with a Big Bang Theory repeat — leading the night in the adult demo. Interest and The Mentalist (13 million, 2.7) managed to maintain last week’s numbers, X Factor was down a tenth. ABC’s two-hour Katie Couric special (5.5 million, 1.5) was modest. NBC is still not done burning off the rest of Prime Suspect (3.6 million, 0.8), which fell to a new low.

The Stephen King miniseries Bag of Bones performed well on A&E, pulling in 3.4 million viewers Sunday night and ranking as the most-watched program on cable that night.

Part 2 on Monday showed strong retention, delivering another 3 million viewers. It’s the best-performing miniseries since A&E’s own Andromeda Strain in 2008. (But is two nights really a “miniseries”? Just saying…). Here’s the numbers for HBO’s Boardwalk Empire finale and sneak preview of Luck.

Image Credit: MTV

The second season premiere of MTV’s Teen Mom 2 launched to the biggest ratings in the franchise’s history, while a conservative parent group took aim at the show.

Teen Mom 2 delivered 4.2 million viewers, up 17 percent from the series debut back in January. The MTV release notes that the Centers for Disease Control announced the U.S. teen birth rate declined 9 percent in 2010 and is now at the lowest level ever reported. In other words: We’re not glamorizing teen pregnancy so get off our backs already!

But the folks over the the Parents Television Council say the show is harmful to young women nonetheless, launching a well-timed press release this morning admonishing Teen Mom and other MTV series: READ FULL STORY »

Tuesday night’s penultimate episode of FX’s Sons of Anarchy delivered the show’s biggest rating since its fourth season premiere.

Sons was seen by 4.4 million and had a 2.7 rating in the adult 18-49 demographic, ranking as cable’s highest-rated show Tuesday night. This bodes well for the show’s finale.

Also blowing things up on cable last night: TBS’ Big Bang Theory repeats and A&E’s Storage Wars. Seriously, of the Top 10 highest-rated entertainment shows on cable last night, eight of them were episodes of one or the other.