The Climate, Weeks 33/34

Week-by-week:

Week	Ending	TPUT	y2y	bc	y2y	LeAv	y2y
30	4/21/2013	32.3	-0%	6.6	-6%	1.99	-3%
31	4/28/2013	31.4	-3%	6.5	-11%	1.88	-7%
32	5/5/2013	31.3	-2%	6.8	-11%	1.92	-11%
33	5/12/2013	30.6	-3%	7.1	-10%	2.01	-9%
34	5/19/2013	30.4	-2%	7.0	-9%	2.02	-14%

Season-to-date:

Week	Ending	TPUTy2d	y2dy2y	bcy2d	y2dy2y	LAy2d	y2dy2y
1	9/30/2012	32.4	-6%	9.2	-16%	2.50	-15%
5	10/28/2012	33.3	-3%	8.8	-10%	2.31	-13%
9	11/25/2012	33.5	-3%	8.8	-9%	2.26	-12%
13	12/23/2012	33.4	-2%	8.5	-6%	2.24	-10%
17	1/20/2013	33.4	-3%	8.3	-8%	2.20	-10%
21	2/17/2013	33.6	-3%	8.3	-9%	2.19	-11%
25	3/17/2013	33.4	-3%	8.1	-10%	2.16	-12%
29	4/14/2013	33.3	-3%	7.9	-10%	2.13	-11%
32	5/5/2013	33.1	-2%	7.8	-10%	2.11	-11%
33	5/12/2013	33.0	-2%	7.8	-10%	2.11	-10%
34	5/19/2013	33.0	-2%	7.7	-10%	2.10	-11%

Networks season-to-date (A18-49+):
 

Week	ABC	CBS	NBC	Fox	CW
26	94.02	110	89.61	106	30
30	93.45	110	91.29	106	30
31	93.25	110	91.56	106	30
32	93.09	110	92.07	106	30
33	93.13	109	92.44	106	30
34	92.98	109	92.74	106	30
34+2	93.10!	109	93.10!	106	30

Though Sunday Night Football vaults NBC well ahead of ABC in most of the conventional metrics, the original series-only measurement has them in an absolute dead heat going into the last day of the season! (To take it out to several decimal points, ABC series currently average a 1.9613 while NBC's average a 1.9612.) I had thought a few weeks ago that NBC was favored to pull ahead by the end, but the surprisingly large The Voice downturn over the last few weeks has slowed its furious recovery to the point that, with a day left in the season, ABC is now overwhelmingly favored to keep NBC in the entertainment cellar for an eighth straight season.

Why are they favored? They beat NBC by 0.4 points last Wednesday, and they pulled their weakest half hour for this week (Family Tools), so NBC is going to need practically unthinkable spikes from SVU and Chicago Fire to have any chance.

The late-season Voice deterioration has also taken a toll on the league average, barely able to break a 2.0 in the finale-filled last couple weeks. It's now projected the league average will end up at 2.107, meaning the hit-less year is not coming to pass. The Following will finish with a 125 A18-49+, tying My Name is Earl as the weakest #1 new show of the last decade. But at least it's a hit!

And with no Idol finale on the last two days of the season, there is zero chance the league average decline can get up to -10%. It'll be -11%, the outright worst decline of the A18-49+ era except for the writer's strike season of 2007-08.

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Click to expand for more on the "climate" numbers used herein.

TPUT - This is an ESTIMATED average of how many people are watching TV from 8:00 to 11:00.

• I derive these numbers by adding up all the ratings and dividing by all the shares in each of the 42 half-hours each week. That means there is some error relative to the numbers Nielsen actually releases. Sadly we don't regularly have access to those. I always advise not to rely heavily on these numbers for any one show in any one week, but the hope is that the error is minimized across a 42-timeslot sample every week.

• I include the Old Methodology adjustment, which makes the number more like a measurement of how many people watch primetime programming Live + SD, rather than a measurement of how many people watch any TV (including old DVR stuff) from 8:00 to 11:00. This makes the number perhaps less intuitive in a vacuum, but it's pretty much a wash when making week-to-week and year-to-year comparisons, which is what we're really interested in.

bc - This is an average of how many people are watching national broadcast TV from 8:00 to 11:00.

• This does NOT include the 10:00 adjustment used in the True2 calculation which attempts to account for Fox/CW programming and stronger cable. Again, that perhaps hurts the number in a vacuum, because the 10:00 numbers being used only include three networks, so I'm averaging timeslots that are somewhat apples-to-oranges. But again, it's a wash when making comparisons because I treat it that way all the time. It would not really change week-to-week or year-to-year comparisons, and that's what I mostly care about.

• Another important note here is that these numbers include the preliminary averages for "sustaining" programming like presidential debates and commercial-free benefit concerts whose numbers are typically omitted from traditional Nielsen averages. I might eventually omit these from this particular calculation, but they're needed on my spreadsheets to 1) make PUT calculations in those timeslots and 2) create a competition number for the entertainment shows that air against them.

LeAv - This is a measurement of how many people watch the average moment of original entertainment series programming on the big four networks. Meaning, no sports, no reruns, no specials, no movies, no sustaining programming included.

Note: Beginning with week 9, all numbers compare against the next numbered week in the 2011-12 season. So week 9 compares against week 10 of 2011-12, etc. This was done to make the comparisons more calendar-friendly. See here for more on that.