The 2013-14 Climate Center: Networks

The Climate Center is the latest way to keep up with some of this site's bigger-picture numbers on a week-to-week basis. It'll provide a running track of trends across the broadcasters, including individual networks, genres, and days of week/time of day. These will include the numbers that have gone into the A18-49+ theme posts, plus some new ones. Like the Weekly True Power Rankings, it'll be free of any pesky analysis (aside from definitions of the numbers) and will get updated alongside the SpotVault in the middle of each week. These may or may not get expanded/tweaked over the course of the season; for now, I just want to get some of my immediate ideas out there. Suggestions welcome!

The "Networks" post looks at some of the metrics that best get at the networks' actual strength, most importantly breaking the networks' overall averages apart by category and mostly focusing on only the original non-sports series.

These numbers are up to date through the end of the 2013-14 regular season: Wednesday, May 21.

More Climate Center: Basics | Networks | Genres | Days/Times

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Network originals season-to-date (A18-49+):

Week	Ending	ABC	CBS	NBC	Fox	CW
1	9/29/2013	98	96	117	88	12
2	10/6/2013	96	98	117	89	22
3	10/13/2013	96	98	114	93	29
4	10/20/2013	95	99	112	94	32
5	10/27/2013	95	99	112	93	33
6	11/3/2013	95	99	113	93	32
7	11/10/2013	94	100	112	91	32
8	11/17/2013	94	101	111	91	33
9	11/24/2013	95	102	110	90	33
10	12/1/2013	95	102	110	88	33
11	12/8/2013	95	103	112	87	34
12	12/15/2013	94	103	111	88	34
13	12/22/2013	93	103	112	88	34
14	12/29/2013	93	104	111	88	34
15	1/5/2014	93	104	110	90	34
16	1/12/2014	93	105	109	90	34
17	1/19/2014	92	105	107	95	34
18	1/26/2014	92	106	105	97	34
19	2/2/2014	91	105	104	100	34
20	2/9/2014	91	106	103	100	34
21	2/16/2014	91	106	103	101	34
22	2/23/2014	90	106	104	101	34
23	3/2/2014	91	106	104	101	34
24	3/9/2014	92	105	104	100	34
25	3/16/2014	93	105	104	99	34
26	3/23/2014	93	105	104	98	34
27	3/30/2014	93	105	104	97	34
28	4/6/2014	94	106	104	96	34
29	4/13/2014	94	106	103	95	34
30	4/20/2014	95	106	103	95	34
31	4/27/2014	95	106	103	95	34
32	5/4/2014	96	106	103	94	34
33	5/11/2014	96	106	103	94	34
34	5/18/2014	96	106	103	94	34
35	5/21/2014	96	106	103	94	34
2012-13 Final		93	109	93	106	30

Network originals season-to-date by day of the week (A18-49+): 

Day		ABC	CBS	NBC	Fox	CW
Monday		114	109	170	101	18
Tuesday		86	128	135	71	49
Wednesday		104	122	83	125	39
Thursday		107	136	63	95	43
Friday		82	74	64	53	18
Sunday		91	93	53	117	n/a

Networks season-to-date by genre:

A18-49 Ratings:

Genre		ABC	CBS	NBC	Fox	CW
Overall		1.64	1.85	2.29	2.00	0.52
Originals		1.81	1.99	1.94	1.77	0.63
Repeats		0.91	0.99	0.85	0.69	0.30
Sports		1.63	4.66	5.28	5.35	n/a
Specials		2.62	2.21	1.92	0.82	0.37
Movies		0.91	n/a	0.97	1.25	0.29

Real estate:

Genre		ABC	CBS	NBC	Fox	CW
Originals		65%	64%	56%	64%	66%
Repeats		17%	27%	16%	21%	22%
Sports		5%	4%	17%	13%	0%
Specials		7%	5%	10%	2%	8%
Movies		7%	0%	1%	0%	5%

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

Network originals season-to-date - These numbers index the networks' averages in original non-sports series against the average for the big four networks combined. To help compare the network race to the previous season, also included are these same numbers as of the corresponding week last year, as well as the numbers from the end of last season. Why only original non-sports series? See here.

Network originals season-to-date by day of the week - To go deeper into the network race, this table breaks apart each network's collection of original non-sports series by day of the week. This helps to illustrate which networks are more balanced and which might be riding one or two strong shows/nights.

Networks season-to-date by genre - While we here at Spotted Ratings believe in evaluating networks based on the strength of their original series, not everyone in the media is so evolved. Most media compare networks based on their overall averages, baking in huge events like sports and awards shows. These tables help to break down exactly what goes into those numbers, listing both the ratings average for each network in each category as well as the percentage of the average (or the percentage of primetime real estate) that each category takes up.

• To keep the "Originals" ratings row consistent with how A18-49+ is calculated, everything is counted as full-length; in other words, an episode of The Mentalist that starts after 10:30 due to overrun still counts as a one-hour episode. However, the other "by genre" rows, including "Overall," are based on half-hour breakdowns that capture only what airs within the networks' normal definition of primetime. This paints a better picture of actual primetime ratings. (For example, an overrunning NFL game on 11/3/13 had a final rating for the whole game of 7.7, but the 7:00 and 7:30 ratings were 8.3 and 9.0. The 8.3 and 9.0 are what go into the "Sports" and "Overall" averages.)