Leno has strong opening week with new NBC show, but now real competition sets in

Leno’s new show has strong opening week for NBC

NEW YORK — If only every week could be so easy for Jay Leno.

Blessed with stars, a contrite Kanye West, the industry’s nearly undivided attention and a lack of competition from NBC’s rivals, his new prime-time show had a strong opening week. All five of its episodes finished among The Nielsen Co.’s 24 most-watched prime-time shows last week.

Reality sets in this week: Monday’s Leno episode had 5.7 million viewers, with demographic ratings on the cusp of what NBC considers profitable in the long term. The season premiere of CBS’ “CSI: Miami” had 13.7 million viewers.

The premiere of “The Jay Leno Show” had 18.4 million viewers last week Monday, and the audience had slipped to 7.6 million by Friday, Nielsen said.

NBC had mixed results for its critically acclaimed Thursday lineup, which debuted a week early. “The Office” reached a healthy 8.2 million viewers, and the new comedy “Community,” with 7.9 million people, ranked No. 20 for the week. Amy Poehler’s “Parks and Recreation” has problems, though, with an audience of fewer than 5 million people.

The CW’s “Gossip Girl” opened its season with 2.6 million viewers, fewer than last year for the buzzed-about show’s opening. The network said the audience was slightly up in the target audience of young women.

NBC’s Sunday night football matchup between the New York Giants and the Dallas Cowboys in the Cowboys’ new stadium drew just under 25 million viewers, the biggest audience ever for the network’s Sunday night series.

It carried NBC to an easy win last week, as the network averaged 11.6 million viewers in prime time (7.3 rating, 12 share). CBS had 8.3 million viewers (5.3, 9), Fox had 5.3 million (3.3, 6), ABC had 4.4 million (2.9, 5), the CW had 1.9 million (1.3, 2), My Network TV had 1.5 million (1, 2) and ION Television had 790,000 (0.5, 1).

Among the Spanish-language networks, Univision led with 3.5 million viewers (1.8 rating, 3 share), Telemundo had 900,000 and TeleFutura 880,000 (both 0.4, 1) and Azteca had 170,000 (0.1, 0).

After its first week in nearly a year out of the winner’s circle, NBC’s “Nightly News” topped the evening newscasts with an average audience of 8.2 million viewers (5.5 rating, 12 share). ABC’s “World News” had 7.4 million (5, 10) and the “CBS Evening News” had 5.2 million (3.6, 8).

A ratings point represents 1,149,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation’s estimated 114.9 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.

For the week of Sept. 14-20, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: NFL Football: Giants vs. Cowboys, NBC, 24.82 million; “Sunday Night NFL Pre-Kick,” NBC, 18.91 million; “The Jay Leno Show” (Monday), NBC, 18.42 million; “America’s Got Talent” (Wednesday), NBC, 15.79 million; “NFL Post-Game,” CBS, 15.52 million; “America’s Got Talent” (Monday), NBC, 13.9 million; “Emmy Awards,” CBS, 13.47 million; “The Jay Leno Show” (Wednesday), NBC, 13.36 million; “Football Night in America,” NBC, 13.36 million; “60 Minutes,” CBS, 13.12 million.

ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Co. CBS is owned by CBS Corp. CW is a joint venture of Warner Bros. Entertainment and CBS Corp. Fox and My Network TV are units of News Corp. NBC and Telemundo are owned by General Electric Co. ION Television is owned by ION Media Networks. TeleFutura is a division of Univision. Azteca America is a wholly owned subsidiary of TV Azteca S.A. de C.V.

On the Net:

The Nielsen Co.: www.nielsenmedia.com