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Access Atlanta > Entertainment > Radio Talk > Archives > 2008 > October > 01 > Entry

10/1: Huge ratings for the Dawgs/Alabama game

While scripted TV came back with a vengeance last week, the big Nielsen ratings numbers in Atlanta came courtesy of the Presidential debate, the Falcons game and the Bulldogs.

University of Georgia’s painful loss to Alabama Saturday drew a higher-than-average 845,000 viewers on ESPN, by far the biggest performer of the week. That’s not quite Super Bowl level but it’s equal to one-fifth of the entire Atlanta population and 37 percent of TVs that were on.

And regionality certainly came into play: 6.68 million viewers caught the game nationwidr/ Atlanta represented a whopping 13% of that figure, about 10 times greater than the typical show.

In comparison, the Atlanta Falcons loss to the Carolina Panthers Sunday brought in a still potent 555,000 fans on WAGA-TV.

The top scripted show was the season premiere ABC’s “Desperate Housewives” Sunday evening, with about 453,000 viewers (18.7 million nationally). That’s down about 10 percent from last year. The top reality show was the first night of “Dancing With the Stars” on ABC Sept. 22 with 472,000 viewers (21.3 million nationally). That’s on part with a year ago. The top new show is CBS’s “The Mentalist” with 390,000 viewers Sept. 23 (15.6 million nationally) and it held nearly its entire audience last night, a good sign.

On Friday night, when all the major news and broadcast networks aired the Presidential debate, WSB-TV came in on top with about 380,000 viewers, followed by Fox News and CNN, both in the 220,000 range. Collectively, about 1.4 million Atlantans (and 52 million Americans nationwide) caught the debate.

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Comments

By Brett

October 2, 2008 7:11 PM | Link to this

Hi. I’m trying to find the local t.v. news rankings for Atlanta. CBS-46 is now saying that they are the number 1 rated 11pm news. Is that possible? If you can get back to me, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks for your time.

Brett R.

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November 19, 2008 2:24 AM | Link to this

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