Festival TV Ratings Trail 2009

According to the CMA and Nielsen Media Research, ratings for its three-hour CMA Festival: Country’s Night To Rock grew by 6% this year among Women 18-34 and helped ABC reach Wednesday summer highs in total viewers 18-49.

Unfortunately, the ABC Sept. 1 airing was positioned against high profile shows such as Big Brother 12 (7.7 million viewers) and America’s Got Talent (10.3 million viewers) which adversely affected the CMA audience size overall.

Zap2it.com live numbers showed that NBC led the night with 7.5 million viewers, CBS grabbed 6.6 million and ABC (helped by the CMA) lunged into third place with about 6 million viewers.

The hourly Festival breakdown showed a steady drop in viewers throughout the three hour event starting at 6.3 during the 8 p.m. time slot, sliding to 6.1 for 9 pm and falling off to 5.6 million during the third a final hour.

By comparison, last year’s CMA show fared quite better, winning the night with 7.8 million viewers and scoring its largest audience in four years. However, the 2009 presentation ran against repeats across the board on other channels.

All this data is based upon preliminary data and subject to some change. Source: The Nielsen Company