Summer Broadcast Season Cools On Sundays

The upfront advertising market may be heating up, but the summer broadcast season continues to cool.

On Sunday night, only one network--NBC--managed to eke out an average rating of 2 or higher in the key viewer group, adults 18-49. The net posted a preliminary 2.2 rating/7 share among 18-49 viewers.

But much of that had nothing to do with NBC's prime-time Sunday night schedule. Rather, it benefited from a U.S. Open golf tournament overrun that started in the afternoon. The golf event gave NBC a 2.6 rating during the 7 p.m. hour--the highest-rated programming of the evening.

CBS was second at 1.7/6, with its best coming from a 2.1 rating repeat of "Without a Trace." Fox saw a 1.4/5, with a "Family Guy" repeat at 9 p.m. getting a 1.6 rating.

That was the good news. The remaining three broadcast networks weren't even above a 1 rating for the night. Particularly glaring was ABC's shrinkage.

Now that the NBA finals ended quickly, ABC was left with a flagging reality show and a couple of drama reruns. ABC's reality series "Fast Cars and Superstars: The Young Guns Celebrity Race" could only muster a 0.7, the lowest rating for an original series on the big four networks this summer.

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ABC's "Desperate Housewives" and "Brothers & Sisters" reruns were also under the 1 rating mark. If that wasn't enough, ABC finished behind Univision between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. among 18-49 viewers. Overall, ABC was fourth at 0.9/3, Univision fifth at 0.9/2, and CW sixth at 0.5/2.

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