Cable TV Animation: Second Quarter 2008 Ratings

Also of note, there were four weeks within Second Quarter 2008 where a Nickelodeon program completely swept the Top 10 listing for the most-watched program of a recorded week; meaning that different episodes of the same program ranked as each of the ten most-watched series/episodes in all of cable and broadcast television. Of these four instances, three of them were by a Nickelodeon animation by the name of SpongeBob SquarePants (the other was by a week of confident string of iCarly episodes). These episodes of SpongeBob SquarePants which swept the Top 10 listing were of the Kids 2-11 persuasion (iCarly was of Tweens 9-14).

As previously reported by AnimationInsider.net--[Recent A.I. News: "Nick: Q2 2008 Ratings"]; when it comes to preschool television animation, Nickelodeon is growing just as much. With long-standing giant Dora the Explorer, it's cousin Go, Diego, Go, perennial favorites The Backyardigans and The Wonder Pets!, and strong but creative relative newcomer Ni Hao, Kai-lan; Nick claims an edge on the competition. The Nick Jr. animation averaged a share of 4.1 (541,000) in the Second Quarter for preschoolers (Kids 2-5), for Total Program Day.

Of special interest in an otherwise slow Quarter, the final week of June 2008 saw the highest single week performance by a network in terms of Total Viewers as measured by Total Program Day analysis. During this interesting week of television programming, Nickelodeon averaged a massive 2.31 million viewers.

Disney Channel:
Disney Channel lacked stability in Second Quarter of this year, with an uneven stream of weekly performances throughout much of the Quarter. Although select growth could be found following the launch of key episode premieres or following various television specials, Disney Channel saw a plethora of audience losses, with demographic losses in each month of analysis. April saw a decline with Kids 6-11 of roughly -08%, recorded through the Total Program Day, which although much, was the children's channel's smallest decline of the Quarter.

The Tweens 9-14 audience showed a consistent decline (Total Program Day), throughout April 2008 for the Disney Channel. Although the cartoon and live-action kid sitcom network has previously helped guide the tween audience, in a year-to-year comparison, the Tweens 9-14 demographic dropped -11% (down to 375,000) on average for this month.

Moving on to the month of May, Disney Channel, with Kids 6-11, similarly declined another -08% (Total Program Day). May 2008 was a difficult month on some level for almost all kids cable networks, but Disney Channel, for its loss, showed modest growth in Total Program Day with Kids 2-11 as the weeks continued; and likewise, in Primetime, Kids 6-11 viewers grew from week to week, if not every so slightly, while other kid networks showed a decline viewers at least one week in said month.

Disney Channel's June saw double-digit declines in every notable kids demographic. The network saw a decline with the Kids 2-11 audience, when compared to the previous year, of -10% (TPD) and -14% (Primetime), and a similar drop in viewer delivery of -11% (TPD) and -15% (Primetime) with Kids 6-11. From a larger perspective, Disney Channel lost more viewers in Primetime than throughout the entire day of programming, in each demographic. The largest of such losses, in June 2008, were with Tweens. Tweens 9-14 viewership decreased -16% (TPD) and down another -21% (Primetime).

Regardless of Disney Channel's multi-media dominance among all kid's entertainment channels due to household reach -- Disney Channel averaged a 1.55 Primetime rating in June as based on total U.S. household projection -- Second Quarter 2008 saw a decrease of -09% (K6-11, TPD) overall. One key highlight though, specific to the network's animated programming, was an episode of Phineas and Ferb in Q2 2008, which pulled in a commendable 1.29 million Kids 6-11.