JIMMY KIMMEL - NIELSEN RESUMES RATINGS REPORTS

NIELSEN RESUMES RATINGS REPORTS

Barely hours after reports appeared indicating that Nielsen Media Research had decided not to issue its daily ratings reports from Friday of last week until Thursday of this week because of the digital transition, the company presumably determined that the transition had made an insignificant impact on overall TV watching, and it began releasing preliminary ratings data again. Most industry interest focused on Sunday's telecast of the fifth and final game of the NBA Championship series between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Orlando Magic, which the Lakers won by a score of 99-86. The three-hour telecast drew 10.12 million viewers, down from 14.94 million a year ago for the Finals between the Boston Celtics and the Lakers, but up from the 9.29 million who tuned in to the San Antonio/Cleveland contest in 2007. Earlier in the evening the Jimmy Kimmel Live/NBA Countdown telecast drew 8.13 million viewers. Ratings results for the night did not appear to have been affected at all by the analog-to-digital transition, leading some to conclude that most of those 2 million Americans who were "completely unprepared" for the transition probably don't watch TV anyway.

16/06/2009