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Numbers Are In for Daytime Syndication’s Premiere Week — Here Are the Winners and Losers

Sep 17, 2012  •  Post A Comment

A veteran daytime talk host earned bragging rights as the genre’s ratings leader, while a new entry also made its presence felt during the first week of the fall syndication season, Deadline.com reports.

Veteran Ellen DeGeneres came out on top in the ratings, averaging a 2.9 household rating/8 share and a 1.8/11 in women 25-54 in metered markets — a big 45% improvement on her show’s fall 2011 premiere week in households and an even bigger 65% increase in women 25-54. Part of the increase can be credited to a stronger lead-in from “Steve Harvey” on NBC stations, the story notes.

“Another returning show to improve on its September 2011 performance was ‘Live! With Kelly and Michael’ (2.8/10 in HH, 1.6/11 in W25-54), which debuted a week earlier,” the report adds. “It posted the biggest fall premiere HH rating this year (3.3) for its September 4 opener, which introduced Kelly Ripa’s new permanent co-host Michael Strahan. Its Week 2 averages were up 4% and 14%, respectively, from September 2011 when the show was co-hosted by Regis Philbin.”

Placing third overall was “Dr. Phil,” which had the start of its season delayed by one day due to coverage of the U.S. Open tennis tournament. “Phil’s” numbers: 2.4/7, down 8%; 1.0/6, down 17%.

Katie Couric’s new talk show “Katie” was the front-runner among freshman talk shows, coming in fourth overall. “Katie” averaged a 2.3/7, equaling the time-slot average for a year ago, and a 1.2/7, down 14%. “The show got off to a strong start on Monday with a 2.8/8 and a 1.6/9,” the story reports. “It subsequently dropped to a 1.7/5 and 0.8/5 on Thursday but rebounded Friday with Jennifer Lopez as guest (2.2/6, 1.1/7).”

The report adds: “’Steve Harvey’ finished as a solid No. 2 new syndicated talk show (1.4/4 in HH, 40% time-slot improvement, 0.9/6 in W 25-54, up 80%). Trailing the pack were ‘Jeff Probst’ (0.8/3, 0.5/3) and ‘Ricki Lake’ (0.7/2, 0.4/2), though ‘Jeff Probst’ was able to tie sophomore ‘Anderson Live’ (1.2/4, 0.5/4) in the demo.”

One caveat about all the numbers is that there were some premptions because of other programming, such as the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Furthermore, as we have noted priviously, ""Ricki Lake" has faced an extra obstacle during premiere season, the story notes: A retransmission dispute between Tribune and Cablevision kept it off the air in 40% of the New York market."

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