With the Super Bowl, the Grammy Awards and the strongest regular lineup in television all on its schedule this month, it should be no surprise that CBS will be the big winner when the official February sweep rating period closes Wednesday night.
But the result will actually break one long streak of futility for CBS: this will be the first time since 1998 that the network will finish first in the most important category for advertising sales, viewers between the ages of 18 and 49.
CBS’s traditional strength is among older viewers, but this month the numbers in the 18-to-49 category fell decidedly in its favor. With just two nights left to be counted, CBS is averaging a 4.3 rating in that group, far ahead of ABC, which is second with a 2.2 rating. Fox is now third, with a 2 rating. That is an unusual place for that network because for a decade it has ridden high in February on the strength of “American Idol.â€
NBC is trailing, of course. Its number, a 1.2 among the 18-to-49 audience, s the worst ever for a network, and well behind the Spanish-language network Univision, which is averaging a 1.5.
CBS last won in a February sweep 15 years ago, and it took covering a Winter Olympics to do it that time. But CBS’s longtime strategy of assembling the biggest audiences possible, without focusing strictly on younger adults, has never seemed more sound.
For the month, CBS â€" backed by those big events â€" is averaging 15.46 million viewers in prime time. The closest competitor is ABC, with less than half that total, 7.32 million. Fox has dropped 13 percent in a year, and is down to 6.1 million viewers. NBC, which had the Super Bowl last year to inflate its numbers, has had a plunge to 3.96 million viewers, from 10.26 million.
Perhaps the most striking example of CBS’s appeal to the mass of viewers is this statistic from February: For the month, in terms of scripted entertainment shows (that means no sports, award shows or reality ! shows), individual episodes of shows on CBS occupy the first 31 places in terms of total viewers.
To be fair, this only includes viewing based on the episodes’ being watched on the same day they are broadcast. The show in 32nd place, ABC’s “Modern Family,†for example, gains well over four million viewers when delayed viewing of its episodes is included.
But CBS’s dominance in terms of appealing to the largest number of people is unassailable. The network often brands itself, accurately, as “the most-watched network.†In February, no other network comes close.
