Reading Into Ratings

My favorite network television show is Cold Case. The show airs on CBS every Sunday night from 9-10pm. According to a Nielsen Media’s recent ratings, Cold Case was ranked 18th with 9.8 million viewers, tied with the show How I Met Your Mother.
Cold Case has an audience of approximately 7,096,000 and approximately 9,804,000 viewers. It holds a rating/share of 6.3/10. Cold case is up against some pretty tough competition in its Sunday night time slot including Oprah’s Big Give on the ABC network which ranked 13th during the week of March 24th-30th with 11,362,000 viewers. However, with the recent NCAA Basketball tournament taking place on the same network as Cold Case (CBS) one might assume that the audience watching the basketball games during the late afternoon and evenings may carry over to watch Cold Case at 9pm. Another question that may arise is will the show’s ratings fall once the tournament is over?
Cold Case has been on air for almost 5 years now and received a viewer rating of 3.7 out of 4 stars on zap2it.com. Its popularity is strong however its ratings have fallen most likely due to the strong competition of television taking place on Sunday nights.
Sunday night is a big night for television with popular shows such as Extreme Home Makeover (ABC-8pm), 60 minutes (CBS-7pm), and Law & Order SVU (NBC-10pm). This is another key factor in Cold Cases near last place rating due to the other popular shows occurring on Sunday evening on rival networks drawing viewers. Although in different time slots, many viewers may tune into their favorite show then turn the television off and resume their busy lives without ever considering other shows such as Cold Case on other networks at other times.
The writer’s strike has also had an effect on Cold Case quite possibly for the better with shows like Desperate Housewives not airing new episodes recently on Sunday nights.
If I were to move my favorite show to another timeslot in order to increase its overall ratings I would move it to Thursday nights for two main reasons. One being that only two shows on Nielsen’s top 20 airs on Thursday nights which is Deal or No Deal (NBC-8pm) and The Apprentice (NBC-9pm). The other main reason is that there is no American Idol on that night. Its near impossible to compete with the show that’s always at the top of the ratings dominating Tuesday and Wednesday nights. For the very reason that there are not many shows top-rated shows on Thursdays (except for the two mentioned above) and there is no American Idol, I feel the Cold Cases’ ratings would increase.