As different sources like Showbuzz Daily and SpoilerTV have stopped consistently reporting rankings data and now Programming Insider picking back up, with slightly narrower reporting criteria, it’s made tracking this metric harder to follow. I’ve tried to consolidate all that historical data going back to 2019 here.
Because Programming Insider reports narrower criteria of cable programs (including only originals in primetime, as opposed to cable originals throughout the day as Showbuzz and SpoilerTV formerly reported), I’ve narrowed all the historical rankings data we’ve collected based on the Programming Insider criteria. I determined whether a given program was in fact in primetime based on whether the majority of its duration occurred between 8:00 pm and 11:00 pm ET.
Rankings — where the program ranks among all other telecasts on its given day — are probably the most telling measure of a program’s media value.
I chose to aggregate the rankings by median to avoid allowing one-off low rankings to strongly affect a quarterly result. Year-quarters are used here to allow for seasonal comparisons, for example, Raw’s ranking is lower in Q4 because of NFL competition.
Programs that consistently rank highly tend to be highly valuable to their networks; those that rank less highly, are less so.