For several weeks now, CBS has been preparing reporters for that ever-so-magical day when Criminal Minds would beat ABC's Lost on Wednesday night. After several false alarms and several weeks where Criminal Minds won in the nebulous "households" measurement, but not in the much-less-nebulous "viewers" category, that day is now.

On Thursday (Nov. 2), CBS celebrated with a press release headlined "FINAL -- FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, 'CRIMINAL MINDS' TOPS 'LOST' IN VIEWERS" (their caps, certainly not mine). And, indeed, Criminal Minds averaged 16.97 million viewers, more than 900,000 more than watched Lost. The CBS release also trumpeted a whopping 1% increase over last week in total viewers and a 3% increase in adults 25-54. Nice.

But ABC was having none of it and instantly put out a release poking at CBS' Achilles heel, playing the age card.

ABC's release included this damning paragraph:

"ABC's Lost won its 9 o'clock time period and ranked as the night's #1 TV show in Adults 18-49 for the 5th week in a row (on each of its telecasts this season).  ABC's younger skewing Lost dominated CBS' older skewing Criminal Minds in the time period by 32% in Adults 18-49 and by 58% in Adults 18-34.  The differences between the audience for the ABC drama and the CBS drama is quite clear.  Premiere to date, the median age of the Criminal Minds viewer is 53.5 years, over 10 years older than the Lost viewer (43.4 years). On average the CBS drama gets 58% of its overall audience from viewers 50+, driving up its Total Viewer count.  In contrast, 64% of the audience for Lost is under 50.  In addition to ranking as the #1 program of the evening in the key Adult 18-49 sales demographic, Lost was also the highest-rated television show on Wednesday with Adults 25-54, Adults 18-34 and Teens 12-17."

Way to go ABC. Your friends over at CBS try to have a little fun and what do you do? You push their wheelchair down the steps like Richard Widmark in Kiss of Death.

Whatever happened to respecting your elders?

We at Zap2it would like to congratulate both ABC and CBS for making sure that nobody watched FOX's The Rich List.

Comments

I wonder how you can even choose which vanilla flavored show on CBS to watch?

| Nov 2, 2006 4:05:12 PM | #

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They can dress it up however they want, but that's pathetic that this show is even close to Lost in viewers and ABC ought to be panicking. Do they really still believe that 18-49 means anything more significantly than the 49-over group when the majority of the country's population is or will be over 49! The bottom line is Lost got beat and its going to get killed when American Idol comes back. Then they won't even have the 18-49 audience either! Sucks because i love this show, but i knew it would burn out quick. I give it two more years tops, which will probably be long enough anyway.

Steve | Nov 3, 2006 6:52:11 AM | #

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"Way to go ABC. Your friends over at CBS try to have a little fun and what do you do? You push their wheelchair down the steps like Richard Widmark in Kiss of Death."

Oh, Daniel, you made me laugh so hard with that comment. Good one!

Sue | Nov 3, 2006 12:43:00 PM | #

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By the way, I'm very glad From Inside the Box is easier to find nowadays. I used to have a really hard time finding it. Next to TV Gal, it's my favorite section of Zap2it.

Sue | Nov 3, 2006 12:46:55 PM | #

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Amen, Sue! I totally agree. :)

Sarah | Nov 6, 2006 9:05:38 AM | #

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