Television Audiences

There are approximately 1.6 million political junkies in the United States, or at least that's how many Americans consistently tune in for debates featuring candidates seeking the presidential nomination. Monday's debate, the Republicans' sixth and the third including front-runner George W. Bush, averaged about the same number of television viewers as previous forums.

A stormy sky that dumped rain on South Bend over the last few days is expected to clear by this weekend, leaving sunshine and nice weather for football. Maybe too nice. With Notre Dame playing a rare night game at home — against rival USC, no less — university officials and local police worry about legions of Irish fans tailgating for hours and hours beforehand. "Weather is a big factor," said Capt. Phil Trent of the South Bend Police Department. "If it's a great day to stand around, they'll tend to get much more intoxicated.

The human race seems to be falling for the space aliens' devious scheme: We're watching more television than ever, according to a report released Monday. If you've seen that Hulu.com commercial starring Alec Baldwin, you know that TV is a plot devised by aliens to turn our brains into mush so they can scoop them out and eat them. Computers, the ad says, are making our brains even mushier by giving us more places to watch TV. The Nielsen Co.'

Don Kirshner, the veteran music mogul who shepherded songs from a monstrously talented stable of young writers to the top of the pop charts in the 1960s, launched the career of the Monkees and then became a familiar face to millions of rock fans as impresario of his late-night music TV series in the 1970s, died Monday of heart failure in Boca Raton, Fla., where he had lived for the last decade, a family spokeswoman said Tuesday. He was 76. "Don Kirshner's Rock Concert" brought the biggest names in rock and pop music to television in live performances instead of the lip-synced sessions that often characterized rock music on television.

More than an entire day -- that's how long children sit in front of the television in an average week, according to new findings released Monday by Nielsen. The amount of television usage by children reached an eight-year high, with kids ages 2 to 5 watching the screen for more than 32 hours a week on average and those ages 6 to 11 watching more than 28 hours. The analysis, based on the fourth quarter of 2008, measured children's consumption of live and recorded TV, as well as VCR and game console usage.

It didn't top the final episode of "MASH" or Gulf War coverage, but the verdicts in the O.J. Simpson murder trial drew a huge television audience of about 51 million people at home and untold millions more at work, Nielsen Media Research reported Wednesday. With live coverage on four national broadcast networks and six national cable channels, the dramatic determination of Simpson's fate accounted for a whopping 91% of all home TV watching between 10 a.m. and 10:15 a.m.

On a recent winter night, while neighbors strung their Baldwin Park homes with Christmas lights, the Lams and their three children sat in front of a television set with rabbit ears sprouting out of the top. Wait a second -- rabbit ears? Is this 1950? No, it's almost 2010, and the Lams are a modern Los Angeles family that, like many in the region, are rediscovering the convenience -- and economics -- of the old-fashioned TV antenna. In the wake of the transition to digital television, Southland viewers are finding they can get nearly three times as many channels as they once could with an antenna.

The first presidential debate didn't exactly pack in viewers, as Sunday's 90-minute Bill Clinton-Bob Dole showdown was seen in less than one-third of the nation's 97 million homes. ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and CNN totaled about 48% of homes watching television at the time but not quite 32% of all possible TV households in the United States--translating to an audience of roughly 30.6 million homes.

The Olympics are a bigger draw in Los Angeles than most other major markets, with an average Nielsen rating after three days of 27.3, compared to the national average of 21.2 The national rating for Sunday night's prime-time competition was a 22.9, while L.A. drew a 27.1. The L.A. rating ranked 12th among the nation's 33 largest markets. Topping the list, somewhat surprisingly, was Sacramento with a 34.5. Second was Atlanta, the host city, with a 31.7 and third was Orlando, Fla., with a 30.6.

Fox, the network that gives fleeing criminal suspects their moment in the sun, will let Lowell Waddy of Michigan City, Ind., have his fling with fame in December when he leads a high-speed chase that ends when he crashes into a tree on an episode of "World's Wildest Police Videos." It seems like only yesterday, but more than a decade has passed since Barbour/Langley Productions rolled out the series "Cops" and its gritty brand of video verite.

David L. Wolper, who died Tuesday at the age of 82, was television's first marquee producer, a personally embodied brand who in the 1960s and '70s was synonymous with seriousness and quality and scope, though not everything he produced actually fit that description. He was most famously associated with the 1977 miniseries "Roots," but Wolper was already well known by then, his name attached to Jacques Cousteau, whose "Undersea World" specials he produced, and to the National Geographic Society, whose specials he also produced, and all manner of award-winning historical and contemporary documentaries.

American children are playing soccer in greater numbers than ever and fans are filling stadiums across the country, although they may be there as much to see the Mexican national team as our own professional league. Since the U.S. hosted the World Cup in 1994, the sport's popularity has been growing steadily among immigrant families and the well-off. Vanity Fair magazine had soccer beefcake on its cover in June and a Louis Vuitton ad on the back with former international soccer superstars Pele, Zidane and Maradona.

Can a well-endowed teen make MTV hot again? The youth-obsessed cable network, seeking to stem a years-long ratings slide, thinks it has found just the thing to get back on track: "The Hard Times of RJ Berger," a scripted comedy about a boy with an, um, anatomical "gift." The show, billed as a cross between "The Wonder Years" and the R-rated comedy "Superbad," is a raunchy coming-of-age tale about a nerdy teen who achieves notoriety among his high school peers when they discover that he has a rather large penis.

On a recent winter night, while neighbors strung their Baldwin Park homes with Christmas lights, the Lams and their three children sat in front of a television set with rabbit ears sprouting out of the top. Wait a second -- rabbit ears? Is this 1950? No, it's almost 2010, and the Lams are a modern Los Angeles family that, like many in the region, are rediscovering the convenience -- and economics -- of the old-fashioned TV antenna. In the wake of the transition to digital television, Southland viewers are finding they can get nearly three times as many channels as they once could with an antenna.

More than an entire day -- that's how long children sit in front of the television in an average week, according to new findings released Monday by Nielsen. The amount of television usage by children reached an eight-year high, with kids ages 2 to 5 watching the screen for more than 32 hours a week on average and those ages 6 to 11 watching more than 28 hours. The analysis, based on the fourth quarter of 2008, measured children's consumption of live and recorded TV, as well as VCR and game console usage.

Jazz musician Bill Cunliffe loves television -- but he doesn't watch it on a TV set. "I can watch anything I want, any time I want," he said, "on my bottom-of-the-line Mac PowerBook." Cunliffe, 53, is one of a growing number of TV viewers who get all their programs via the Internet. For reasons that include saving money, convenience, personal choice and a hatred of commercials, these viewers are cutting the cord from cable, satellite and telephone suppliers of TV service, and even throwing away the rabbit ears and other antennas that brought in over-the-air broadcasts.

During the 1988 writers strike, TV viewers sick of watching reruns found themselves turning to Fox's raunchy new sitcom "Married With Children." The budding Fox network was struggling and, like its bigger rivals, had resorted to rerunning episodes when viewers discovered henpecked shoe salesman Al Bundy and his Spandex-clad wife, Peg. Their quirky appeal helped brand the "fourth" network as an iconoclast, able to take on ABC, CBS and NBC.

A Super Bowl halftime show is an odd bird. For starters, the audience comes for football, not for song and dance. The costly extravaganza lasts only 11 minutes, with only five minutes before and after to set up and tear down. And it must captivate the year's biggest U.S. TV audience--an estimated 130 million viewers--not to mention the 75,000 fans in the stadium.

David Letterman has milked plenty of sex scandals for laughs. But it remains to be seen whether the CBS comic's admission Thursday that he had sexual liaisons with female employees while he was involved with his now-wife, the mother of his 5-year-old son, will fade away with a few late-night punch lines. Although Letterman focused on his role as the victim of a would-be extortionist who demanded $2 million to keep the details of his affairs secret, the episode sparked impassioned discussion Friday about sex in the workplace and hypocrisy.

Melanie Oudin drew tennis fans to television. Wednesday's ESPN2 coverage of the U.S. Open quarterfinal match between the unseeded 17-year-old from Georgia and ninth-seeded Danish teenager Caroline Wozniacki plus five-time defending champion Roger Federer's four-set win over Robin Soderling was the most-watched tennis telecast in ESPN2's history. Oudin captivated serious and casual tennis fans with her unlikely romp through a draw in which she had to beat four higher-ranked Russians.