Deadline this week is reporting that NBC is projected to fall to fifth place among adults ages 18 to 49 after a dismal sweeps showing.
While CBS raked in ratings for established shows such as The Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men, as well as the its coverage of this year’s Super Bowl. Fox continued to ride the success of American Idol, but NBC averaged only a 1.2 rating in the key adult demographic from January 31 to February 19. As Deadline points out, that’s lower than the ratings Spanish-lauguage station Univision has seen over the same period.
New NBC shows such as Do No Harm and 1600 Penn have been ratings failures. The only shows NBC seems to have that garner even moderate ratings are The Biggest Loser and The Office.
Networks have the money and exposure to provide free TV entertainment to millions of Americans, but as the country becomes more connected those same networks are becoming less relevant. The NBC Facebook page, for example, has only around 400,000 “Likes,” while Netflix has over 3.7 million. Now that Netflix has demonstrated through House of Cards that it can provide popular premium TV programming without getting it from other content producers, networks should be scrambling to make themselves more relevant – and available – online.