GSN number-palooza returns

Been a while since I did a full-blown number crunch on a bunch of GSN ratings. But you can't keep an actuary away from numbers for very long.

Especially when Douglas dumps a whole week (well, Monday through Friday) in one blog post. The results for October 3-7 started out horrendous and eventually turned semi-respectable for our little game show network. So the story had kind of a happy ending. The prime time/total day viewership averages (numbers in thousands of viewers)...

October 3 176/182
October 4 272/216
October 5 323/227
October 6 383/227
October 7 340/227

No, I didn't rig those total day numbers. The last three days just turned out identical. GSN is up against the new season on the broadcast nets, and TBS was sopping up a lot of cable viewers in this week for the extended baseball playoffs.

But sports are generally no threat to GSN's old-skewing, female-skewing audience. In fact, TBS's audiences for the playoffs grew as the week went on, but GSN's numbers also rose. So I really doubt that baseball (or football, for that matter) affected GSN's ratings much. Monday was just a really, really bad day.

The top ten for the week had a nostalgic look, like when a certain suitcase-opening show was new on the network (again, numbers in thousands of viewers)...

Oct 6 9:00PM Deal or No Deal 414
Oct 7 10:30PM Family Feud (O’Hurley) 396
Oct 6 8:00PM Deal or No Deal 395
Oct 5 9:00PM Deal or No Deal 364
Oct 6 10:30PM Family Feud (O’Hurley) 356
Oct 7 9:00PM Deal or No Deal 345
Oct 5 10:00PM Family Feud (Karn) 344
Oct 6 6:30PM Baggage 341
Oct 4 6:30PM Baggage 331
Oct 7 10:00PM Family Feud (Karn) 330

Even after endless rerun cycles, Howie and friends have a little juice left. Otherwise, it was no surprise to see old warriors Karn, O'Hurley and Springer.

Haven't done this before, but let's look at the bottom ten for the week. Mostly it was bits and pieces from the fringes of the schedule. But there was one noticeable exception...

Oct 4 2:00AM $25,000 Pyramid 105
Oct 5 12:00AM Drew Carey’s Improv-a-Ganza 105
Oct 3 2:30AM $100,000 Pyramid 102
Oct 6 8:00AM Match Game 101
Oct 3 11:30PM Baggage 100
Oct 5 8:00AM Match Game 87
Oct 6 12:00AM Drew Carey’s Improv-a-Ganza 86
Oct 4 8:00AM Match Game 75
Oct 3 12:00AM Drew Carey’s Improv-a-Ganza 53
Oct 3 8:00AM Match Game 30

In case the network hasn't noticed, nobody is watching the now-cancelled improvisers.