Miss Universe

This week the 56th Miss Universe was crowned in Mexico City in the pageant’s eleventh year of ownership by Donald Trump. It got a lot of press – but was anyone watching?

I took a look at the Nielsen ratings to find out. It’s all in the numbers:

Nielsen Television Ratings report the percentage of all viewers watching a particular show. There are two key numbers: Ratings points and share. A single national ratings point represents 1%, or about 1.1 million households. Share is the percentage of TV sets in use that are tuned to that program. For example, a show receiving a 9.2/15 means that on average 9.2%, or 10.1 million households were tuned in at any given moment and 15% of all TVs in use at the time were tuned into this program.

OK, so who was watching what at 9 p.m.? The competition was Two and a Half Men and The King of Queens on CBS, the Ex-Wives Club on ABC, the second hour of On the Lot on FOX, and repeats of Girlfriends and The Game on The CW.

Despite it being its own Queen of Queens, Miss Universe came in third, barely squeaking past the Ex-Wives Club. I wonder how many previous Miss Universes are ex-wives? I could not find that information on the Miss Universe site. Donald, maybe you could help us with that. I know you have two ex-wives. Coming in at #1? Two and a Half Men, with 74% more viewers than Miss Universe. Put another way, given a choice, most people would rather watch two and a half men over 77 lovely ladies. There’s a lesson there somewhere I’m sure.