tv ratings

For Watson, it was elementary. IBM's mighty supercomputer has landed the title of new Jeopardy! champ. No matter how hard Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings -- the two human contestants pitted against the machine -- tried, they were just no match for the brainy Watson.

Super Bowl XLV, which aired on Fox on Sunday, attracted 111 million viewers, making it the most-watched television program of all time, Nielsen said Monday.

Hulu reached an agreement with Viacom that will once again allow the video site to air episodes of Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show" and Stephen Colbert's "The Colbert Report," 11 months after the shows were pulled from the site.

So far, at least, Piers Morgan shows no signs of being CNN's next big star. His ratings have declined steadily, falling below that of his predecessor, Larry King, in his first two weeks on the air. But it may be too early to make a fair comparison.

Oprah Winfrey's new cable network is commanding some of the highest ad prices on cable, and it justified those rates with its heavily watched debut. Now, OWN will have to prove it can maintain its viewership levels throughout the year.

Oprah Winfrey's cable TV network drew more than 1 million viewers on its debut over the weekend. The new channel, Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN), launched at noon on New Year's Day, The Wall Street Journal said. It replaced Discovery Health in about 80 million homes. The channel is a joint venture...

Here's a nice surprise for television advertisers: Digital video recorders are actually increasing, not decreasing, the number of viewers who are watching the commercials. Nearly half of the DVR owners in the critical 18- to 49-year-old age group watch the commercials, which boosts ratings, Nielsen says.

Bristol Palin helped boost the viewership for "Dancing with the Stars" when she made it to the final round, while her mother's show, "Sarah Palin's Alaska" got half a million more viewers in the same week.

It's not just that his new talk show Conan is attracting a huge audience -- more than 4.1 million for its first night -- but they're young as well. And advertisers are willing to pay a premium to reach these viewers because they're so difficult to find.

Networks broadcasting midterm election results attracted 11% more viewers than they did during the 2006 elections, and about a third more than the 2002 midterms, indicating the heightened level political interest among Americans concerned about House and Senate races, Nielsen reported Friday.