"The Amazing Race 14" episode two is now confirmed to have held its key demo audience steady despite competition from the Academy Awards. TAR14 scored a 2.6 same day Nielsen rating in the key 18-49 age group, dead even with the previous week's premiere that was itself hampered by the Presidents' Day holiday.
While a 2.6 demo mark is generally nothing to celebrate, the fact that it scored the mark despite having virtually no support from the rest of the CBS Sunday night lineup has to be encouraging. The next highest rated CBS show that night among key viewers was "60 Minutes" with only a 1.6 demo rating. To improve off of that lead-in against such long odds speaks well to the continued hardcore following for TAR.
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Where TAR14 did suffer an additional blow was with the overall audience level, down to 7.8 millions due no doubt to older viewers drifting away to watch the Academy broadcast. To be quite honest, I'm at a bit of loss as to what these numbers mean in terms of the popularity of the show. We really need to get a clean set of ratings next Sunday without outside interference from holidays or monster event shows.
If "Amazing Race" rises back to more encouraging numbers next Sunday under normal circumstances, we can safely classify the first two weeks of mediocre marks as just being a result of unfair circumstances. On the other hand, no improvement from these first two weeks would prove more worrisome. Let's just hope that casual fans drawn away early on will be willing to jump back in for week three.
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| EST | Series | Viewers
(millions) | Rating
(18-49) |
|---|
| 7 p.m. | 60 Minutes | 9.2 | 1.6 |
|---|
| 8 p.m. | The Amazing Race 14 | 7.8 | 2.6 |
|---|
| 9 p.m. | Cold Case (repeat) | 6.9 | 1.6 |
|---|
| 10 p.m. | The Unit (repeat) | 5.5 | 1.2 |
|---|
| CBS weekly average | 10.2 | 2.5 |
|---|
| Episode | Viewers
(millions) | Rating
(18-49) | Overrun |
|---|
| TAR 14.1 | 9.2 | 2.6 | none |
|---|
| TAR 14.2 | 7.8 | 2.6 | none |
|---|
____________________________Labels: cbs, ratings, tar 14.2, the amazing race, the amazing race 14
