Friday 12/16/11 - Univision Wins Sixth Consecutive Friday, Beating The Discovery Channel

For the sixth consecutive week, Univision averaged the largest A18-49 audience on Friday, as its lineup of Familia con Suerte (1.41 A18-49 Live Rating), Fuerza del Destino (1.66) and Rosa de Guadalupe (1.15) placed first across the TV landscape, despite all three programs declining from last week's viewing benchmarks.

The latest episodes of Gold Rush (1.63) and Flying Wild Alaska (0.74) fueled The Discovery Channel to the second largest overall A18-49 viewership of the evening, and largest cable audience, as both programs reported significant improvement over their previous original airings, increasing 21% and 54%, respectively, from last week.

One of the only networks to schedule original programming on Friday, ABC reported the biggest A18-49 viewership among English-speaking broadcast networks. Recently announced that this will be the show's last season, back-to-back episodes of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition at 8pm (1.14) and 9pm (1.27) increased 19% and dropped 5%, respectively, compared to last week's viewership. At 10pm, the latest airing of 20/20 (0.82) declined significantly with A18-49 viewers from a week ago, ranking last in the hour.

Trailing ABC by 10%, NBC tied FOX for the second-highest A18-49 ratings among the English-speaking broadcast networks as its entire schedule reported lower viewership than last week. While its 8pm airing of Chuck (0.64) dropped 27% and 9pm episode of Grimm (1.11) declined 17%, the network's latest airing of Dateline (1.16) at 10pm reported a 21% smaller A18-49 audience.

Breaking from its regularly scheduled programming, FOX opened the evening with holiday specials, including Happiness is a Warm Blanket, Charlie Brown (0.94) at 8pm, followed by Ice Age: A Mammoth Christmas (1.09) at 9pm. An encore airing of The Simpsons (0.93) rounded out the evening at 9:30pm, with the network tying NBC for the night.

Over on CBS and The CW, repeats of their usual Friday night lineup took center stage, with the former airing A Gifted Man (0.72), CSI: NY (0.84) and Blue Bloods (0.99), and latter putting forth Nikita (0.30) and Supernatural (0.33), landing the networks fourth and fifth, respectively, among English-speaking A18-49 broadcast viewers.

Source: Nielsen, based on Live data