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Olympics gold-medal winner Michael Phelps and an appearance by Tina Fey helped bring Saturday Night Live to its best premiere in seven years, and its best overall audience since 2002.
Saturday’s premiere, hosted by Phelps, averaged a 7.4 rating and 18 share, according to Nielsen (via Media Life), its best since it pulled a 7.6 for its premiere on Sept. 29, 2001. The premiere was also up 64 percent over last season’s opener, which averaged a 4.5/11.
Phelps is also scheduled to appear in a cameo later this season on HBO’s Entourage.
Phelps certainly pulled in viewers, but it is likely that Tina Fey, who appeared playing Republican vice presidential hopeful Sarah Palin, was also a draw. In fact, anything to do with Palin has been a big ratings boon for broadcasters this election season. When Palin appeared on ABC’s World News for an interview with Charles Gibson, the show pulled its best ratings since February, with a 2.5 rating and 10 share among the 25-54 demo, writes MediaPost.
CBS Radio and Yahoo, two of the largest online radio providers, are combining their online radio stations, beginning early next year.
CBS Radio’s 150 stations and LaunchCast’s 150 online stations will be integrated into Yahoo’s music site, powered by CBS…
Cox Enterprises, Inc. announced today that the company is bringing together its three media units - Cox Newspapers, Cox Television and Cox Radio - under a new organization named Cox Media Group, Inc., effective January 2009. The subsidiary will be headquartered…
Target is one of the first brands to create an iPhone application. The Target “gift globe” allows iPhone users to shake their phones to launch a snow-fall effect.
When the snow clears, a gift idea from Target is revealed. Users…
ABC is set to launch a slew of new series in a midseason shuffle. Primetime: What Would You Do? returns Tuesday, Jan. 9, in the 10pm time slot. The show is a hidden camera experiment in which actors stage scenarios…
Only 28% of the audience of an average news program, website or magazine gets valuable information about products and services advertised there, making news venues less effective at conveying ad messages than all forms of media combined (see chart), according…
Effective immediately, any telemarketing call that delivers a prerecorded message must include a quick and easy way to opt-out of receiving future calls. The opt-out must work both for consumers who answer these calls in person and for those whose…
