‘Big Bang Theory’ Ratings Top ‘Community’ By 364 Percent
CBS’s Big Bang Theory is still the biggest comedy on primetime television. Every week ratings data are gathered from Nielsen, which is a measurement of what people are watching and when they’re watching it. Although it’s an estimation since not everyone is a Nielsen household, these are the ratings that count as far as the life of a television show goes.
Fortunately for the CBS comedy it has absolutely nothing to worry about. For this week the ratings are in and it’s said that the Big Bang Theory killed their competition the NBC sitcom Community.
Although the Big Bang Theory saw an 11 percent drop in their overall ratings, they’re still enjoying fantastic numbers as they managed to pull in 18.9 million viewers with a 5.1 rating among adults 18-49. Its competitor, failing sitcom Community is pulling in 3 million viewers with a 1.1 rating. This means that the Big Bang Theory scored a rating that’s 364 percent higher than Community.
In addition to going up against Big Bang Theory, Community also had to deal with American Idol. Despite the FOX reality show not pulling in the numbers it used to gather in the ratings, it’s still a huge player in the game overall. In total American Idol pulled in 11.2 viewers.
Back in August, the show’s creator Chuck Lorre opened up to the Hollywood Reporter about the huge success of the Big Bang Theory.
“We never imagined when we started that we’d have anything like what’s happening; the last couple years have been beyond our wildest dreams.”
At the time the show had just scored eight Emmy nominations, including the coveted nomination for Best Comedy. Of all the critical praise, Lorre said:
“You never imagine that you can reach that many people who care about the show so deeply. We all feel as a group we’re doing our best work now; we’ve grown up and the show has matured, and we’re doing a much better job of putting on the show every week.”
As far as taking the Big Bang Theory’s success in stride, Lorre seems to really know what he’s talking about, and isn’t buying into the idea that his productions are untouchable.
“The relationship with the audience today on television is so fragile — there are so many things to watch. So for us to have a relationship with the audience that has some kind of sustained relationship over time, we have to make a great show every week.”
In addition to heading up the Big Bang Theory, Chuck Lorre practically owns CBS’ comedy block as he is behind successful shows like Two and Half Men, and Mom.
