‘Star Wars’ a force for Spike
April 15, 2008
The Force was again with Spike TV over the weekend.
Following last weekend’s strong numbers for the three “Star Wars” prequels, Spike scored again with Episodes 4-6 of the saga. Sunday’s “Star Wars: Episode VI — Return of the Jedi” (8-11 p.m.) performed the best with 4.1 million total viewers, nearly matching the numbers for the previous weekend’s “Episode III — Revenge of the Sith” (4.2 million), according to Nielsen Media Research.
On Friday, “Episode IV — A New Hope” averaged 2.5 million viewers from 8-11 p.m., while “Episode V — The Empire Strikes Back” brought in 3.5 million from 8-11 p.m. Saturday.
Overall, the premieres of the six movies averaged 3.4 million viewers, with a 62% male audience.
Meanwhile, a “SpongeBob SquarePants” special on Nickelodeon averaged 6.1 million viewers at 8 p.m. Friday, making it basic cable’s most-watched program for the week ending April 13. The half-hour special, “Pest of the West,” also ranked No. 1 across all of broadcast and cable among the younger demos, including kids 2-11 (3.5 million), kids 6-11 (2.4 million) and tweens 9-14 (1.6 million).
Leading up to the special, a dedicated “Pest of the West” page online garnered more than 1.5 million visits.
At VH1, the 90-minute “Rock of Love 2″ finale, which found Bret Michaels choosing Ambre(cq) as his love match, averaged 5 million total viewers at 9 p.m. Sunday. “Rock,” the fourth-highest-rated telecast in VH1 history, also pulled in 3.9 million in the adults 18-49 demo.
“Rock” also gave VH1.com its most-trafficked day on Monday as more than 1 million unique visitors came to the site for show-related content. In addition, the record for one-day video streams for a single franchise also was broken as 1.2 million “Rock” video streams were logged in the 24 hours following finale.
Overall, the second season averaged 2.7 million viewers per episode. A reunion special airs at 9 p.m. Sunday.
