Thursday, April 27, 2023

Weekly Nielsen Ratings: 1978-79 TV Season (UPDATED)

Below are the full weekly primetime Nielsen ratings results for the 1978-79 television season. Data comes from the Nielsen pocketpieces which were very graciously transcribed by an anonymous contributor. There are tabs available for each of the season's 52 weeks with the Household rating, share, and impressions available for nearly every primetime program. There are 7 incomplete weeks of the season where I am missing the associated pocketpiece, so the data provided comes from a variety of sources including Newspaper lists, and trade publication articles. In those weeks, about half of the ratings data is available. Full pocketpieces have been recovered and all weeks have complete data.

This article previously only consisted of Newspaper scans to tell the story of this season's ratings, and those scans are still provided at the bottom of this article in case people want to see them. In some cases, the data in the Newspapers will slightly differ from the ratings in the pocketpiece  because the newspaper data is based off of Fast National data while the pocketpieces are from finalized data. The pocketpiece data should be considered more accurate and the raw scans of them are all available under the "Pocketpiece" tab.



Newspaper scans:
Only the top 10 results are available for the first seven weeks of the season (from the Raleigh News and Observer), but beginning with the w/e Nov. 5, 1978 there are the top 15 results available (from from The New York Times). Top 20 results are available starting with the w/e Mar. 25, 1979 (from Newsday) and are provided through the end of the season, save for 2 weeks (May 6, 1979 & Sept. 2, 1979) where only the top 15 is available.

Additionally, the second document includes full rankings (without ratings) from The Fort Worth Star-Telegram and these are available for nearly every week of the proper season (not the summer) except for the following weeks: w/e Dec. 17, 1978, Dec. 24, 1978 (top 20 and bottom 10 are provided in the "ratings" document), Dec. 31, 1978, January 14, 1979 (top 20 and bottom 5), and January 21, 1979 (top 20 and bottom 10). The final week of full rankings is the week ending April 15, 1979.

ARCHIVED WEEKS (ratings - all weeks)

ARCHIVED WEEKS (full rankings - thru April 15, 1979)

Source: Nielsen Media Research via Newsday, The New York Times, The Raleigh News & Observer, and The Fort Worth Star-Telegram

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