ABC's Broadcast of CMA's Up Year-to-Year in Key Demos

"The 48th Annual CMA Awards" (8:00-11:00 p.m. - 16.1 million and 4.5/14 in AD18-49):
With its broadcast of "The 48th Annual CMA Awards," ABC towered over Wednesday night, ranking No. 1 in each half-hour and beating 2nd-place CBS by 7.4 million viewers (16.1 million vs. 8.7 million) and 125% in Adults 18-49 (4.5/14 vs. 2.0/6) - ABC's Adult 18-49 winning margin was up year to year (from a 114% advantage last year). In fact the wide-appealing COUNTRY MUSIC AWARDS show swept the evening, winning in Total Viewers, all key Adult demos (AD18-34/AD18-49/AD25-54), Teens 12-17 and Kids 2-11. It was ABC's 2nd consecutive year to win the opening Wednesday of the November Sweep.

In viewers and young adults, the Net marked its strongest performance on any night with entertainment programming in 8 months - since the "Academy Awards" on 3/2/14.

"The CMA Awards" was on par with its year-ago telecast in viewers and young adults (16.8 million and 4.7/13 on 11/06/13) and was up for the 2nd year in Teens 12-17 (+4%) and Kids 2-11 (+19%) to its best numbers since 2011.

ABC's "CMA Awards" topped CBS' April telecast of the "ACM Awards" by strong margins (14.2 million and 3.3/9 on 4/6/14) in Total Viewers (+13%) and Adults 18-49 (+36%).

"The 48th Annual CMA Awards" was Wednesday's most-social broadcast with 1,043,707 tweets.

A note about increasing DVR penetration and year-to-year rating comparisons: Year-to-year rating comparisons based on the Live + Same Day data stream are distorted by the level of DVR penetration in the Nielsen sample, which has jumped up to 49% currently, from 48% at the same point in 2013. More viewers are watching shows on their own timetables, which may not be reflected in the overnight next day numbers. The only truly valid year-to-year comparison would be one based on the Live + 7 Day metric, once those stats are released by Nielsen.

Source: The Nielsen Company, Fast Affiliate Live + Same Day Ratings for 11/05/14. Nielsen Socialguide for 11/5/14/14, Total Tweets +/- 3hrs during telecast.

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