Nielsen Bottom 10, October 16th-22nd, 1972

Week 6 of the 1972-1973 season started on Monday, October 16th, 1972 and ended on Sunday, October 22nd, 1972. The highest-rated program was a World Series game (Wednesday) on NBC with a 33.6/49 Nielsen rating/share. Here are the 10 lowest-rated programs:

## Program Network Rating
56 NCAA Football [Saturday] ABC 12.1/22
57 Julie Andrews ABC   9.8/15
58 “Smithsonian Adventure” CBS   9.7/18
59 CBS Reports–Friday CBS   9.4/15
60 Pol.–McGovern–Friday ABC   8.9/18
61 Alias Smith & Jones ABC   8.7/15
62 Political–Nixon–Friday NBC   8.1/16
63 NCAA Post Game [Friday] ABC   7.3/18
64 Democrats for Nixon–Friday ABC   6.5/13
65 NBC White Paper NBC   5.8/11

For the record, program titles are written exactly the way they were published in 1972.

If you’re curious, ABC and NBC aired the same half-hour paid political program (Democrats for Nixon) from 7:30-8PM ET on Friday, October 20th. From 10:30PM-11PM ET that night, ABC aired a half-hour political program featuring Senator George McGovern.

Sources:

“NBC Tops Ratings With World Series.” Los Angeles Times. 2 Nov. 1972: D30.
“World Series ups NBC batting average.” Broadcasting. 6 Nov. 1972: 44.


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3 Replies to “Nielsen Bottom 10, October 16th-22nd, 1972”

  1. Hard to believe there were Democrats for Nixon. Of course, I still find it hard to believe there are still Blacks for Trump.

    1. Ignore California and New York, and going by the election map you find most of America and most Americans supported Trump. Even in California and New York about a third of the voters voted for Trump. However most of the media comes from NY and California so there’s a skew to how he’s perceived. This is also why they failed to predict his win.

      Democrats for Nixon was likely political propaganda show. Although you do have to remember that how people saw Nixon at the time was different than how many see him today. He appeared on Laugh-In after all. Most of the Nixon hate was generated well after Nixon left office.

      1. This really isn’t a political forum, but I do have to address your point on Nixon bashing. I was a teenager during the Watergate era and I remember that both the media and the general public hated Nixon as much if not more than Trump in 2017. The only show that didn’t really bash him was Laugh-In and that was because both Rowan and Martin were Republicans who even appeared at Nixon’s second inaugural ball. They even got George Schlatter blackballed because he was a Democrat. Not only that, but many Republican and even some Democratic historians say Nixon was actually an unappreciated president. Therefore, your second paragraph argument is totally WRONG!! I won’t address your first paragraph as this is not the proper forum to address current politics.

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