I had a couple of posts recently, one on CBS’ NCIS, and one on the micro-budgeted Paranormal Activity, that noted how well each were doing.
The NCIS piece (which drew a level of interest that surprised me a bit) mentioned the show atypically drew better ratings the older it got. However, I was unaware of how popular the show actually is. Now, in something like it’s 7th or 8th season, the program has vaulted to being the number one rated show on TV.
Last week, for instance, it was number one, and not by a little. NCIS drew 20,702,000 viewers, far ahead of the number two show that week, Dancing with the Stars, which drew 16,350,000. NCIS is so popular that it allowed the so-far quite lame NCIS Los Angeles the number three show, with 16,310,000, which nearly put it in a tie for second place. Four place was CBS’ former powerhouse CSI, which garnered 14,897,000 viewers.
In other words, NCIS drew over 33% more viewers than CSI. Helpfully for CBS, NCIS even wins its timeslot with the 18-35 demographic. Again, the most amazing thing about NCIS is that it’s drawn higher ratings every year it’s been around, in defiance of just about every rule of TV ratings we know. I’m not sure any other show ever has done this over such a sustained period of time.
Meanwhile, I noted that in its first weekend Paranormal Activity made about 7.1 million on 160 screens, for an astounding 42,000 per screen average, or there’s about. Indeed, when the final figures came in, it turned out that the actual figures were 7.9 million, and over 49,000 per screen. (In other words, the audience drop-off for Sunday was far less than anticipated.)
To put this in context, that means that just about every theater it played, assuming they have an average of 500 seats and tickets cost an average of $10 a pop, sold roughly 5000 tickets for the film in three days, or ten complete sell-outs of those five hundred seats. That’s very rough guestimating, but it gives you an idea of how well it did.
The film opened wider this weekend, up to 700 screens (Saw VI will open on 3,000 screens next weekend). Unsurprisingly, the screen average fell a lot, but remained at a very high $26,500 for the weekend, and garnered the film–which again, was shot for a reported eleven thousand dollars–another $20 million. Not a bad return on investment there. Assuming it can hold its own against Saw next weekend, it’s possible the film will make upwards of $75 million by the time all is said and done. And then there’s home video. Pretty sweet.
