Entertainment Magazines Make Monster Moves Post Holiday

Review based on a national syndicated rating report for the week ending December 5, 2021.

Entertainment Tonight (2.0 live plus same day national Nielsen rating, up 25% from the week before) led a powerful pack of entertainment magazines in the post-Thanksgiving Holiday session ending December 5.

Access Hollywood (season high 0.8, up 14% in households and up 33% among W25-54), TMZ (0.7, up 17%) and Extra (season high 0.6, up 20% in households and up 50% among W25-54) also lit up the chart.

The improvement in the big magazines came despite a plethora of college and NFL football preemptions on December 2^nd and 3^rd. For example, Extra had to shrug off losing its primary run to Thursday Night Football in most of the country’s largest cities and Access Hollywood scored even though it was blown out by the “Christmas in Rockefeller Center” special on December 1.

Also making news was the soon-to-be-pulled chatfest Dr. Oz (0.6, unchanged), which began to hemorrhage ratings after it was blacked out in Pennsylvania and New York beginning December 1 due to its eponymous host, Mehmet Oz, announcing his run for the US Senate. The show, which was down 14% from last year at this time, was broken out of the ratings on December 2^nd and 3^rd due to low coverage.

Dr. Phil (1.8, up 20%) was the big winner in talk, taking the category lead for the fourth time in the past five weeks.

Judge Judy (4.7, down 2%) was one of several daytime programs negatively affected by preemptions on November 29^th and December 2^nd for coverage of the latest coronavirus variant, but still topped the court shows for the 1,315^th week in a row by a wide margin.

Hot Bench (1.4, down 7%) was the No. 2 courtroom, followed by People’s Court (0.8, unchanged) and Judge Mathis (0.6, unchanged).