Viewers

It is a loud voice beaming out of the tiny Middle Eastern peninsula country of Qatar in the Persian Gulf. Since its inception in 1996, it has been raising eyebrows in the Middle East and elsewhere for its provocative approach to news and analysis. After Sept. 11, the Al-Jazeera satellite channel, the first 24-hour all-news network in the Arab world, won international notice for its exclusive footage from Afghanistan and its broadcast of a series of taped speeches from al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

The decision wasn't in a league with the infamous one NBC made in 1968 to cut away from the ending of an incredible AFC football game to show a rerun of the film "Heidi," but some Baltimore area viewers were feeling a "Heidi Bowl" kind of pain Sunday night when WJZ (Channel 13) left a extra inning Orioles game to carry the top-rated newsmagazine "60 Minutes. " "Epic" might be too strong a word for what was going on in Boston, but it was pretty great. The Orioles, after winning a 13-inning game Friday against the Red Sox and a regular 9-inning game Saturday, were locked in a duel with the Sox that had depleted both bull pens.

E very so often in reporting on the media, a fact comes along that is so impressive it warrants a second look. Last week, there were three facts like that. And most remarkably, they all seemed to be pointing to the same conclusion: TV continues to be the principal storyteller in American life, despite more than a decade of pundits insisting that the medium was one step away from the boneyard. The first number that raised some eyebrows came when Nielsen announced that last Sunday's Super Bowl was the most-watched show in television history.

Update: Mirlande Wilson told WRC-TV  in Washington Thursday that she has lost her ticket . If you've been following the bizarre story about the Baltimore woman who claims she may have won a piece of the Mega Millions record-breaking $656 million jackpot, you may have noticed the peculiar hat Mirlande Wilson wore to her news conference this week -- the one with “Sweet Swine Pork Rinds” stitched across the front. After Wilson's picture was broadcast by The Baltimore Sun and news organizations across the country, a reader from Chicago wrote in to suggest that Wilson and her cap were part of a political stunt designed to smear Mitt Romney, the GOP frontrunner for president.

T here are more reasons to watch the Golden Globe Awards show tonight than at any time in its history. The biggest one is that for the first time the live telecast will have a host, and he's an unpredictable one who could create some genuine, unrehearsed fun: Ricky Gervais. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has also given more control to Dick Clark Productions with the mandate to create a television event worthy of prime time - rather than an awards dinner geared to a hotel ballroom in Beverly Hills filled with celebrities.

The November sweeps ratings period is one of the first major milestones of the TV season. Usually, network and station executives can't talk enough about what they have to offer during the month in hopes of attracting viewers. Unless, that is, one of the things you have is "The Jay Leno Show" airing at 10 p.m. thanks to a risky move made by NBC in hopes of cutting costs this fall. If you are an NBC affiliate manager such as Jordan Wertlieb at WBAL-TV in Baltimore, you are more interested in talking about December when the other networks will mostly be in reruns.

WJZ -TV enjoyed one of its most successful ratings books ever in January winning all competitive weekday news time periods with viewers 25 to 54 years of age, the demographic on which most TV news ad sales are made. WJZ also won in total viewers in those time periods. The CBS-owned station was Baltimore's leader at 5 and 6 a.m. in the locally-produced newscasts that precede network morning shows. WJZ was also number one at noon, 5, 6 and 11 p.m. The last time that happened was in 2008, when WBAL, WJZ's long-time rival, topped all newscasts.

Jeff Sagansky, CBS' Entertainment president, is rather delighted when he thinks about what the competition is up to these days -- they're going after young viewers."

Three years after surpassing CNN as the top-rated cable news channel, Fox News continues to enjoy growing viewership. Fox had an average prime-time audience of 1.5 million people in the second quarter of 2005 - a 9 percent gain over the same period last year. In June, the network posted its best ratings of the year, attracting an average prime-time audience of more than 1.7 million. CNN dropped 13 percent for the quarter, pulling an average 721,000 viewers in prime time. CNN Headline News grew, expanding its average prime-time audience for the quarter to 322,000 - a 63 percent increase over the same period last year.

The following editorial appeared in the Chicago Tribune Nov. 24: IN THE battle of the networks to compete with cable TV's edgy and uncensored fare, a recent special on ABC scored unexpected attention - from the government. The Victoria's Secret Fashion Show opened more than a few eyelids when its televised lingerie exhibition uncovered body areas seldom seen on network TV. It also prompted about 600 telephone calls and e-mails to the Federal Communications Commission, according to Commissioner Michael Copps.

(UPDATES with final figures and total tune-in through the telecast.) The CBS telecast of the 54th Grammy Awards Sunday was seen by an average audience of 39.91 million viewers, according to Nielsen ratrings released by the network. That's the second largest Grammy average audience in history and the largest audience for the music awards show since 1984. In 1984, TV was on another planet in a pre-fragmented media galaxy. In today's media world, the audience the Grammys drew is huge.

I was going to be nice and NOT write about the NBC newsmagazine "Rock Center" moving to 9 p.m. tonight after a failed run at 10 Mondays with Brian Williams at the helm. But then, NBC News sent out a press release calling special correspondent Chelsea Clinton and the rest of the newsmagazine team "the Cooperstown of NBC News. " Remember the quote about Clinton having "prepared all her life" for this job? More on that in a second. How failed has this Brian Williams ego trip been so far?

WJZ -TV enjoyed one of its most successful ratings books ever in January winning all competitive weekday news time periods with viewers 25 to 54 years of age, the demographic on which most TV news ad sales are made. WJZ also won in total viewers in those time periods. The CBS-owned station was Baltimore's leader at 5 and 6 a.m. in the locally-produced newscasts that precede network morning shows. WJZ was also number one at noon, 5, 6 and 11 p.m. The last time that happened was in 2008, when WBAL, WJZ's long-time rival, topped all newscasts.

The Ravens-Patriots and Giants-49ers championship games Sunday drew the largest audiences of any shows on television since the Super Bowl, according to Nielsen data released by the NFL. Sunday's games also made for the most watched championship Sunday in three decades. The Ravens loss to the Patriots was seen by 48.7 million viewers, while the Giants victory over the 49ers drew 57.6 million. But the latter was in prime time and went into overtime, which makes a big difference.

An audience of 849,000 area viewers tuned into WJZ-TV Sunday to see the Baltimore Ravens beat the Houston Texans in the divisional playoff game, station managment said Monday. That is 3,000 viewers more than the audience that saw the the Ravens and Pittsburgh Steelers in a regular season game on Nov. 6 in prime time on WBAL, Baltimore's NBC affiliate. But that game, which the Ravens won 23-20, was in Pittsbugh. And that means most of the 70,000 people who were at M&T Stadium Sunday were at home in front of TV's in the Baltimore area for the Steelers game.

High school carpentry courses have given Paul "Pasha" Lippincott the skills to build a deck and a fence at his Towson home and the confidence to move ahead with a floor-to-ceiling renovation of the family kitchen. While completing his senior year and planning to pursue construction management in college, he also has gathered enough know-how and aplomb to demonstrate basic do-it-yourself tasks on BCPS-TV. The senior at George Washington Carver Center for Arts and Technology just taped a segment for "So Easy a Kid Can Do It," a series that debuted Monday on the county schools' cable television channel.

The decision to move the Academy Awards up one month so that the telecast would air in the February sweeps ratings period turned out to be a good one for ABC. Sunday night's Oscar show drew an estimated audience of 43.5 million viewers, up 31 percent from the telecast's all-time low of 33.1 million last year. Those ratings, based on preliminary overnight figures released yesterday by Nielsen Media Research, are the highest since the Oscar telecast of 2000 that was viewed by 46.3 million.

Miss USA is stunning, alluring, yet apparently not all that interesting. The ratings for the pageant held in Baltimore last Friday for the second consecutive year and aired on NBC were down from last year with an estimated 7.7 million viewers nationally and a 5.1 household rating, according to Nielsen Media Research. Last year, it was a slightly higher at 8.1 million and a 5.5 household rating. The 7.7 million figure is close to the pageant's low point of 7.6 million which it drew in 2002 - a rating that led CBS to drop the show.

Andy Rooney, whose CBS career spans the entire post-war history of network news, died Friday as a result of complications following minor surgery, the network announced. A mainstay of Sunday night viewing for millions of Americans, the 92-year-old Rooney only stepped down from his regular commentary post on "60 Minutes" last month. Here's the release from CBS News: Andy Rooney, the 60 MINUTES commentator known to generations for his wry, humorous and contentious television essays - a unique genre he is credited with inventing - died last night (4)

This year, I gave up reporting cable news ratings every month. The numbers and spin tell us about the horse race to some extent. But what they mainly do is distract us from the important moral and cultural stories of the way these channels are warping our view of the world with their ideological and show biz priorities rather than any genuine commitment to news and information. But there are ratings, and then, there are ratings. And the October numbers that just came out offer a sobering snapshot of just how badly CNN's misadventures in programming are going -- even as they cheapen their news brand identity to try and find larger audiences.