Michael Desmond/FOXMen are from Skynet. Women are from the Constance Billard School for Girls.
That's one way to read last night's inaugural matchup of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Gossip Girl.
Fox's sci-fi-wired Terminator scored more young men, ages 18-34, than any show in the 8-9 p.m. time slot, Nielsen Media Research estimates said. The CW's fashionable Gossip Girl ruled with young women.
But when it came to wooing the opposite target-audience sex, both shows largely struck out.
Terminator finished next-to-last in the hour with young women. Among young men, Gossip Girl did better, ranking-wise, but still finished a distant second.
Overall, Gossip Girl averaged an estimated 3.2 million viewers, on par with last week's premiere. The second-season opener of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles averaged 6.3 million, down 2 million from its last new episode, which aired in March.
At least Terminator can rest easy that Gossip Girl probably didn't steal its audience.
Elsewhere, here are the broadcast and cable ratings highlights for the TV week ended Sunday. (Last night's numbers will be reflected in next week's rankings.)
- Oddly enough, the Republican National Convention energized Fox News' base. The network averaged 138 percent more viewers for the final hour of the convention, Tuesday-Thursday, than it did over the same period for the Democratic convention.
- Fox News' coverage of the speeches by John McCain (9.2 million) and Sarah Palin (9 million) outdrew everything on cable, and all but 10 shows on free TV.
- Oddly enough, the Republicans didn't play as well on MSNBC, which averaged 20 percent fewer viewers (2.5 million versus 3 million) over the convention's last three nights.
- No Britney Spears meltdown, no problem. Sunday's MTV Video Music Awards (8.4 million), which featured an apparently fit Spears, reached its biggest audience in four years, and was up nearly 20 percent over last year's show, which featured an apparently sleepwalking Spears.
- While John McCain's Republican convention speech might have gotten a boost by airing right after last Thursday's NFL opener, the NFL opener might have taken a hit by airing opposite the Republican convention (although not the speech). How else to explain a whopping 24 percent drop in viewers from last season's NBC-aired kickoff game (17.8 million) to this season's (13.5 million)?
- Well, here's one possible explanation: Everybody was waiting for Sunday's game (18.3 million), which was up a tick from last year's inaugural Sunday Night Football broadcast (18.2 million).
- NBC's Deal or No Deal (11 million) was TV's top non-football show. Still, the show wasn't any bigger than the previous week, when it didn't give away $1 million.
- Bones' third-season opener (9.7 million) beefed up by 1.3 million viewers over the Fox show's second-season premiere.
- Fox's Prison Break (6.5 million) ran in the opposite direction, down 1 million viewers from its third-season opener to its fourth.
- 90210's big premiere—relatively speaking, as it finished in 60th place in the broadcast rankings—saved the CW from being led in the standings by the MyNetworkTV-bound Friday Night Smackdown (4.2 million).
- A middling-performing The Secret Life of the American Teenager (3.6 million) on ABC Family Channel still outdrew the premiering Gossip Girl (3.4 million) on the CW.
- TNT scored cable's top two scripted shows, The Closer (8.1 million) and Raising the Bar (7.7 million).
- MTV's The Hills (3.3 million) edged Bravo's Project Runway (3.26 million) as the most-watched cable reality show.
Overall, football was a big deal for NBC, which topped the broadcast network competition in total viewers (9.2 million) and 18-to-49-year-olds (4.1 million).
In cable, the Republicans were even bigger deals than usual for Fox News, which ran away with the prime-time crown, averaging 4.2 million viewers.
Here's a look at the 10 most watched broadcast network prime-time shows for the week ended Sunday, according to Nielsen Media Research:
- Sunday Night Football (Chicago at Indianapolis), NBC, 18.4 million
- NFL Thursday Special (Washington at New York Giants), NBC, 13.5 million
- Sunday Night Football Pre-Kick, NBC, 13.3 million
- Fox NFL Sunday Postgame, Fox, 12.9 million
- Deal or No Deal (Monday), NBC, 11 million
- America's Got Talent (Tuesday), NBC, 10.8 million
- America's Got Talent (Wednesday), NBC, 10.2 million
- 60 Minutes, CBS, 10.1 million
- Football Night in America (Part 3), NBC, 10 million
- Bones, Fox, 9.7 million