TOTAL TELEVISION
By Mike Hall

Published: November 28, 2004

CBS won the official ratings race during the first full week of the November sweeps, averaging 15 million viewers per prime-time hour, followed by NBC (11.3), ABC (10.4), Fox (7.3), WB (3.8) and UPN (3.7). But what about the 45 million or so other people, on average, who were watching television? Here's another way of looking at the ratings for that week: instead of ranking the broadcast networks, we've ranked the media conglomerates that own them - and nearly every other outlet on your TiVo grid. The easy winner, predictably, was Viacom, owner of CBS and UPN as well as the MTV cable networks. But other high finishers, like Time Warner and Liberty Media, may be names that television viewers don't normally think of while cruising channels. (For each company, we added up the average viewers for all of the networks and cable channels in which it has a controlling interest; joint ventures were divided evenly among the owners. Only networks whose numbers are made public by Nielsen Media Research, and which met the company's minimum reporting standards, were included.)

Viacom
29,762,000

Walt Disney Company
18,656,000

General Electric
17,750,000

Time Warner
12,120,000

News Corporation
10,752,000

Liberty Media
4,144,000

E. W. Scripps
1,705,000

Hearst
1,422,000

Cablevision
1,297,000

Channels included for each company (in order of viewers, highest to lowest):

Viacom: CBS, UPN, Nickelodeon, the N, Spike, MTV, Comedy Central, TV Land, BET, VH1, CMT, Noggin, Showtime, Nicktoons, the Movie Channel, MTV2.

Walt Disney Company: ABC, ESPN, Disney Channel, Lifetime,* A&E,* History,* ABC Family, ESPN2, Lifetime Movie,* SoapNet, Toon Disney, Biography* (*joint ventures with General Electric and Hearst).

General Electric: NBC, USA, Lifetime, A&E, Sci-Fi, History, Pax, Bravo, Lifetime Movie, MSNBC, CNBC, Biography.

Time Warner: WB, TNT, Cartoon, TBS, HBO, Court (joint venture with Liberty Media), CNN, Cinemax, Headline News, Turner South.

News Corporation: Fox, Fox News Channel, FX, Speed Channel, National Geographic Channel.

Liberty Media: Discovery, TLC, Animal Planet, Travel, Game Show, Starz, Encore, Discovery Health, BBC America.

E. W. Scripps: HGTV, Food Network.

Hearst: Lifetime, A&E, History, Lifetime Movie, Biography.

Cablevision: AMC, WE.

Others: Hallmark Cards (Hallmark Channel), 686,000; Comcast (E!, Outdoor Life), 613,000; Gemstar/TV Guide International (TV Guide Channel), 285,000; Tribune (WGN), 272,000; Landmark Communications (Weather Channel), 239,000; Oxygen Media (Oxygen), 238,000.

(More on media consolidation here, here, here, here and here.)