Sherlock Holmes could solve this mystery pretty easily, thanks to Nielsen
TV viewers have a thing for watching true-crime stories on Saturday nights.
HLN was the #1 cable news network in primetime in younger viewers Saturday night thanks to its HLN Mysteries block of programming. In March of last year, HLN did away with the repeats of its weekday shows and began to re-purpose crime documentaries from sister network truTV. The true crime block, from 7pmET to 6amET Sunday morning, is a hit (no pun intended) with younger viewers, topping FNC, MSNBC and CNN in the 8pm, 9pm, 11pm, Midnight and 1am hours.
And the long-running CBS News magazine “48 Hours Mystery” continues to dominate broadcast TV. Saturday’s broadcast about the 2006 murder of a man at the hands of his abused wife, was the #1 show of the night drawing 4.87m viewers and a 1.4 rating in the A25-54 demo and a 0.9 in the A18-49 demo. That’s up from the same weekend last year: +27% in A25-54 and +13% in A18-49.
It appears crime does pay, at least on TV.