Friday Ratings: ‘Frosty The Snowman’ Wins The Night With Annual Christmas Special
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There must have been some magic in that old silk ratings hat they found, as the annual CBS airing of the animated Frosty the Snowman topped the night’s ratings wars.
The 50th airing of the Rankin-Bass animation special, based on the Walter E. Rollins and Steve Nelson song and featuring the voices of Jimmy Durante, Bille De Wolfe and Jackie Vernon, had an 0.7 rating among the 18-49 set and drew a total audience of 4.04 million in the 8 PM slot. The numbers were steady with last year’s airing.
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CBS doubled down on its Frosty magic with an 8:30 PM airing of Frosty Returns.The 1992 special, featuring Jonathan Winters as the narrator and John Goodman doing the Frosty voice (with music by Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh) had an 0.6 and 3.45 million audience. Repeats of Hawaii Five-0 and Blue Bloods closed out the eye network’s night.
At Fox, the WWE Friday Night SmackDown also scored an 0.7, but its 2.34 million audience was way below Frosty. The two-hour show was down a tenth from its performance last week.
NBC went to the dogs for its Friday fare. The National Dog Show clocked in at 0.5, followed up by a new Dateline at 0.5, which held steady from its numbers last week.
For ABC, American Housewife was down a tick to 0.5, while Fresh Off The Boat was steady at 0.5. ABC’s 20/20 was up to 0.6, a gain of a tenth over last week. for its two-hour slot and marking a triumph over its archrival, Dateline.
The CW had the Christmas special Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer, drawing an 0.2 . A new episode of Penn & Teller: Fool Us, its first new one since September, also fared well, clocking in at 0.2.
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