25 years ago in TV ratings PART 5: February 1986 Nielsens for animated shows in the weekday early fringe time period as reported by network affiliates

I remember clearly which 80s cartoons I watched on independent channels and which were on the networks because the signals from the UHF independents were weaker than the networks. We didn't have cable and consequently if I wanted G.I. Joe, Robotech, Star Blazers, Wheeled Warriors or Voltron to come in good I had to mess with the UHF antenna. So when my memories of a particular cartoon are literally a little fuzzy then that means it was on our local independent station. Thundercats and He-Man I remember coming in crystal clear so those were definitely run on the network affiliates. While I remember 1986 as being the end of the road for toy robots shows like GoBots, Transformers and Voltron, the February '86 ratings show they didn't give up without a fight. In fact, the February '86 network kids' top ten was the most robotty of all the ratings top tens I've found!

Kids' Rank/Share	Household Rank/Share	Program	# of Stations	Feb '85 Shr	May '85 Shr	Nov '85 Shr
01/38	44/16	She-Ra	7	19	19	15
02/36	48/15	He-Man & the MotU	14	19	17	17
03/35	39/17	Scooby Doo	12	20	19	18
04/34	49/15	Thundercats	7	14	13	12
05/32	57/12	Voltron	3	16	14	14
06/31	45/16	Tom & Jerry	5	18	21	17
07/26	60/10	Challenge of the GoBots	5	14	12	8
08/25	52/13	Transformers	10	16	14	14
08/24	08/23	Diff'rent Strokes	33	21	21	20
10/24	07/24	Gimme a Break	12	20	19	20
Other animated shows outside the kids' top 10
11/22	59/11	G.I. Joe	5	19	19	13

The top five in the November '85 network ratings had He-Man at #1, then Scooby Doo, Tom & Jerry at #3, She-Ra at 4 and Thundercats tied with Transformers for 5th place. The top five shuffled around a little the following February but pretty much held steady with the exception of Transformers, whose drop to 8th made way for Voltron to come in at number 5. Voltron had been declining in popularity ever since they switched from lion to vehicle team in late '84, but the third season where new lion episodes were made airing in late '85 definitely improved their ratings. Voltron wasn't the only robot show to enjoy a resurgence in popularity. The GoBots were also on the rebound, improving from 13th place with a 20 kids' share in November '85 to 7th place with a 26 share here. We're talking both Voltron and GoBots increasing by 6 kids share points each! This is interesting because it highlights a huge decline in network popularity for the Transformers, who tied for fifth place in the November '85 ratings with a 28 kids' share but fell to 8th place here with a 25 share. In the stores toy robots were beginning to fizzle out in popularity so it's hard to make correlations between network ratings and toy sales since kids may have been moving on to Nintendos, but some out there were still very much into watching toy robots on television.

25 years ago in TV ratings PART 4: February 1986 Nielsens for animated shows in the weekday early fringe time period reported by independent stations

Although the Nielsen ratings for February of 1986 don't technically qualify as "25 years ago" the numbers are still important analytical tools for roboplastic archaeologists looking to study the popularity of cartoon robot Volkswagens and their transforming Tyrannosaurus cohorts. I'm taking a look this time at the February '86 ratings for shows in the 'Early Fringe' time period (Monday through Friday from 4:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.) as reported by independent stations. Independent UHF stations of the 80s were traditionally the realm of the half hour toy commercial and they were where I did most of my afterschool cartoon watching. Since the independents had a much wider variety of animation in their lineups than the networks, the numbers for the independents give a more complete comparison of the relative popularity of the most cartoons. But first here's the entire top ten based on Kids' share and rank for the early fringe as reported by independent stations in February '86:

Kids' Rank/Share	Household Rank/Share	Program	# of Stations	Feb '85 Shr	May '85 Shr	Nov '85 Shr
01/39	03/12	Diff'rent Strokes	34	12	11	11
02/32	17/10	Scooby Doo	22	10	10	10
03/31	08/11	Thundercats	72	11	9	11
03/31	09/11	Transformers	59	11	10	11
03/31	24/09	She-Ra	57	9	9	9
06/30	02/13	Three's Company	9	15	13	13
06/30	04/12	Too Close for Comfort	20	13	12	13
06/30	15/10	G.I. Joe	73	11	10	11
09/29	13/10	Little House on the Prairie	11	10	9	10
09/29	16/10	He-Man & the MotU	53	10	10	10

February '86 was the first sweeps period after the legendary November '85 sweeps when Thundercats, Transformers, She-Ra, G.I. Joe and He-Man fought it out in a very toy cartoon heavy Kids' top ten. In November the only non-toy cartoons in the top 10 were Scooby Doo, Tom and Jerry and perennial ratings champion Woody Woodpecker. For whatever reason Woody Woodpecker disappeared completely from the ratings in February '86, leaving the non-animated Diff'rent Strokes in the number 1 kids' spot. Tom & Jerry also dropped out of the top ten and the two vacancies left by them and Woody were filled by the live action shows Little House on the Prairie and Too Close for Comfort. One of the criticisms leveled against the ratings system was that the kids numbers were largely inaccurate because children didn't take their reporting responsibilities seriously. I tend to agree that something fishy is going on here because Little House and TCfC were mind numbingly boring to me when I was 11 back in '85. I can't imagine them being more popular than He-Man. Then again, maybe I'm discounting the most powerful demographic of all: pre-teen girls!

Feb '86 was also the second consecutive report to use Kids' rank and share, allowing for a little bit of kid-centric ratings continuity to be established. Transformers and Thundercats continued to be the top toy based shows in February 86, both tying for third with a 31 share. In November '85 they were in fourth and fifth place with Transformers taking a 34 share on the kids chart, slightly edging out Thundercats which had a 33. Although they both improved in rank, the slight erosion in overall share indicated that the popularity of toy based cartoons was beginning to decline.

Other animated shows outside the kids' top ten:

Kids' Rank/Share	Household Rank/Share	Program	# of Stations	Feb '85 Shr	May '85 Shr	Nov '85 Shr
15/25	23/09	Jetsons	21	8	8	8
19/24	28/08	M.A.S.K.	26	9	8	9
22/22	31/07	Flintstones	7	6	7	6
22/22	32/07	Tom & Jerry	5	7	6	6
22/22	36/06	Heathcliff	18	6	6	6
27/21	30/07	Challenge of the GoBots	24	9	8	8
29/18	37/06	Voltron	20	8	7	6
37/14	40/05	Bugs Bunny	7	5	6	4
38/13	42/04	Popeye	3	12	8	7
39/12	41/04	Inspector Gadget	13	5	5	4
39/12	49/02	Tranzor-Z	3	4	4	4
42/11	47/03	Jayce & the Wheeled Warriors	22	5	4	4
45/10	48/03	Super Friends	7	6	6	4
47/09	43/04	Robotech	11	6	6	5

After debuting on the November '85 ratings in 17th place with a 27 share, M.A.S.K. loses a few points and drops to 19th, which is still not too bad. GoBots falls five places to 27th and Voltron actually climbs up the chart, going from 37th in November to 29th in February. Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors in 42nd place only falls one spot compared to November and Tranzor-Z rockets to 39th from 46th. Robotech at 46th remains the least popular cartoon in the kids' top 50. I am still amazed how Tranzor-Z remains so obscure in pop culture history and Robotech so lauded when the actual ratings of the day reveal Robotech's popularity to be well below that of most every other cartoon. It's possible the absence of Tranzor-Z merchandise in North America contributed to this while the less popular Robotech was afforded a toyline. Or maybe a cartoon about a robot that was just a robot didn't make as much of an impression as one about transforming robot fighter planes. Maybe the key to pop culture immortality in 1985 was not ratings popularity but whether or not a cartoon had Shoji Kawamori jet robots you could buy at K-Mart.

NEXT TIME ON RATINGSTASTIC ROBOTCARTOONALYPSE: The February '86 Early Fringe network ratings-featuring possibly the most robotastic top ten ever!

25 years ago in TV ratings PART 3: November 1985 Nielsens for animated shows in the weekday early fringe time period reported by network affiliates

Syndicated cartoons were not exclusively aired on independent stations in the eighties. While many of these half-hour toy commercials may not have qualified for airing on Saturday mornings due to big 3 networks standards, the local network affiliates had no problem carrying them on their Monday-Friday afternoon schedules. This was a sweet irony for many of these shows. In 1984 Tonka's marketing director Ray McDonald stated they initially wanted Challenge of the GoBots to be a network series¹. The networks rejected GoBots as a Saturday morning show² but like many of these toy cartoons it did ultimately find its way onto the network affiliates once it hit syndication.

The Nielsens differentiated between network and independent airings for shows in every time period including early fringe. This makes evaluating a clear 'winner' more complicated considering that the same show could rank in two totally different places between the two charts. Here then are the top ten kid rated shows aired during early fringe (4:30-7:30 p.m. Monday-Friday) for network affiliates as reported for the November 1985 ratings period, plus a few animated shows that fell outside the top 10.

Kids' Rank/Share	Household Rank/Share	Program	# of Stations	Nov '84 Shr	Feb '85 Shr	May '85 Shr
01/36	40/17	He-Man & MotU	15	20	20	18
02/35	41/17	Scooby Doo	13	21	19	18
03/34	33/18	Tom & Jerry	4	21	16	20
04/31	55/13	She-Ra	6	19	15	17
05/28	53/14	Transformers	10	15	17	15
05/28	58/12	Thundercats	7	14	14	13
07/27	54/13	G.I. Joe	3	19	19	19
08/24	08/23	Gimme A Break	12	21	22	20
08/24	13/21	Diff'rent Strokes	32	22	22	22
08/24	16/21	Laverne & Shirley	3	20	22	23
08/24	59/12	Voltron	4	17	15	16
Other animated shows outside the kids' top 10
13/20	62/07	Challenge of the GoBots	6	12	13	11
37/06	63/02	Flintstones	3	3	3	3

Many of the same animated shows dominate much like they do on the independent stations' top ten for the same period. The Transformers, Thundercats, G.I. Joe, He-Man and She-Ra show up here just like on the independents list but what is different are their ranks. Most notably He-Man goes from 10th among kids on independent stations to first on the networks. Transformers and Thundercats stay about the same at the middle of the list. Big shout out to GoBots for cracking the top 20 on both charts. The come from nowhere surprise is Voltron, who on the independent stations was ranked 37th but on the networks ties for 8th place! Such grand variances in network/independent ranking as illustrated by He-Man and Voltron almost make me wish there was one consolidated early fringe list with the network and independent shares combined. I imagine it could be done if the ratings points for each show were combined between the two, assuming a single ratings point accounts for the same number of households on each list. But since the independents had a much larger proportion of animated shows than the network affiliates did, many cartoons that ranked outside of the network top 50 but made it on the independent list would get left out. Shows like Robotech, M.A.SK. and Tranzor-Z are notably absent from the network list, not to mention Woody Woodpecker who dominated the independent list for multiple ratings periods in a row but doesn't crack the network top 50. I guess if all I'm interested in was the top ten it might work.

NEXT TIME ON RATINGSTASTIC CARTOONOCALYPSE: The February 1986 independent sweeps!

¹Philip H. Dougherty (1984, January 25). GOBOTS SET U.S. INVASION. The New York Times.
²Robin L. Palley (1984, July 25). LOOK OUT, CABBAGE KID. Philadelphia Daily News.

25 years ago in TV ratings PART 2: November 1985 Nielsens for animated shows in the weekday early fringe time period reported by independent stations

As I uncover more and more television ratings reports in old issues of Variety magazine a couple of things become clear to me. First, ratings were reported in a number of ways at a number of times. There were three main reporting periods-February, May and November. However, judging from ads placed in broadcast industry publications like Variety and Broadcasting, networks also had access to weekly and monthly reports not widely reported anywhere. The reports also divided up information based on time period and channel affiliation, so whether a show aired on an independent or network station affected its ratings just as much as what time of day it aired. The second big realization I had was that ratings like most statistics can be interpreted a number of ways. Since the data reported comes from these brief windows in time and is parsed in a number of ways, Nielsens can make the same show seem either relatively popular or a ratings loser. Ratings analysis depends then on how you look at the numbers, so a broad, overarching measure of the popularity of a show like The Transformers is tough to ascertain when the data comes in one drip at a time. With the reporting periods 3-5 months apart, a show may have been consistently good or bad in the interim and it would go unnoticed on the all important Feb/May/Nov sweeps reports. Despite these limitations some very important conclusions can be drawn, not the least of which being that a lot more people were watching Challenge of the GoBots 25 years ago than they'll admit to today.

The last time I blogged about ratings numbers I took a look at the May 1985 reporting period. That was a tough one to start with because all I had to go on to determine show popularity was the overall household rank based on share. But starting with the November 1985 reports two new columns were added-Kids' Share and Kids' Rank. This changed everything and made my analysis much easier. Now I was able to rank cartoons based on their kid popularity, which is really all that matters for the kind of analysis I'm trying to do. Here then are the top ten shows based on Kid Rank from the November '85 Nielsens during the early fringe (Monday through Friday from 4:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.) time period:

Kids' Rank/Share	Household Rank/Share	Program	# of Stations	Nov '84 Shr	Feb '85 Shr	May '85 Shr
01/39	16/10	Woody Woodpecker & Friends	3	7	7	8
02/35	05/11	Diff'rent Strokes	30	11	12	10
02/35	23/09	Tom & Jerry	3	10	8	6
04/34	04/12	Transformers	60	12	11	10
05/33	09/11	Thundercats	75	10	11	9
06/32	02/14	Three's Company	10	14	15	13
06/32	15/10	She-Ra	52	9	9	9
08/31	08/11	G.I. Joe	73	10	11	9
08/31	22/09	Scooby Doo	25	11	11	10
10/30	14/10	He-Man & the MotU	50	11	10	10

Some of the shows tied for rank based on their share of the kid market, as was the case with 2nd, 6th and 8th place. For purposes of my chart I used the overall Household Rank as the tiebreaker. I also included Household Share because that's the number the previous rating period columns (the last three on the far right side) use so it's easier to see overall trends. The trends are suspect to me, though because again Nielsen has prior historical ratings numbers for shows that hadn't aired yet. For example, She-Ra shouldn't have November '84 ratings because it hadn't aired yet. Likewise, Thundercats shouldn't have anything from before January of '85. I still don't know where they got those ratings that shouldn't exist.

Without the Kids' Rank it was hard to track the popularity of these shows with their target audience. In the May numbers (which only used overall Household Share) animated shows barely cracked the top ten. But when rearranged this way it becomes very obvious that children loved watching cartoons and animation dominates this top ten instead of being the exception. One thing that remained constant from May to November was that Woody Woodpecker was still the highest ranked animated show. I do remember watching a lot of Woody Woodpecker but I never realized he was more popular than any toy based cartoons in the ratings for a little while. Most of the toy cartoons here in the top ten (with the exception of He-Man) were making their Monday-Friday run debuts in fall '85 so this is truly the beginning of the battle of the toy shows. Transformers does exceptionally well here, ranking fourth not just in Kids but also in overall Household Rank. The magic doesn't extend to all robot shows, though, and the next highest is Challenge of the GoBots which comes in at #22 as we see in the next chart...

Other Animated Shows Outside the Kids' Top 10

Kids' Rank/Share	Household Rank/Share	Program	# of Stations	Nov '84 Shr	Feb '85 Shr	May '85 Shr
15/28	38/07	Bugs Bunny	4	4	5	5
17/27	21/09	M.A.S.K.	28	9	9	8
18/25	34/08	Jetsons	18	7	7	7
22/24	33/08	Challenge of the GoBots	34	9	9	9
29/22	40/06	Heathcliff	17	7	6	6
31/20	41/06	Super Friends	5	11	10	10
34/18	46/05	Flintstones	06	4	5	6
37/17	42/06	Voltron	20	8	7	7
40/15	49/04	Inspector Gadget	12	7	6	6
41/14	50/04	Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors	30	5	5	4
46/09	52/03	Tranzor-Z	6	4	4	3
49/07	51/04	Robotech	9	6	6	6

I didn't feel like typing the entire list out to 54 places like I did last time so I included only animated shows outside of the top ten. Robot shows didn't do relatively well overall compared to other cartoons, with classics like Voltron, Robotech and Tranzor-Z near the bottom of the list. The GoBots at #22 is actually very respectable. Voltron on the other hand was on the downslide as it fell to 37th place here and didn't deliver the same ratings World Events Productions was able to promote back in the same ratings period a year earlier. Robotech doing so relatively poor is interesting because this show is consistently mentioned by Japanese animation fans as being the show that got them into anime. (Yet Tranzor-Z beats it in the ratings and I've never heard anyone say nowadays that Tranzor-Z was their gateway anime show.) Robotech is another show for which there are ratings from months that it hadn't aired yet. Even worse, the 6 share reported here for May of '85 contradicts the actual May '85 report which said it had an 8. I've found it wasn't uncommon for a show to have a certain share rating and then see that number change as reported in the next report's prior history columns. But at this point I'm willing to just overlook those inconsistencies and write it off as me not being knowledgeable enough about the ratings process to interpret it all properly.

Next time I'll continue with November 1985's numbers from network affiliates. For some reason the network top ten kids' shows had pretty much the same cartoons but in an entirely different order and with different share numbers. Since the networks had other more popular programming not all of the shows that made the independent list were on the network top 50. So it should be fun to see how what was popular on independent stations may not have done as well on the networks and vice versa.

25 years ago in TV ratings PART 1: May 1985 Nielsens for animated shows in the weekday early fringe time period as reported by independent stations

I was looking through the June 26, 1985 issue of Variety Magazine when I came across some television ratings numbers. They were for the reporting period covering May of 1985 and they showed ratings for television shows in the top 100 markets in the US. This was awesome because fellow roboplastic historian (and perennial favorite among the collector community) Hooper X and I had been wondering about how good or bad the Transformers fared in terms of ratings during the the show's early seasons. I never expected to find more than ratings for the top ten shows in prime time listed in Variety (if I was lucky), so imagine my surprise when I found this report covered not just prime time but many other time slots as well. Obviously the most important slot to me was the late afternoon period when the cartoons aired and luckily that list had not just the top ten but extended out to the top 54. It was more than long enough to include ratings data on some of my favorites like Voltron, Tranzor-Z, Robotech, Transformers, G.I. Joe and He-Man. This ratings report was exactly what I was always looking for! Or was it? After doing some analysis of the numbers I realized there were some problems here. Problems like ratings existing for shows before they ever aired! But I'll get to that later. First I have to try to explain some of the terminology used on the chart, which is intimidating because I find the lexicon of television ratings scary and confusing. So in other words I hope with this post I will begin the most informative and in-depth television ratings breakdown for afternoon cartoons from 1985 (that makes absolutely no sense to me).

Early Fringe-It turns out the time I was most interested in was defined as "Early Fringe". This is the period Monday through Friday from 4:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., which started about an hour after I got home from elementary school. It's when I remember doing the majority of my childhood cartoon watching.

Households Share/Rank-This is the number that matters the most as it determines where the show stands in relation to all the other shows in the same time period. I interpret it as the percentage of all households everywhere watching a given show and ranked accordingly. Rank is not necessarily proportional to the number of stations carrying a show because some stations may reach larger audiences than others, so a lot of stations may still not have as many households as one station in a large market.

DMA Shr-The Designated Market Area Share is the percentage of people watching in a region where all the people have the same shows available for them to watch. It's essentially how much of a market was watching each show but not reflective of total households everywhere. DMA will generally follow the same trend as household rank so as the number of households watching get lower DMA also gets lower, although two shows with identical DMA will have different household ranks. DMA is useful because in the chart DMAs from previous ratings periods are shown, giving a trend of viewership for each show.

HH Rtg-I suspect this is Households Rating and although I'm not sure, it may be a percentage of all households everywhere tuned in to a show. It's the most confusing number to me because it correlates with nothing else and fluctuates wildly, independent of ranking and DMA share.

May 84 / Nov 84 / Feb 85 Shares-These are the DMA ratings for each show from previous ratings periods. Great for establishing trends in viewership but also great for confusing me as some shows will have numbers here for periods that they weren't known to be on the air! I'll get into specifics as they pertain to individual shows.

Now let's look at the list of top 54 shows during Early Fringe in the 100 biggest television markets as reported for the ratings period of May 1985:

Households Shr/Rnk	# of Stations	Program	DMA Shr	HH Rtg	May '84 Shr	Nov '84 Shr	Feb '85 Shr
1	4	MASH	15	8	14	14	16
2	5	Love Boat	14	5	17	15	15
3	8	WKRP in Cincinnati	14	7	14	12	14
4	7	3's Company	14	6	15	13	15
5	8	Alice	12	6	13	12	12
6	27	Diff'rent Strokes	12	5	11	12	13
7	3	New Newlywed Game	12	3	8	10	12
8	3	Pvt Benjamin	12	5	11	11	12
9	8	Woody Woodpecker	12	3	12	10	11
10	21	G.I Joe	11	3	11	10	11

Here in the top ten we already have two syndicated cartoons-Woody Woodpecker and G.I. Joe. As someone who doesn't really understand the appeal of G.I. Joe I was really impressed that it ranked so high, beating out even He-Man. I have this (admittedly ridiculous) theory that the G.I. Joe toyline isn't actually popular with the public at large but it's instead a propaganda campaign subsidized by the US government and that's why it consistently sold well. Yet the numbers don't lie and it looks like G.I. Joe was genuinely a ratings winner and consistently popular in previous ratings periods. But how could that be? This all looks good until you realize that G.I. Joe didn't start airing daily episodes until September of 1985. How could there be May of '84 ratings when all that existed at that point was the 5 episode 1983 series? Isn't it odd that by May of '85 G.I. Joe only had a total of ten episodes apparently being rerun for two years and yet it still ranks number 10 in the ratings? The strangeness doesn't end there...

Households Shr/Rnk	# of Stations	Program	DMA Shr	HH Rtg	May '84 Shr	Nov '84 Shr	Feb '85 Shr
11	65	He-Man MotU	11	3	13	12	12
12	14	Little House o.t. Prairie	11	4	14	12	11
13	46	Scooby Doo	11	3	14	13	12
14	3	Waltons	11	4	14	10	10
15	21	Brady Bunch	10	3	12	9	10
16	21	Flintstones	10	3	11	11	12
17	3	Hart to Hart	10	5	7	9	9
18	13	Jeffersons	10	5	12	10	11
19	4	Transformers	10	3	8	10	9
20	10	What's Happening	10	4	11	11	11

Transformers comes in at #19 in the May ratings despite not beginning its Monday through Friday run until September! By May of '85 there were only 16 episodes of Transformers from the 1984 debut season. Were these being repeated daily? Again we have an instance of a cartoon with nowhere near the number of episodes necessary for syndication ranking high in the ratings. Even stranger is that there are DMA numbers for Transformers from May of 1984, a full four months before the first season began airing! How is this possible? Could it be that the four stations from which these ratings were reported carried the Transformers before any others in the US? Was the cartoon even ready to be aired in May of '84? I don't understand how any of this could make sense.

Households Shr/Rnk	# of Stations	Program	DMA Shr	HH Rtg	May '84 Shr	Nov '84 Shr	Feb '85 Shr
21	3	Batman	9	3	7	11	11
22	7	Benson	9	4	8	8	10
23	11	Dukes of Hazzard	9	4	12	11	11
24	17	Happy Days	9	4	9	9	9
25	39	Heathcliff	9	2	10	10	11
26	11	Leave it to Beaver	9	3	10	10	9
27	3	Sanford & Son	9	4	8	7r	8
28	10	Star Trek	9	4	10	10	11
29	7	Bosom Buddies	8	4	9	9	7
30	10	Bugs Bunny	8	2	7	7	9

Not much for fans of robots cartoons to talk about in the 20s except Heathcliff, which had that transforming car the Cadillac cats rode around in.

Households Shr/Rnk	# of Stations	Program	DMA Shr	HH Rtg	May '84 Shr	Nov '84 Shr	Feb '85 Shr
31	8	Gilligan's Island	8	3	9	9	10
32	11	Good Times	8	4	10	8	9
33	11	Laverne & Shirley	8	4	9	11	9
34	15	Mork & Mindy	8	3	10	9	9
35	4	One Day At A Time	8	4	11	9	10
36	3	Quincy	8	3	8	9	8
37	9	Robotech	8	2	9	9	8
38	28	Super Friends	8	2	11	11	10
39	17	Tom & Jerry	8	2	11	10	10
40	52	Voltron	8	2	10	10	9

Robotech having May '85 ratings makes sense because it debuted in March of '85, but likewise it shouldn't have any ratings history from 1984! So where they're getting November and May '84 numbers is a mystery to me.

Voltron comes in surprisingly lower than I expected but thankfully it was around in daily syndication in 1984 so the previous year's numbers aren't as suspect. Still, it didn't start until September of '84 so I don't know how they could have DMAs for May. I expected Voltron to have stronger numbers after the ads I'd seen in Variety touting it as the number one new animated show of 1984. I thought it would be at the top of the list, or at least be higher ranked than G.I. Joe or He-Man. Then I realized it was all a matter of marketing spin on ratings numbers and I understood being the number one NEW animated show is different from being the number one animated show period.

Households Shr/Rnk	# of Stations	Program	DMA Shr	HH Rtg	May '84 Shr	Nov '84 Shr	Feb '85 Shr
41	7	Too Close For Comfort	8	4	10	9	10
42	5	Buck Rogers	7	3	12	11	7
43	7	Eight Is Enough	7	3	12	10	7
44	3	I Love Lucy	7	2	5	8	6
45	41	Inspector Gadget	7	2	8	8	8
46	4	Popeye	7	2	11	7	9
47	4	Andy Griffith Show	6	2	5	6	5
48	15	I Dream of Jeannie	6	2	6	6	6
49	3	Anything For Money	5	2	11	7	9
50	16	Bewitched	5	2	7	6	6

Can't forget the most awesome transforming police car ever!

Households Shr/Rnk	# of Stations	Program	DMA Shr	HH Rtg	May '84 Shr	Nov '84 Shr	Feb '85 Shr
51	5	Chips Patrol	5	2	8	7	6
52	15	Fat Albert	5	1	7	7	6
53	25	Tranzor Z	5	2	6	5	5
54	6	Plastic Man	4	1	7	5	4

Rounding out the bottom of the bunch is Tranzor Z, who like many other shows fared better in other time slots outside of early fringe. In fact a lot of these shows aired at other times, further compounding the difficulty of creating a fair comparison of each show's relative popularity. This all remains very confusing to me. I am still totally stumped by how some shows have ratings from periods before they aired. Maybe the ratings are right and we don't know definitively when these shows first came out after all. Maybe there were test markets and other situations that IMDB and Wikipedia have no knowledge of. I wish these numbers would have been more cut and dried and simple to understand instead of confusing me more. But what I've presented here is at least a start and hopefully in the future I'll come across other ratings reports that can shed some light on the questions this one raised.