I thought this was a bigger hit on TV
Not that it did horrible, but i remember it being much more of an event then it was...
Beatlemania, such as it was, faded quickly on TV last week. While the opening installment of ABC's three-part "Beatles Anthology" attracted about 27.3 million viewers nationwide, Part 2 dropped to 21.7 million and Part 3 to 18.3 million. The latter, on Thanksgiving, was outdrawn by repeats of "Home Alone" and "ER" on NBC.
http://articles.latimes.com/1995-11-29/entertainment/ca-8209_1_beatles -anthology
The show may have been hyped like the Second Coming, but ratings for ABC's three-part "The Beatles Anthology" suggest a large part of America greeted the Fab Four's return with a shrug.
Not that ABC should have expected much better, media-watchers suggest. After all, millions of people watched six hours of biographical material about a band that hasn't put out a record in 25 years, about four mop-tops with museum-piece hairdos, about music much of today's youth see as far removed from modern rock as Gilbert and Sullivan is from Little Richard.
"I have talked to any number of people, in particular young people, who didn't connect to it," says Neil Alperstein, who teaches media and popular culture at Loyola College. "A second Beatles generation? I don't think that it holds the same meaning for them. Anybody who anticipated [that vast numbers of young viewers would tune in] I think was barking up the wrong tree."
Adds Shirley Peroutka, a communications studies teacher at Goucher College, "I haven't heard zip from my students about it. I think for them it was a nonevent."
Sure, the show did OK, but it was far from the TV event of anyone's lifetime. Part 1 (which aired Nov. 19), with an estimated 17 million households watching, came in sixth for the week; it lagged behind NBC's entire Thursday night lineup, according to the Nielsen ratings.
Part 2, for which viewers had to wait three days, placed 13th the next week, with 12.9 million households.
"The broadcast schedule was extremely eccentric," said rock critic Dave Marsh, a fan of the series, whose cover story in TV Guide included interviews with Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. "You have to wait two nights for Part 2, and you put [Part 3] up against one of the biggest family social evenings in the year. I'd have scheduled it different."
Way behind 'Home'
Part 3, airing Thanksgiving, settled in at 36th place -- 26 places and 3.5 million households behind a repeat of "Home Alone," which aired against it on NBC. Part 3 also placed third in the week's Battle of the Brits, behind both Part 2 and ABC's broadcast of Princess Diana's BBC interview, which ranked 16th.
(Since the Nielsens measure households, it's hard to say how many people actually watched. ABC estimates 20 million viewers watched the anthology's entire six hours.)
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1995-12-03/news/1995337214_1_beatles- anthology-part-2 share