‘Judge Judy’ Leads Syndicated Shows in Ratings

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 12, 12:16PM EST · Published May 6, 8:20AM EDT

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‘Judge Judy’ Leads Syndicated Shows in Ratings — © Thinkstock

[cnxvideo id=”625498″ placement=”ros”]”Live with Kelly,” the talk show hosted by Kelly Ripa, got all the press last week among syndicated programs. She added a new co-host Ryan Seacrest. However, the show is barely among the top 20 syndicated shows based on audience. The top spot belongs to courtroom reality TV show “Judge Judy.”

In the week from April 17 to 24, “Judge Judy” had a household rating of 6.6, which means it captures 6.6% of those watching TV during the period. Since the show is syndicated, and many people are watching network programming or shows on major cable networks, the figure is impressive. “Live with Kelly” had a rating of 2.2. It is worth noting the two shows do not compete with one another, because they are in different time slots.

The shows just behind “Judge July” are “Family Feud” at 6.5 and “Wheel of Fortune” at 6.0.

“Judge Judy” is long-lived. It has been on the air since 1996, eons in the syndicated TV business. It has run almost 6,000 episodes.

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The show is hosted by Judith Susan Blum. She is really a judge. Her last real posting was as supervising judge for family court in Manhattan. Her TV job probably pays her better. It has been reported she makes $47 million a year.

Judge Judy has become a cottage industry, and a large one. She has authored several books. There is a Judge Judy app. There is also a Judge Judy interactive game. However, the ultimate interaction between judge and viewers is that people can submit their cases online to be considered for a place on the show.

Judge Judy has not only made herself money. Her show is syndicated by CBS Television Distribution, a division of CBS Corp. (NYSE: CBS).

Anyone who thought Kelly Ripa is the queen of daytime TV is not even close.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.