The Big Bang Theory

The Big Bang Theory (or TBBT) is an American situation comedy, which premiered on CBS on September 24 2007. It is created and executive produced by Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady, and concerns two 20-something socially inept prodigies, a theoretical and experimental physicist at Caltech, who live across the hall from a beautiful, socially adept girl who does not share their level of intellect. It is produced by Warner Bros. Television and Chuck Lorre Productions, and taped in front of a studio audience.^[1]

Cast

Production history

On October 19 2007 the show was picked up for a full 22-episode season, the first comedy of the 2007/08 season. ^[4]

The show returned on March 17, 2008 with an earlier time slot^[7] and nine new episodes.^[8]

Theme song

Characters

Episodes

DVD Releases

The complete first season is expected to be released on DVD on September 2 2008 in the US, Amazon.com has already listed the item.

Ratings

U.S. standard ratings

In the following summary, "rating" is the percentage of all households with televisions that tuned to the show, and "share" is the percentage of all televisions in use at that time that are tuned in. "18-49" is the percentage of all adults aged 18-49 tuned into the show. "Viewers" is the number of viewers, in millions, watching at the time. "Rank" is how well the show did compared to other TV shows aired that week.

Unless otherwise cited, the overnight rating, share, 18-49 and viewing information come from Your Entertainment Now.^[10] The weekly ranks come from The Programming Insider,^[11] unless otherwise referenced.

#	Episode	Air Date	Timeslot	Rating	Share	18-49	Viewers	Weekly Rank
1	"Pilot"	September 24, 2007	8:30 P.M.	6.0	9	3.7/9 (#3)	9.57 (#3)	37
2	"The Big Bran Hypothesis"	October 1, 2007		5.5	8	3.4/8 (#2)	8.58 (#2)	44
3	"The Fuzzy Boots Corollary"	October 8, 2007		5.3	8	3.4/8 (#2)	8.36 (#2)	44
4	"The Luminous Fish Effect"	October 15, 2007		5.4	8	3.2/8 (#3)	8.15 (#4)	49
5	"The Hamburger Postulate"	October 22, 2007		5.6	8	3.5/9 (#2)	8.72 (#2)	44^[12]
6	"The Middle-Earth Paradigm"	October 29, 2007		5.7	8	3.6/9 (#2)	8.92 (#2)	45
7	"The Dumpling Paradox"	November 5, 2007		6.1	9	3.8/9 (#2)	9.67 (#2)	38
8	"The Grasshopper Experiment"	November 12, 2007		5.9	9	3.8/9 (#2)	9.39 (#2)	36^[13]
9	"The Cooper-Hofstadter Polarization"	March 17, 2008	8:00 P.M.	5.5	9	3.7/11 (#2)	9.10 (#2)	23
10	"The Loobenfeld Decay"	March 24, 2008		5.3	9	3.4/10 (#2)	8.63 (#2)	28
11	"The Pancake Batter Anomaly"	March 31, 2008		5.5	9	3.1/9 (#2)	8.68 (#2)	33
12	"The Jerusalem Duality"	April 14, 2008		4.7	8	2.9/8 (#2)	7.69 (#3)	34
13	"The Bat Jar Conjecture"	April 21, 2008		4.7	8	2.9/8 (#2)	7.51 (#4)	42
14	"The Nerdvana Annihilation"	April 28, 2008		5.0	8	3.0/9 (#2)	8.16 (#4)	34^[14]
15	"The Porkchop Indeterminacy"	May 5, 2008		4.7	8	2.8/9 (#2)	7.56 (#3)	44 ^[15]
16	"The Peanut Reaction"	May 12, 2008		5.0	8	2.9/9 (#3)	7.88 (#3)	38^[16]
17	"The Tangerine Factor"	May 19, 2008		4.7	8	2.7/8 (#3)	7.36 (#3)	52^[17]

Season 2

Season 2 will begin airing on Monday, September 22, 2008 at 8:00 p.m. The first episode is called, "The Bad Fish Paradigm."

Seasonal ratings

Seasonal ratings based on average total viewers per episode of The Big Bang Theory on CBS:

UK ratings

The show made its terrestrial debut on Channel 4 on 14 February, 2008 and brought in an average audience of 1.0 million viewers. The second episode, shown the following week, also received 1.0 million. For the third episode an average of 1.1 million tuned in. The show is also shown as a 'first-look' on Channel 4's digital offshoot E4 the preceding evening, and brings in 400,000 viewers on average. The 5th episode received 880,000 viewers. After airing the first 5 episodes, the average is still hovering around 1 million. Episode 13 was watched by 1.3 million viewers and was the most watched episode on Thursday 15th May 2008.^[20]