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Can’t get enough of The Wendy Williams Show? Well, neither can Debmar-Mercury it seems. The company is the producer and distributor of the popular daytime TV show and it has announced it will add two months of original episodes to the fourth season of the program, extending production through June and July because the show is such a hit. Wendy Williams pulled in the biggest Nielsen sweeps gains of any talk show on the TV dial and surged to new ratings heights in the February sweeps.

“I have the greatest fans in daytime TV, and I’m so excited to be giving fans more fun throughout the summer,” Williams said in a press release. “If it were up to me, we’d have a show every day, all year long!”

The show made some changes that have worked. According to the press release, the ratings surge started with the most recent expansion in mid-December of the Wendy fan-favorite “Hot Topics” segment. Wendy finished as the fourth highest-rated metered market talk show among women ages 25-to-54—the key daytime demo—averaging a 1.1 rating and a 7 share during the month. This was an incredible 47 percent share increase in the demo from the most recent sweeps period in November 2012. All that means people were really watching Wendy.

“Wendy is absolutely thriving and, with its record-breaking sweeps finish, continuing spectacular ratings growth and ability to build on its lead-in, it is clear that this is the hottest program in the genre,” said Debmar-Mercury Co-Presidents Ira Bernstein and Mort Marcus. “Expanding the number of original episodes will allow us to continue the program’s incredible momentum well into the summer, when our core audience grows with younger viewers drawn to Wendy and her unique take on hot topics of the day.”

In the end, Wendy also scored the best gains by far of any talk show compared to November and February 2012. The show jumped 35 percent  in the ratings in that women 25-to-54 age demographic and 29 percent in households. During February, the show saw year-over-year gains of 11 percent in households and nine percent in the demo.

(New York Times) — President Obama’s announcement of Osama bin Laden’s death was watched by 56.5 million people in the United States on Sunday night, the Nielsen Company said Tuesday.  The nine-minute address to the nation appeared to be the most-watched such event in nearly a decade. Despite the fact that the announcement came at 11:35 p.m., well after the bedtime for many people, it rated higher than every other address that Mr. Obama has given as president.

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