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A reminder about network television: NBC won an important demographic on Friday night...sort of.

If you consult the very useful web site TV By The Numbers, you'll see that the Friday night ratings race among the 18-49 demographic was won by NBC, with its Chopping Block (is that still on?) and two hours of Dateline NBC.

But it's not quite that simple. If you use the numbers from the Cynopsis newsletter, also a very helpful daily bulletin about ratings as well as lots of other things, you'll see a different result.

Who won, after the jump...

 

According to Cynopsis, the winning network for viewers 18-49 on Friday night was Spanish-language network Univision, which the other chart doesn't include.

Now, the caveats: It's summer. It was a Friday. What the other networks were showing that night was a mishmash of repeats and episodes of canceled or seemingly doomed shows (The Chopping Block, The Goode Family, and so forth).

Nevertheless, when you read about network races, network upfronts, network executives, and network programming, it's easy not to notice that Univision frequently beats the CW (home of much buzzed about shows like Gossip Girl), and sometimes competitive with all the English-language networks.

It presents an interesting set of challenges. My Spanish has decayed significantly since high school, when I would describe it as "pretty good," and my guess is that it's still better than that of lots of entertainment writers. It's not necessarily that there's anything wrong with comparing English-language networks to each other, but it's worth issuing a reminder from time to time that a rundown of network that includes NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, and the CW isn't a roundup of U.S. broadcast television; it's a roundup of U.S. broadcast television in English.

So when you're trying to get your arms around the entire picture, keep in mind that, according to MediaPost, Univision averaged almost 4 million viewers in prime time during the 2008-2009 season. They're not American Idol numbers, but if the whole picture does include things like Gossip Girl (generally watched by significantly fewer than 4 million people), then it includes Univision as well.