This chart traces the Saturday ratings of the WCCO-TV program Axel and His Dog from March 1955 (when the weekend edition began) through December 1956. Ratings for the competing programs on KSTP-TV and WMIN/WTCN-TV are also included, although WMIN/WTCN-TV quickly threw in the towel on Saturday morning. The rating is the percentage of all television sets in the metro area (whether being watched or not) which are tuned to a particular show.

The Y axis shows the timeline, and the X axis represents the average rating that each show achieved for that particular month. The vertical lines that occasionally bisect the chart indicate points when the schedule of Axel and His Dog was changed. This usually resulted in the show facing different competing programs.

This particular chart shows how incredibly popular Axel became by this time. In April 1956, he achieved an astounding rating of 28 -- this means that more than one-quarter of all the televisions in the Twin Cities area (including those that weren't even on) were tuned to Axel and His Dog. The following month, however, KSTP-TV fielded Fury, a new network show about a boy and his horse. Axel and Fury fought a pitched battle over the summer which ended in a draw. That was quite a respectable result for a local program up against a new network show, but WCCO-TV evidently decided to hedge their bets and in November 1956 moved Axel to an earlier time slot. There Axel began his complete domination of early morning Saturday TV that would continue for years.

Want to see some more Saturday ratings? Click here!