The CW's ratings are down 28 percent this season! During sweeps, viewership dropped 22 percent! Even with Gossip Girl's buzz, the young people network is at risk of folding, say TV experts who are paid to have an opinion about these sorts of things. If things don't pick up by next season, one of the partners – Time Warner/Warner Bros. or CBS/UPN – is expected to pull out, collapsing the network. [WSJ] So why does a network that had promise – courting the young demographic that advertisers love – face such an uphill battle? CONTINUED »
"There are two ways to maximize profitability. One is to go the CNBC route and hire Mark Hoffman and give him the latitude and the budget to invest in coverage and make the network really shine with news. This method will eventually lead to higher profits as the network brand is enriched. The other way is the path NBC chose for MSNBC; to slash the budget - to give up the idea of going toe to toe with resources against CNN and FNC and instead just try to be good enough so that viewers wouldn’t flee the network in droves. Nobody at NBC will publicly own up to this, but I have heard privately from several sources that this is the understood policy of NBC News regarding MSNBC. [...] The day MSNBC moved to 30 Rock was not the beginning of a new era as much as it was the completion of a process started nearly two years earlier with the departures of Neal Shapiro from NBC News and Rick Kaplan from MSNBC and the drive to get MSNBC under the direct physical, creative, and budgetary control of NBC News and maintain the new order of doing things the most cost-efficient way possible." [ICN]
Guess what? Marketers are being more careful with their ad budgets! Guess what else? Big companies like Disney's ABC can't afford to let cash-conscious advertisers spend less on TV buys, because it affects the bottom line, and that scares shareholders!
So that's why ABC is today, during its upfront presentation, rolling out the new "Advertising Value Index," which will supposedly help prove the value of TV advertising by letting clients choose specific criteria, rather than just Nielsen ratings numbers, in choosing where they put their 30-second spots. [WSJ] Things like "income level, education, employment status, how long viewers tune in to commercials or how engaged they are with the program" will all be just a checkbox away.
Except, well, media buyers already have this information. CONTINUED »
"In the weeks leading up to this prelude to the upfront advertising marketplace, the Media Rating Council quietly met, reviewed a crucial audit of Nielsen's so-called C3 ratings system, and opted to withhold accreditation for what will be the currency for billions of dollars in TV advertising buys."
Confused? Allow us to explain. You know those upfront presentations all the networks are hosting to solicit ad buys for the upcoming television season? Those billion dollar deals are based on Nielsen data that hasn't passed muster for the second year in a row.
And then it gets worse. CONTINUED »
Talk all you want – and people like David Bauder will – about how television viewership since the strike is down, across the board. "ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC had nearly 9 percent fewer viewers in April and May so far than during the same period a year ago" [AP] Then again, the networks have been losing audiences year-over-year, so why blame Hollywood scribes' neediness for a few digital dollars?
But how about some real sobering news? You know, the type that will feed the gossip chamber? CONTINUED »
BY THE NUMBERS The team up between MSNBC and the New York Times isn't exactly impressing anyone obsessed with numbers. The ever trusty Nielsen says The New York Times Special Primary Edition finished fourth among the cable nets at 2pm, with just 271k viewers. [Media Mob]
BROOM CLOSET May sweeps is working! Oprah is up 9%; Rachael Ray is up 6%; Maury is up 19%; and Tyra Banks is up 10%. Oh, and then there's Regis and Kelly, Ellen, and Steve Wilkos … all flat. The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet, however fell 10%.
Deal or No Deal, that gimmicky hour of game show bile that employs some trade secret formula to determine how much money to give away to contestants while still raking in the dough from advertisers, is not as popular as it once was. Actually, it's the least popular it's ever been! Not even Star Wars-themed episodes can help. CONTINUED »
BY THE NUMBERS Bill O'Reilly's two-night Hillary Clinton interview series plopped FNC into third place for all basic cable channels during last week's primetime, grabbing an average 3.43m total viewers, and 816k in those aged 25-54, up 30 and 40 percent respecitvely compared to April's averages.
Whenever something goes awry in pop culture, a reporter must call to arms a panel of experts to explain why. This is what keeps people like Robert Thompson and his ilk employed. So there's David Carr today, rounding up reasons for why primetime shows are not attracting the huge audiences that they did before the writers strike.
Here are a few: CONTINUED »
BY THE NUMBERS Katie Couric has outdone herself with a new record! Record low, that is. Besting the week of April 14th's CBS Evening News record-setting ratings (5.39m viewers), Courc's broadcast averaged just 5.34m viewers for the week of April 21. [TVD]
This image is not the life support monitor for Patrick Swayze, all though by the looks of his chain smoking and the way this graph is steering, it might as well be. Rather, it's a chart of network television ratings for this season vs. last season. Some obvious highlights: The CW is nearly off the charts, in a very bad way; for all its awesome new shows, ABC is dragging; American Idol cannot support the entire Fox channel; and NBC, once the top network and then suddenly the No. 4 loser, is the only channel showing gains.
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Leaks about Katie Couric's future at CBS occupied the chattering classes last week. Then we learned she wouldn't get a presidential debate, even though Hillary and Barack have faced off more than twenty times. And now the CBS Evening News is coming off clocking its worst week of ratings in its history, averaging just 5.4 million viewers, down from 6 million two weeks before. CBS News SVP Paul Friedman says he's "frustrated" about their numbers. As he should be:
Katie's broadcast scored fewer viewers than 48 Hours Mystery and, if things continue, will end up somewhere between the WWE's Friday Night Smackdown and clip show Most Outrageous Moments. (And those Seinfeld numbers are here.)
In its rush to lock Conan O'Brien into a long-termdeal, even if that meant prematurely ousting Jay Leno, NBC may have overlooked one itsy bitsy piece of information: The host of CBS' Late Late Show may be a more in-demand commodity. For the first time ever, the show's host Craig Ferguson beat Conan in the ratings game. Last week he took four out of the five nights, with 1.88 million viewers to Conan's 1.77 million. Naturally, NBC would like you, and its advertisers, to remember that its late night host won the prized 18-49 demographic.
Fewer than six and a half million people tuned in to watch George Takei sing country. And after just one episode, CBS has canceled Secret Talents of the Stars. [TV Eye]
Nielsen plans on measuring out-of-home television watchers, like those who catch The Biggest Loser at the gym, a college basketball game at a sports bar, or The Office while working late at, um, the office. It's not clear how they're having their samples record the data, since the plausibility of accurately recording what you watched while you're sweating during a 5-mile treadmill run or getting hammered with your old frat buddies is, um, slim. Hopefully like your waistline is about to be.
Any article that speculates about the possibility of Nielsen's downfall – in headline-ending-with-a-question-mark form – is a friend of ours. After all, we waste no fewer than 1,000 words a week on the subject. So there goes AdAge's Brian Steinberg with "Can Nielsen Still Reign Supreme?" It's a storied look at Nielsen's 1950s beginnings to where it stands today: Trying to get its hands in every audience measurement medium possible, going beyond TV ratings and into video game and YouTube consumption. Providing this data to advertisers is big business, mostly because the P&Gs of the world spend billions without any absolute, concrete evidence its campaign messages turn into sales. It's Nielsen's job to convince them they're doing the right thing. CONTINUED »
For the first time since 2001, CNN has beat Fox News in the coveted 25-54 demographic during primetime, 444,000 (up 87 percent) to 430,000 viewers (up 10 percent). FNC, however, remains the leader in overall viewership during the 8-11pm slot. [AJ-C]
Score one for Nielsen! They've put an end to an antitrust suit filed against them by erinMedia, which has tried, and failed, to encroach on Nielsen's television audience measurement space. The two parties agreed to a settlement, avoiding a trial where that charged Nielsen with blocking competitors from entering the TV ratings space. Too bad, too, since a full-on courtroom drama would've seen testimony from ABC's Henry DeVault, CBS' David Poltrack, and NBC Universal's Alan Wurtzel, as well as confidential documents, internal emails, and business agreements. [MP]
Since October 2007, Nielsen has been inflating the ad spends at about 20 local TV stations. That's because they've been understating household coverage estimates, and overstating the coverage area of those stations, illegitimately awarding them more viewers than they actually had.
The error-plagued ratings company won't say which networks were affected – we wouldn't want angry advertisers to know exactly who to call – but they're blaming it on "the methods it has used to calculate their coverage on satellite TV operators DirecTV and EchoStar, and that the problem was limited to the 26% of U.S. TV households that receive TV via the DBS provide."
Smaller cable networks rely on this data to sell advertising, which means millions of dollars in ad budgets may have been spent in the wrong place.
Nielsen has given itself 60 days to figure out the exact cause of the problem and restate its numbers. But we all know how well they do with promised timelines.
