Tuesday 11/28/06 ratings

from Marc Berman at mediaweek

Obveeus...

So, what was his reasoning for labeling it a loser?

telenovels...

.

The last two weeks, Veronica was ~1 million viewers below its season
average. It looked doomed.

Obveeus...

That would be his reason for labeling the show a loser in those weeks.
Apparently, he labeled the show a loser last week, then retracted the
comment. I was just wondering if anyone had the chance to read his original
article version where he called VM a loser.

Obveeus...

I sat through this whole episode and that was a *really* hard thing to do.
The show is horrible. It should not even get a second episode, but it
probably will since December is the time when sponsors don't want you to
watch TV.

telenovels...

They don't? How will you see the ads for their Christmas sales? I
suspect advertisers want as many tv watchers as they can get.

Obveeus...

You suspect wrong. Sweeeps is November. They want everyone wastching lots

telenovels...

.

Sweeps only applies to local advertisers buying local time on local
stations. Not the nationals (like walmart, jcpenney, sears). They
monitor the ratings all year.

of ads in November. Reruns dominate December because they want people out
buying stuff, not in their home watching 'must see TV'.

telenovels...

While that reasoning makes sense, it makes me wonder: Why do I see so
much advertising for christmas? You would think the stores would pull
the ads & save money.

Obveeus...

Why do people line up by the millions to see old/repeat cartoons? Don't
poeple have VCR/DVD for nostalgia? Maybe NBC should just buy/control The
Cosby Show, Cheers, Seinfeld, and Frasier...then run them every Thursday
night until the end of time.

telenovels...

I like that plan! ;-) Actually, that wouldn't work because those
shows were repeated ~4 times every year & they are worn-out. In
contrast Charlie Brown is only 1 a year.

Also, many of these people (kids) have never seen the show.
Hence the high ratings and sales for kids shows/Disney movies.

Obveeus...

Kids have a ton of cartoons to choose from these days. Advanced plots,
soundtracks, and toys to match what they see on TV. An almost wordless

telenovels...

If you say so. The huge ratings of Charlie Brown's Christmas seem to
disagree.

Obveeus...

You are kididng yourself if you think little kids sought out the Charlie
Brown specials on their own. The ratings are based upon adults tuning
in...and 'forcing' their kids to watch.

telenovels...

I doubt that. My mom never forced me to watch Charlie Brown. She'd
say, "Charlie Brown is on" and I'd say "Nah, I'll pass; I've already
seen it," and that was the end of that.

She didn't force me to sit and watch it.

cartoon with piano music just doesn't entertain them. Parents are buying
that stuff in the hopes of passing on the nostalgia to their kids, but the
kids themselves would much rather watch a pokemon cartoon.

Obveeus...

I have seen that show in the past. Last night I shut the TV off rasther
than be subjected to it again.

Obveeus...

Someone remind me, why is the word 'diluted' being used here?

Rob Jensen...

Because Berman doesn't understand that comparing Gg's ratings this
year on a new network with smaller national coverage with Gg's ratings
last year with larger national coverage is extremely problematic. He
conveniently ignores that all of the CW's shows that originated from
The WB are down by similar percentages, which isn't "dilution"
(watering down the viewership, dissipating the viewership), it's stil
the network changeover.

Frank Swarbrick...

I'm a bit confused. Why does the CW network have less national coverage
than the WB did? Seems to me that the CW should be in all the markets
where the WB was, with the addition of those markets where UPN was even
when the WB was not. Is this not the case?

Barnabas Collins...

Becuase some of the CW outlets are subchannels on an HDTV signal.
So when people like me ask Comcast how to get the subchannel,
the response from the people at Comast is "what is a subchannel?"

My understanding is if you take out the subchannels CW has an
85% penetration.

Rob Jensen...

My understanding is besides the digital subchannels there are areas
whose local CW station is regular-cable only and that market
penetration for analog-only stations is more like 80% at best, thus
accounting for the 20% declines across the board for CW shows that
originated on The WB.

Obveeus...

100% - 20% = 80%. So, logically, WB was available analog to every person in
the country last year.

Maybe your logic only works if people don't think about the math, don't have
any ability at all to find a digital subchannel, and more realistically:
don't think that the old WB shows are worth any effort to 'seek out'.

But heck, my area doesn't even *have* a local CW station, so I'm able
to get three different timezones of the CW through the CW's
superstations package.

-- Rob

Obveeus...

So, he isn't saying that the show is 'diluted', but that the show's ratings
are diluted? Weird.

Gg's ratings rose a half-million between last week and this week. With
no DwtS to contend with, the fairweather fans of Gg are finally
getting off their asses and finding the show again (and will likely
leave the show again when Idol starts up.) If Berman knew what he was

Obveeus...

Now, that is where I might be able to see the word 'diluted' used properly.
GG has X number of devoted fans. When DWtS or AI are on, only those X fans
watch regularly while the rest are soaking in the reality TV shows. Then,
when no reality TV is on, GG enjoys 'extra' viewers, casual viewers, diluted
viewership because of the added casuals.

talking about and were consistent in how he labels winner and losers,
Gg would clearly be in the Winners column this week.

-- Rob

Obveeus...

This was the 'season finale' of sorts, right? At least a first third season
finale mini-arc? So, basically everyone that is willing to watch the show

telenovels...

Good observation and it makes sense. If people saw pieces of the
mystery, they will want to tune-in to see the final conclusion. We'll
get 3 of these this year.

tuned in for the 'big ending'. I'd suggest thast VM has a peak audience
near 3.5 million. Maybe all CW needs to do is find a way to reach that peak
more than a couple times a year.

Obveeus...

I saw the first 2 episodes of this, but didn't bother last night. The male
characters are boring. The female characters are pretty much written in as
sidekick flirts with no value of their own. They need to pay more allention
to GA or ER and learn to make the female characters more valuable. Probably
too late, though, as this show should be cancelled soon.

Tuesday 11/28/06

Note: The following results are based on the fast national ratings
(Live Plus Same Day data)

-Total Viewers:
CBS: 12.77 million, Fox: 11.47, NBC: 10.17, ABC: 9.70, CW: 4.16

-Adults 18-49:
Fox: 4.6 rating/12 share, NBC: 3.6/ 9, ABC: 3.4/ 9, CBS: 3.3/ 9, CW:
1.9/ 5