Posted on 04/30/2008 11:17:19 AM PDT by abb
Many top shows are back but ratings continue to fall
By Toni Fitzgerald Apr 30, 2008
The writers’ strike is long over, but broadcast ratings have yet to return to their pre-strike levels.
A number of shows have fallen to season or series lows following their return after the strike, and most are down from last fall.
It’s a pattern seen across every network as the May sweeps kick off.
Last week ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Ugly Betty” posted their second-lowest ratings in adults 18-49, averaging a 6.5 and 2.5, respectively, in their first original outings since January.
Fox’s “American Idol” had one of its worst Tuesday outings of the past five years, averaging a 9.0, after posting its lowest in five years the previous week.
CBS’s “CSI” also hit a series-low 4.6, as did NBC’s “My Name is Earl” at 2.3 and, for the third straight week, the network’s veteran “ER,” which averaged a 2.9.
CW stalwarts such as “America’s Next Top Model” and “Beauty and the Geek” have dipped as well compared with last fall.
Further, every network was down compared with the same week last year. Collectively, the Big Five averaged an 11.9 rating for the week ended April 27, off 20 percent from a 14.9 the same week a year ago.
Some of that is certainly attributable to lingering effects of the strike.
Fox, which was off 26 percent year to year, was without “House” and “24,” two of its highest-rated scripted shows, while NBC was missing “Heroes,” which won’t return till fall. CBS’s “Shark” and “The Unit” didn’t come back until last night.
But there’s another, more subtle strike effect that may be at play here as well, accounting for much more of the drop off. That’s the lack of urgency among viewers to tune into the shows as they return. While certainly some have jumped back into their old viewing patterns, it appears a goodly share gravitated to other outlets like cable or video games or the internet and have not returned.
Some may not know that their favorite shows are back, or they may not know where to find them, with hits like “House” and ABC’s “Lost” having gotten new timeslots.
But it also appears more and more viewers are time-shifting, recording shows to view at a later date or viewing them online after their original airing. DVR penetration in the Nielsen sample has shot up by more than 50 percent compared with this time last year and now accounts for 24 percent of households.
That seems to be born out by live-plus-seven-day-playback numbers, released two weeks after live-plus-same-day weekly data. “Housewives’” April 13 return from hiatus, for example, grew to a 6.5 rating, up 10 percent from its live-plus-same-day-playback rating.
The Internet will squeeze inefficiencies out of advertising. Just as automation did in manufacturing and IT in business processes. 4/30/08
Posted by Steve Boriss in AdAgencies.
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For about a century, one of the most inefficient functions in U.S. business has been advertising. Legendary department store founder John Wanamaker captured this frustration best in his famous remark “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” The primary beneficiaries of these inefficiencies have been ad agencies, many of whom (and let’s be honest) have earned a great deal of money for not much work and with even less accountability. With fees typically based on a percentage of ad spending rather than on actual business results, agencies have had the perverse incentive to encourage higher and higher programming production costs, and higher and higher ad rates to cover them. So, it is understandable that ad agencies have not been all that anxious to push their clients toward the Internet, which threatens to end these cozy deals.
But perhaps ad agencies are finally beginning to accept the inevitable, at least based upon what the NY Times witnessed at at a recent leadership conference of the American Association of Advertising Agencies. Attendees listened intently to the nation’s top agency executives, who berated the industry and urged them to “stop wallowing in self-pity and get on with the challenges ahead.” They even listened to Google CEO Eric Schmidt paint a rosy picture of underappreciated opportunities the new environment will create, something that will not ring true to the audience, but most certainly is. U.S. manufacturing has become more efficient by opening its doors to automation, and U.S. business practices did the same through IT. Advertising will now take its turn, and the U.S. economy will be the better for it.
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