New England Patriots safety Brandon Meriweather (31) strips the ball from Buffalo Bills cornerback Leodis McKelvin, center, for a fumble as New England Patriots linebacker Pierre Woods (58) helps with the tackle in the fourth quarter during an NFL football game Monday, Sept. 14, 2009, in Foxborough, Mass. The Patriots recovered the ball and went on to win 25-24. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
The Monday Night Football game on ESPN wound up going down to the wire and ended at 10:12pm on the east coast. That's millions of fans watching the game at the very end, some of them who might have flipped over to The Jay Leno Show at 10pm had the game ended sooner or if the game wasn't as close.
With less than six minutes in the game (and still well before 10pm ET), the Buffalo Bills had led 24-13 after scoring a touchdown.
But the Patriots came back. Tom Brady drove the Patriots to a score with two minutes and six seconds. A missed two point conversion made the score 24-19.
Then the Bills' Leodis McKelvin lost a fumble on the ensuing kickoff that was recovered by the Patriots deep in the Bills territory. Brady tossed another touchdown pass with 50 seconds remaining and the Patriots took the lead, this time for good, 25-24.
It all adds up to something that makes Disney smile just because. Just because the game could've been a blowout with people tuning out in spades in the fourth quarter. That didn't happen. And as a bonus, in the process, the Mouse got to stick it to the Peacocks a little bit when it came to Leno's debut.
I'm guessing the MNF game will average somewhere in the 15-18 million range. It's hard to compare numbers to last year, because last year the similar game was The Minnesota Vikings and Green Bay Packers which averaged 12.5 million. Neither team was the national draw that a Tom Brady led New England Patriots is. Brett Favre was already gone from the Packers, and while hard core sports enthusiasts tuned in to see how Aaron Rodgers would perform, it lacked Tom Brady style appeal, and tonight's game also marked Terrell Owen's regular season debut as a Buffalo Bill.
But even if tonight's game only averaged 12.5 million like last year's first Monday Night Football contest there still could've been as many as 25 million to 30 million watching the tail end of the game. I'd guess closer to 20 million, but even then, that's 20 million who weren't flipping over to Jay Leno at 10pm. Sure, not all of them were going to flip over, and some, like me, were on the west coast where it wasn't an issue anyway. But some who might otherwise have tuned to Leno...didn't.
If 6 million people who might have tuned to Leno just to catch the first ten minutes, that alone would lower The Jay Leno Show's hourly average by a million viewers. I'm not suggesting the game cost Leno that many viewers, that's just an easy example of the math. I will see if I can get some stats on the ESPN numbers from 10p-10:12pm (or at least 10p-10:15) to see if we can get a better idea of the potential impact.
Sadly we never see 15 minute detail for the preliminary overnight reports, so we will have to get a feel for how many people tuned in for the first ten minutes of The Jay Leno show and then tuned out from the 30 minute detail. Whatever the number who tuned in for the first 10 minutes or so, it's lower than it might have been had the Monday Night Football game gone differently.
MNF and Jay Leno are not targeting the same audience
Knope, I think that is largely true, and will be true next week or later this week. But for something like a majorly promoted premiere, it becomes an event where just due to the curiosity factor it bleeds over across multiple audience targets.
That’s why it’s a given that Leno’s numbers for tonight (and even this week) will be much larger than they are when it settles into its normal audience.
I disagree “Knope” I ended up recording it because i was watching the game and never watched any of the show live.
Thats why they invented the dvr.
I just sat through the entire miserable hour of the Leno show premiere (oh shut up, my dad was a fan of Leno’s Tonight Show) and oh my gawd, it was one of the most painfully boring and unfunny things I’ve ever seen. And I actually liked Leno on the Tonight Show. But this seems more like a lousy mash-up of variety acts with less time for the monologue and the funny bits he does between the monologue and guest segment.
I actually turned to my dad at one point and said “This show is going to tank” (he didn’t agree).
Robert — I see what you’re saying. What I was thinking is that older audiences would tune in no matter what, and the younger, more tech-savvy age brackets would end up DVRing it or streaming it. So for me, the audience stays no matter what. It just gets spread through different avenues.
It hurts being a bills fan. I’d rather it have been a blowout like they were predicting. I wouldn’t have been disappointed because I wasn’t expecting them to win, then in the last 5 minutes, I was expecting them to win, and they didn’t. And it sucked. And I missed Leno.
I shouldn’t have expected any less from “Lets get our fans hopes up, just so we can disappoint them” Bills. 4-0 start last season just to finish 7-9. MNF in Dallas, intercepting Romo 4 times to lose on two 50+ yard field goals. 4 Super bowl losses in a row including Scott Norwood. The losing end of the Music City Miracle. The list goes on.
On topic: Yeah I think it made a difference in Leno’s ratings. You can count me as lost viewer. But Leno goes up against MNF for the full hour for the rest of the season so it wasn’t really Leno’s viewers to grab.
Indeed, because of Kickoff week there was an MNF game at 7pm along with a game at 10:20. Typically, the games start at 8:30 and will be on at 10pm no matter what.
I was looking at it only in terms of the premiere episode of the Jay Leno Show, which I consider a special event. And although streaming and DVR are nice, DVRs aren’t available in 66% of the homes in the USA, and most people still watch most of their TV on their TVs.
Though I’m sure it won’t be long before NBC will be working views of videos on thejaylenoshow.com into the press releases.
There was also some nonnegligible baseball, right? Rockies vs. Giants for the NL wild card pitted, what, the No. 16 DMA vs. No. 6?
Boris, the #6 market is spread out over a very wide area. Much of it is not “Giants Country” and even where it is, I’m sad to say I think the audience for Giants/Rockies was probably negligible.
Even with a pennant race and even with Lincecum pitching a great game, tge Giants being 4.5 games behind in the race before the game probably didn’t help. I’d bet local viewing for the Raiders/Chargers game dwarfed Giants/Rockies in the Bay area.
Robert,
Are there numbers for the total audience for online viewing? While I agree, the majority of people watch TV on TV nowadays, there are many 18-30ish who only watch the shows online via hulu, nbc.com, thedailyshow.com, colbertnation.com, etc. I would exclude cbs.com from the other streaming platforms, just because they take so long to post new shows.
I thought when I saw CBS streaming the NCAA tourney a couple years ago, that they would embrace the internet revolution–but they seem reluctant.
Are the internet rating systems just not worthy tabulating, or do they do this and its just such a small amount that its not included with say Neilson ratings?
1) It’s Aaron Rodgers, not Rogers.
2) Don’t talk smack about the Green Bay Packers. Any one who claims the Packers “aren’t a national draw,” frankly, should never be listened to.
I personally would have given Leno a look to see what the new format was like had the game not gone long; but I doubt the cumulative effect will result in anything more than a .1 drop in the demo.
@Jon: The guys recently ran the numbers on which teams draw the biggest non-local viewership (spoiler: it’s those damn Cowboys), if they say GB isn’t as much of a national draw as the Patriots, they have the Nielsen numbers to back it up.
Given the numbers Leno got last night, I don’t see how he lost.
Chuck, this was guesswork in the middle of the night on Monday. And I’m sure the football game overrun did take some viewers from Jay, but it’s impossible to know how many with the data we will see.
Well I wonder if Jay Leno’s new show will be enough to save NBC from their last place rating http://www.newsy.com/videos/death_of_the_american_actor