The other day Broadcasting & Cable ran a story about how not all of the local NBC affiliates are pissed off about The Jay Leno Show being a bad lead-in for their local 11pm news. For all the yammering about how bad it is, it was interesting to see an article that at least attempted some balance. And OK, sure, it was before a series-low 1.2 adults 18-49 rating on Friday night (people must've been working on their Halloween costumes - sadly that excuse didn't make it on the fan excuses for low ratings BINGO cards), but it came after Leno losing (badly) against repeats of CBS dramas at 10pm -- an area where Leno was supposed to do better.
Some of the affiliates are clearly willing to take a wait-and-see approach, at least publicly, while they wait for shorter days and bad weather:
"I'm still optimistic," says WKYC Cleveland President/General Manager Brooke Spectorsky. "It's still early-we haven't gotten the time change yet, and we haven't had the awful weather. It's always dangerous to make a statement before the weather gets ugly."
[...]
WKYC's 10 p.m. hour is off a little more than 10% compared to last year, says Spectorsky, but all-important late news is pretty much flat. WJAR Providence has seen late news off in the single digits, but VP/General Manager Lisa Churchville suspects that's more about her prime lead-in butting up against Major League Baseball.
"We're getting nice numbers [for Leno]," she says. "We're not dissatisfied."
NBC affiliates board chairman Michael Fiorile, sounding weary of addressing the Leno effect, says the affiliate group is not panicking. "It's early," he says. "We'll look at it when November's over. If it improves the way we hope it will, we're in it for the long haul. If not, we'll take a look."
Did Daylight Savings Time make it to any of the bingo cards? Because the affiliates totally count as disgruntled fans!
I didn’t put Daylight Savings Time into the mix for the bingo cards, but there will be a v3 someday and I will add:
It was Daylight Savings Time.
It wasn’t Daylight Savings Time.
Ask and ye shall receive.
Thanks for posting this. It’s the most interesting story of the season to watch for me. I’d love to see some hard local news numbers for the season eventually.
Jay averaged a 1.4 this week–below what NBC’s minimum guarantee was to advertisers, a 1.5, and well below what they said would be a “home run” for them, a 1.8.
I’d say his days are numbered. Heck, his contract may even be bought out if the Comcast deal goes through.
I don’t think Leno getting series-low numbers on a Friday is really any cause for concern, I mean it is Friday after all. The 1.3 on Monday is what I’d be crapping my pants over if I was an affiliate, and this came out after that.
Nice to see there are some affiliates who at least *try* to be optimistic.
Lynn, where did you get that a 1.5 demo rating was a minimum guarantee to advertisers for the Leno show? Not here, and I’ve never read that.
Feel free to post a link in the comments, so we can judge the credibility of the source.
Here’s a link, Bill, to Bill Carter at the New York Times:
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/leno-loses-to-a-cbs-rerun/
Here’s another NY Times link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/business/media/12nbc.html?hpw
Here’s a link where it’s reference in the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2009/10/09/DI2009100903476.html
Here’s an article from the Associated Press that mentions it:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hAJNIGmFfSwvALcrAVuCjgDoGaSAD9BAET1O3
Well here is a link to the 1.5 demo minimum. Don’t know how legit it is but I read at some other sites (I forget) a while back. I’ll have to look for them.
http://blogs.ajc.com/radio-tv-talk/2009/10/28/what-are-your-favorite-new-shows-so-far/
It contains the paragraph,
“NBC: Clearly, no “ER” or “Friends” in the horizon. “The Jay Leno Show” is barely holding its own at 10 p.m. Reviews have been brutal and many nights it’s not even able to get a 1.5 rating among 18 to 49 year olds, the minimum the network has promised to advertisers.”
Lynn, re: first Bill Carter link 1.5 = acceptable, not “minimum guaranteed to advertisers”WaPo link is “1.5 to be profitable”
second Bill Carter link & AP link do say guaranteed to advertisers. I will either blame my memory or bad reading skills for missing those.
Edit: OK, to move the discussion past either my bad memory or incomplete reading skills, let’s assume a 1.5 demo was what advertisers paid for.
Assuming that, guaranteed to advertisers means that the advertisers will get make good time later if Leno doesn’t deliver the demo eyeballs they were promised.
Plenty of shows will be giving make goods to advertisers this season. I can pretty much guarantee that Desperate Housewives and CSI among others are delivering less than was promised too.
It’s not a good situation, but it doesn’t mean the show gets shut down. There is zero chance Leno goes away prior to next Fall. Zero.
I wouldn’t begin to guess what the likelihood is of a change is even then. I would guess things become clearer by this spring, but maybe not even then.
Bill, last sentence in the first link:
“He averaged a 1.6 rating in the 18-49 group, just barely above the 1.5 number it guaranteed advertisers the show would reach.”
Also Bill, based on NBC saying that a 1.5 is the minimum NBC would consider “acceptable” for Jay, then anything below that, by definition, is “unacceptable.” And shows with “unacceptable” ratings don’t typically get renewed–especially when they’re causing a network’s parent company to want to sell off controlling interest in said network : )
1.5 is the guaranteed minimum rating. That means anything below that and advertisers get money back and that is unacceptable. Lynn is 100% right. Problem for NBC is that they did not expect to reach 1.5 so quickly. NBC projected higher for the first 20 weeks. Even still NBC is not going to cancel Leno this season.
NBC claimed that 1.5 would mean $300 mil in profit. While 1.4 means less profit, I highly doubt that that .1 is going to make the difference between $300 mil profit and break-even or less.
The 10 PM time period on NBC will never go back to five different scripted shows per week. Period. Whether or not it’s Jay Leno in there or something else is up to them.
Ryan, I wouldn’t be too sure about that. Gaspin claims NBC is no longer managing for margins.
There will be at least one Dateline in the post-Jay 10 p.m. hour so there won’t be five dramas in the timeslot Monday-Friday.
Leno’s days are numbered as soon as they find a way out of this without losing face they will take it. I personally am leaning towards them keeping him for 1 or 2 days a week but that’s purely a guess on my part.
He’s doomed because he’s not performing like they bragged he would and the bottomline is that with Leno in the lineup five days a week NBC will never be number 1 and as soon as the guard changes at NBC that will be the goal and they will have to boot Leno to get there.