Ten weeks into the new season, the networks are holding their own -- and with some help from sports, could be headed for their first year-over-gains in some time.
According to Nielsen's "most current" season-to-date estimates, the English-language broadcast nets combined are flat or up a tick in all key ratings categories vs. last year.
via Variety.
Reading that you'd think that ratings were probably OK, and, of course, that's what Variety, always the suck up, wants you to think.
It's true that if you combine all the broadcast networks together things are nearly even vs. last year, but the problem with that sort of sloppy (or intentionally fuzzy) analysis is that Fox is the only network up vs. last season and all the rest are down!
Here are the year over year % changes in season to date adults 18-49 primetime ratings (on a "most current"* basis) through week 10 of the season.
Fox +18.3%
CBS -2.7%
ABC -5.9%
NBC -7.7%
Does that indicate "holding their own" to you? Take off any rose colored glasses before answering.
Of course, expect this spring to see something similar from Variety, because NBC's average will be boosted massively by two weeks of the Winter Olympics. That will likely lift NBC above last years averages, and might be enough to boost English broadcast networks as a whole above last years averages, but does it really indicate a break in the long term trend of broadcast declines?
And note that you can't just average those four numbers together to get an overall average since Fox only programs 15 hours of primetime, while the other 3 program 22 hours.
Note: The CW wasn't mentioned in the Variety piece, so I am assuming their numbers weren't included. For the record, the CW's most current 18-49 ratings are up 8.4% this season, but that is entirely due to them dropping Sunday from their schedule, all of their returning shows are down in the ratings.
* "most current" ratings are mostly Live+7 day ratings which include DVR viewing within 7 days, plus Live + Same Day ratings for the most recent 2 weeks. Unfortunately you cannot compare them directly to the season to date ratings we typically report, since those are all Live+Same Day.
Actually, given how awful Sunday was for the CW, I think you guys were predicting something like a 20% increase awhile ago, right?
How do the winter olympics perform ratings wise when compared to the summer olympics?
Godfather, what I wrote was that just by staying even with last seasons M-F ratings, CW’s average would go up 20%. But I didn’t exactly predict it.
The fact they’re not up 20% in their average indicates that their M-F numbers are, on average, down. In specific, each of their returning shows is down, but I don’t have the individual numbers handy.
tdot, I have some old olympics numbers I will look up, but that will have to wait until later.
Rupert Murdoch is one scary dude. Be afraid America. Be very afraid.
what do they know? variety… ha. what is that? some fly by night organization. losers i tell ya. losers sitting at home in their jammies on the internets all the time.
why does this flippin sight want broadcast networks to fail? bunch of losers. lol get a life.
The kids don’t want em, and they don’t want the adults. Its a sad story.
Data was probably right when he said TV died in the early part of this century *g*
tdot, unfortunately the olympics numbers I have don’t include the most recent ones, my Winter numbers end with 2002, and summer with 2004, but looking at the closest year pairs, Winter Olympics seem to have both higher primetime and higher total household ratings than the nearest Summer Olympics, but there is wide variability so I am hesitant to say Winter always > Summer. I also have no demographic group ratings.
The 2002 Salt Lake Olympics averaged a 12.6 HH rating overall, and a 19.2 HH rating in primetime.
yourmom, so pointing out where Variety is factually wrong is wishing broadcast TV an early death? Surely you aren’t under the impression that just because Variety says everything is great that suddenly the balance sheets will agree, right?
thanks! wow I would’ve thought it would be the other way around
Why can’t sports ratings be included in the aggregate number for all the broadcaster. Doesn’t the baseball World Series take place every year, excluding a world war. Even the frigging Olympics happens every other year. There is no way that any big sporting event will ever be ghettoed to a cable channel. And it’s a zero-sum game. This year, the World Series on Fox was hot, so it took viewers away from the other networks. Also, considering that NBC has Leno on every weeknights, and the aggregate number for the broadcaster did not crash, that’s not bad. Okay, so another way to interpret the Leno non-effect is that NBC is already at subterranean level to begin with, so never mind that.
Bill, you along with too many people in the media are too bias for cable TV. In the future we will look back on this time and see it as the zenith of cable TV, the week when a cable company buys a broadcast network/production studio. It’s the same as when Viacom bought Paramount. Viacom was a movie theater chain and they wanted some control over the product that drives their business. Comcast knows its business model is getting stamped with an ever nearer expiration date by the internet. A smartphone on the wireless internet is the perfect replacement for the traditional boob tube. You wouldn’t want to use the iPhone to work on Excel, Word or Illustrator. On the other hand, a smartphone is perfect for mindless entertainment.
Another reason why I think cable may be peaking is that the DTV transition is done. This year many people were confused, bamboozled and surrendered themselves into subscribing to pay-TV rather than choosing a new TV (ATSC? NTSC?) or a converter box and deal with antenna problems.
Kozy, Bill has no bias towards cable, and neither do I. At the end of the day there is a lot more interest in the broadcast shows here than the cable shows, so if anything our editorial bias favors the broadcasters.
Bill just has a bias against Variety sometimes serving as the broadcast nets PR department and it irks him so much that it produces mostly snarky pieces rather than more purely “thoughtful” examinations.
Of course sports should and will continue to be included. CBS will pickup some year over year gains due to the Super Bowl (and NBC will be briefly impacted the other way before the olympics). The problem isn’t that they shouldn’t be included, it’s that they make any year over year comparisons more difficult.
FOX definitely benefited over last year with a.) The Yankees in the World Series and ALCS and b.) one extra game in the World Series vs. last year, but its gains are not exclusively due to baseball. And I’m not sure I agree that it’s completely a zero sum game with sports events. Particularly with the bigger events there are definitely people tuning in who wouldn’t have otherwise been watching TV. It would be great to have specific data on that handy, but sadly I do not.
Kozy, the problem with sports is that their ratings are dependent on outside factors. Fox isn’t way up this season because they made smart programming choices. They are up because they lucked out with which teams made it to the World Series. Next fall they will be up or down for the same reason.
Have you ever tried actually watching a show on your iPhone? Maybe you enjoy that, but even I have higher standards than that, and I watch everything on my 13″ laptop screen.
tdot, Bill,
The difference in ratings between 2002 and 2004 could have been because of location; the ’02 winter games were in Salt Lake City, Utah while the ’04 summer games were in Athens, Greece.
That’s a big time differential and a lot of events probably got time delayed.
I’d bet the location of the Olympiad is more indicative of the US ratings than whether they are summer or winter.
Julia, a complete aside, but I really enjoy watching shows on the iPhone providing I’m in a circumstance where it can comfortably be held a couple of feet my face. I don’t really have a problem with the screen size and because of the the earbuds I’m more immersed with less possibility for distraction.
Kozy, I have no problem including the World Series or the Super Bowl or any other annual event in an annual examination of overall broadcast network performance, but adding the Winter Olympics into the annual averages to demonstrate a point about overall broadcast network annual performance is silly. Yet, be certain the entertainment press will do exactly that.
And to Robert’s point about CBS ratings average benefiting from the Super Bowl, that’s true, but overall (4 or 5 network total) broadcast averages year to year performance will only be affected by any *change* in Super Bowl ratings, which are likely to be relatively small.
Matt, very good points, and please do not take my note about Olympics as being comprehensive or particularly predictive, I looked at a bunch of old numbers and made a rough guess about Summer vs. Winter overall.
The truth is that FOX finally made an effort this year, and it paid off. Personally, I watch no shows on FOX at all, but if they have made an increase in the category of broadcasters then it is still a factual statement. To me, it’s like when ABC announces that DH is Sunday’s #1 entertainment scripted series, a true statement, but the reader has to understand the context of what is being said. Maybe gains will not be permanent, maybe they will, but I didn’t see any claim that they would be. It says 10-weeks in. It doesn’t say all networks are up. That’s not sucking up, that’s reporting a fact. If gains on Disney, USA and Bravo outweigh losses on MTV, TVLand and Lifetime, then you would still report that cable is up overall.
Indeed barring two undefeated teams going into the Super Bowl it’s hard to see this year’s Super Bowl having much better ratings than last year’s record-breaking ratings. Though even without an undefeated team or two, there are enough story lines where setting a new record is very possible. Whatever the SB pulls it certainly will visibly help CBS in any y/y comparisons, but it will not do much if anything to any combined network average.