Lost in this month's NBC latenight crisis coverage has been the rising power of cable in late night among young adults, particularly the success of Adult Swim.
The latenight sister to Cartoon Network, Adult Swim has averaged a 0.9 rating among adults 18-49 in the 11:30 p.m. hour season-to-date. That's just a tenth of a ratings point lower than O'Brien, Letterman and ABC's "Nightline," all of which are delivered a 1.0 rating in the demo in the fourth quarter of 2009.
Update: Commenter U.V. notes that it's mostly Family Guy reruns at 11:30p, and those reruns always seem to rank ahead of everything else. For the week ending 1/17, the best 11:30p airing of Family Guy averaged a 1.4 adults 18-49 rating between 11:30p-12a. It could be that Family Guy is beating Letterman in the 18-49 demographic, but unfortunately we don't have half hour data for "Late Show" (or "Tonight Show") to make those comparisons.
gnarley
Awesome and it’s why I don’t get people saying Conan working on projects for Adult Swin is a step down. They are up and coming and need more creative help to continue.
LOL — Robot Chicken is what we watch — much more entertaining
As I’ve said, there are just too many late night talk shows. It’s just not a special thing anymore, like it was when it was just 2 or 3 guys. Shows like Jimmy Kimmel that arrived late to the party and water down the comedy are the reason. He’s a plague on the excitement these shows used to garner. Please cancel him. He’s so unfunny and gross to look at.
That is impressive for cable!
Not to scuff the shine off this story (I normally watch [as] more often than any of the talk shows myself), but [as] consists of Family Guy reruns at 11 & 11:30 M-Th. Robot Chicken airs afterward at 12 on those nights, and Venture Bros. is a Sunday-only show.
So, it’s really Family Guy that is responsible for the nice number, isn’t it? Ultimately it’s still good news for CN/as, but it makes the headline seem slightly misleading. (Unless you consider “etc” your loophole)
U.V., good catch. While I think they were measuring the entire 11:30-12:30 hour, indeed, it’s the Family Guy reruns fueling those ratings. The 11:30 FGs rank ahead of either Robot Chicken or Venture Brothers in any of the rankings I’ve looked at (and we see that data pretty much weekly, lately).
I’ve updated the post and also added this: for the week ending 1/17, the best 11:30p airing of Family Guy averaged a 1.4 adults 18-49 rating between 11:30p-12a.
Imagine if Conan was a lead-in for Robot Chicken
Adult Swim does good work.
Yes, the fact that the Family Guy reruns do so well does prop up their numbers quite a bit (the FG reruns on [as] are allowed to show things that FOX won’t, so they get a whole new set of viewers).
But it is an example of how a properly scheduled network can help all of its shows do well. FG followed by Robot Chicken, and people are hooked for the night!
Maybe they can get Conan to host a renewed version of Space Ghost: Coast to Coast.
Adult Swim is pretty much what I always watch every night. I can’t remember the last time I watched one of the broadcast network’s late night shows.
Posted too quickly, I meant to add a question.
What are the ratings for the second half hour of O’Brien and Letterman (prior to the O’Brien/Leno drama)? We are talking so much about how Family Guy is main reason for the strong Adult Swim Ratings. But if you want to see how Robot Chicken is doing, you need to know how the second, less watched, halves of the talk shows perform.
Saruma, we do not normally see half hour breakdowns for The Tonight Show or Late Night, but in a single recent week we did see the second half hour fell 10% for the TS and 20% for LN. I wouldn’t be confident those exact % drops are consistent, but I’m sure some drop in the second half hour is typical.
They haven’t made enough Family Guys to prevent a loyal viewer from seeing the same ones over and over, and like most animated shows, they don’t get better with repeated viewing. But the real gold, in my opinion, on AdultSwim is in shows like Morel Orel, The Awesome Show, Tom Goes to the Mayor, and ( even tho again, too few shows so too many repeats ) the truly weird and weirdly vulgar AquaTeenHunger Force. I loved the one season of Xavier: Renegade Angel, and not ever having seen the Sims animation, I didn’t know it was open to charges of being a copycat. The truth is, sitting through the really juvenile stuff like RobotChicken and Squidbillies and Metalocalypse ( which grows on me somehow ) just to see the actually good stuff after midnight is too much for me except rare occasions. AdultSwim, like a lot of people, would rather go for the cheap shots than stuff truly provacative. ( Their overly-snarky pseudocontempt for their audience is also tiresome. ) But the basic points above are true: They push the envelope, like it or not, far more than late-night talk shows. Mediocre stand-up comics schmoozing, infomercials … or sshamelessly lockeroom, bathroom, possibly drug-laced humor … For me , its no coice at all.
I am an admirer of adult swim. Especially the Venture Brothers and Aqua Teen Hunger Force
If these shows were truly putting up gangbusters numbers, they wouldn’t constantly be trying to develop new ones that go bust.
Most of the Adult Swim hits are either repeats of shows from somewhere else, or spin-offs of other shows that are already established.
Plus animation is very difficult to do, so it’s not like this is an easy out for other networks.
And Adult Swim has created itself into a brand. Built off the back of Space Ghost, it slowly grew into a whole thing. But counter programming in another animation block has largely failed from competing networks.