You can listen to a short piece from yesterday's NPR Morning Edition where I talked a bit about the current competitive position between NBC and ABC with the incredibly dulcid-toned Neda Ulaby. As short as it was, I wanted to expand on the point in a post.
Neda highlighted how badly NBC did last week when it didn't place a single show in the top 25 for average viewership. I agreed that wasn't good, but show by show comparisons sometimes miss the big picture.
The networks get paid by advertisers based on their adults 18-49 ratings, and its that overall average that determines their overall advertising revenue. Breaking that up into show by show comparisons can be interesting for its own purposes, but the overall average is what matters for the network's overall revenue.
On that basis, ABC did as badly as NBC did last week, as each averaged a 2.1 adults 18-49 rating. No question that a 2.1 average weekly rating in mid-March is bad news for both. Another point I tried to make in the interview was that it's a pretty safe bet that with Dancing with the Stars returning next week that ABC will bounce off those weekly lows (how high is another matter), but NBC really has nothing left in the tank this spring. No big show left to boost ratings. My guess is that a 2.1 weekly rating will not be NBC's lowest point of the spring.
“Dulcet,” man, dulcet. “Dulcid” makes it sound like she was gobbling Tums or something.
After listening to the short piece, I'm convinced that NBC is more doomed than planet Earth on History channel.
I heard this in my car on the way to work yesterday morning, and was like, hey that's the guy…
You know, here's something that's forgotten in the 18-49 shuffle:
Where are the sports programs for ABC?
Think about it. NBC has Sunday Night Football and the Olympics. FOX has football the World Series. CBS has NCAA and the Super Bowl.
Where's ABC's big sports event? They don't have one. And, since sports events are the biggest ratings winners, that's probably hurting their averages.
ABC's biggest sports event is the NBA finals.
Monday Night Football is on ESPN which also has the BCS going forward. To the tune of $5 billion in carriage fee revenue, I doubt the Mouse is sweating it. It's more likely that Disney will have ESPN continue to buy up events (possibly the Olympics?) and attempt to keep raising its fees rather than worry about boosting ABC's seasonal averages.
Well they did get the Oscars right? They seem to like to ship off all the sporting events to ESPN. But don't they run some of the Nascar races?.
It's not a weekly event, like Sunday Night Football or Baseball Playoffs, with lots of primetime viewing, or the most watched TV event in The Super Bowl.
Robert, you just helped my point. NBA finals are in early June, end of the season. I know ABC doesn't put on many sports, because of ESPN, but I'm sure the season to date ratings would be closer for the other networks to ABC if you dropped sporting events from all of them. ABC wouldn't look nearly as bad then.
Don't get me wrong, I agree completely that ABC is having a bad year, but I think the situation is exacerbated by having no major sports programs to air. ABC wouldn't be in nearly as bad shape if they still had MNF on or another big sports event.
While I definitely agree ABC is hurting more than the mainstream media is interested in writing about, to some degree it's much more calculated by Disney than it is at NBC Universal.
Because of that, though results are starting to look similar, I don't view the results in exactly the same way. NBC has some good cable networks, but it doesn't have a big sports network and ESPN is so big relative to the rest of the cable channels in terms of subscription revenue the difference that makes in the discussion is a big deal.
Disney has already floated the “eh, let ABC rot for all we care” balloon by way of “We might spin ABC off from Disney” comments: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6294LU201…
That's ABC's choice. no one is forcing them to ship off sporting events like Nascar to ESPN. Plus other than the Super Bowl(which Robert and Bill already show the ratings for CBS with and without it) what do/did they have.
I think Disney is stripping ABC of all the big sporting events for 2 reasons:
1) as was started before, they can get huge carriage fees for ESPN. I'm sure those carriage fees bring in more profit then if ABC were to have those events.
2) I really think Disney is ready to sell ABC off to whoever is willing to buy it. So it would make sense for them to keep the big events on a network that they don't want to unload. Disney sees the writing on the wall for Broadcast TV, and it's not pretty.
I guess the difference is that what's happening to ABC was expected then, since Disney isn't as high on it (and who would be, Broadcast TV is in trouble). NBC is crashing even though their parent corporation actually is trying “harder.” That about right? Thanks for the link by the way.
One has to wonder what ABC will do to resurrect itself then, or even if it will gain enough support to. Given that Comcast owns NBCU now, I imagine they'll give the network as much support as they reasonably can. So is NBC's long term outlook actually better, since they have a more supportive parent, than ABC's is?
Robert do you have any idea how much revenue ABC Television represents to Disney? I know for example NBC television is only if I recall about 5 percent of NBCU's entire revenue profile so while the network itself might have a high profile, revenue wise it seems inconsequential.
in 2009, revenue from the cable networks was $10.555 billion and for ABC it was $5.816 billion cable has been much bigger than broadcast for a while, though cable revenues are growing and broadcasts have been pretty flat. Disney's total revenue for '09 was $36.149 billion
I really don't believe Comcast gives a crap about NBC Television and it's pretty obvious where the attention the past 5 plus years have been in terms of development and growth for NBCU.Disney not only has ESPN but ABC Family has grown a lot also. Look at the film rights purchased for The Blind Side and Alice in Wonderland. It certainly wasn't for ABC but ABC Family. But no different than NBCU acquiring the rights to the Oceans movies and Bourne movies for USA and News Corp who owns Fox acquiring the rights to show Avatar in 2012 on FX not on Fox.
I agree, I think ABC will easily be next years target, its failed to launch strong 10/9c central shows these past two seasons and I doubt fall 2010 will have much difference (maybe Castle will be up but I know Private Practice will be down). While NBC will easily be up (most likely leading growth next TV season) due to the fact that beating Jay Leno's performance will be extremely easy, ABC will be down for a multitude of reasons. The continual falling ratings of Grey's Anatomy and Desperate Housewives will continue to pull the network down (and did so this year aswell – 20% for DH so far!), along with the fact that Private Practice and Brothers & Sisters will fall as a result, they are also loosing Lost so thats another punch to the gullet. There only hope lies in the fact the they launch some huge hit next season at thursday 8/7c or Tuesday 8/7c, which I doubt will happen.
Just want to point out something:
How many sports programs has ABC broadcast this year? It hasn’t had The Olympics, the Super Bowl, or The World Series, and football is on ESPN now. Sports are clearly boosting averages for the other 3 networks, ABC doesn’t have that. And Sports Programs are the biggest ratings winners for networks. Where are ABC’s?
I think ABC had high hopes for one of their SciFy shows hitting it big like Lost has. But none have the creative forces behind them the level of a JJAbrams. Plus Lost is just unique. I might have enjoyed Flashforward has it been better written and executed properly but I found the show very sloppy and the characters pretty unappealing for the most part. And V like Eastwick is a retread and I hate remakes of any kind. Sorry V fans.
Katie-Kat, I think V will do really well after Lost. Why? It appeals to the same audience. It also has Elizabeth Mitchell. Also, they have a new showrunner Scott Rosenbaum who seems to know what hes doing.
Nothing has done well after Lost. And lots of shows have good showrunners. Heroes does or at least did. No one can say Parenthood doesn't nor Friday Night Lights yet those shows didn't gain universal acceptance. Parenthood still may who knows but who's better than Ron Howard for this kind of show. Personally i was not impressed with V the first time. But I will say it has had more promotion than FastForward did and in theory, is in a weaker timeslot. Of course allegedly Parenthood had a ton of promotion with a good lead in and see what happened there so who knows.
Nothing has done well after Lost.
Fair enough, but what you aren't taking into account is that ABC has never had anything that flowed well with Lost. Lost is an oddball show on a network filled with soapy dramas and dramedies. V isn't a perfect fit for Lost either, but it's still Sci-fi and it stars one of Lost's most popular actresses. I think of everything that ABC has put behind Lost, V has the best shot as taking advantage of that lead-in.