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Dirty Sexy Money: Renew or Cancel?

October 31st, 2007 by Bill Gorman

UPDATE: ABC has announced that Dirty Sexy Money will Return in Fall 2008

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I always thought the can’t miss formula was Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll. Instead, ABC tries the similar forumula of Sex and Money and Scandal with Dirty Sexy Money at 10PM Eastern Wednesday.

Once again we ask, Renew or Cancel?

Dirty Sexy Money’s Audience & Rank among New Shows, New ABC Shows

Date Audience, Live+SD (million) Rank among all New Shows Rank among New ABC Shows
9/26 10.44 #5 of 20 #2 of 3
10/3 9.61 #5 of 23 #3 of 6
10/10 8.64 #6 of 24 #4 of 7
10/17 8.67 #5 of 24 #5 of 8
10/24 8.26 #8 of 26 #5 of 8

Dirty Sexy Money has lost just over 20% of it’s debut audience through 10/24 but seems to have stabilized.

It’s total Live+SD audience has been above average compared to other new shows, but has slipped to #5 among new ABC shows.

For the week of Oct 22-28 it was #15 of 22 for all viewers and #13 of 22 for 18-49 viewers for ABC.

How is it doing against its competition on Wednesday?

Dirty Sexy Money’s Rankings for its 10pm Wednesday Timeslot.

Date Viewers Adults 18-49 Adults 18-34 Adults 25-54
9/26 #2 #3 #2 #3
10/3 #2 #2 #1 #2
10/10 #2 #2 #1 #2
10/17 #2 #2 #2 #2
10/24 #2 #2 #2 #2

Dirty Sexy Money has settled into the #2 viewer and demo viewer position on Wednesday at 10PM against the competition of CSI:NY and Life. For demo viewers, that’s pretty easy competition, since CSI:NY is a weak demo performer.

Dirty Sexy Money’s Lead-In Audience Lost from Private Practice.

Date Lead-In Audience Lost
9/26 -28%
10/3 -23%
10/10 -31%
10/17 -27%
10/24 -29%

Dirty Sexy Money has the enviable position of following Private Practice, this season’s second hottest new show. Sadly, it loses a very significant share [~30%] of the audience from Private Practice in the process. That’s a big negative, and indicates to me that in a different schedule slot, Dirty Sexy Money wouldn’t look nearly as good.

Conclusions

Negatives

  1. Very significant audience lead-in loss from Private Practice.

Positives

  1. Above average performance for all new shows in general.
  2. Solid #2 demo viewer position in its timeslot.
  3. Decent performance among ABC shows for viewers and demo viewers.

11/17 UPDATE: ABC has granted a full season order for Dirty Sexy Money. Not clear how that’s going to be filled with the writers strike on, but fans can hope.

Verdict: Renew.

However, I think it’s an obvious beneficiary of schedule position, and were it or Private Practice to be moved, I could see it getting hit hard.

Note from Seidman: I disagree with Bill (shock, I know!) about the importance of lead-in. The one benefit a good lead-in has is that the next show can be promoted heavily during the airing of the lead-in. Otherwise, since the dawn of everyone having a remote control, I believe this is a statistic that doesn’t have much value at all.

Back when we had to get up off our lazy butts to change the channel, lead-in was a huge deal. Now? I doubt it. That there is still Nielsen focus on this metric seems like mostly legacy thinking.

I don’t see Dirty Sexy Money benefiting greatly from its Private Practice lead-in, and think it would fare about the same elsewhere in the schedule other than on Friday/Saturday. I think it would do even better following Desperate Houswives, not because of the bigger lead-in, but because the shows are more similar. I like this show mostly because of the cast, especially Donald Sutherland. He’s creepy cool.

Wondering about other shows? Check our all our Renew or Cancel? posts.

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Nielsen TV Ratings Data: ©2007 Nielsen Media Research, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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