I know tomorrow’s April Fool’s day, so I’m writing this tonight so nobody thinks it’s a trick.  While most of the Jericho faithful have been very understanding of my writing, but some  attacked me as an American Idol, Biggest Loser reality TV loving goon (I don’t watch either show).

Back in the day I did enjoy Survivor, say circa 200-2002.  Though almost everything I watch these days besides sports and shows about sports is in the realm of scripted television, there is one exception.  The truth is I do know how I’m going to fill the void in my Tuesday schedule now open, is in fact with a reality show: Hell’s Kitchen, with a new season premiere Tuesday night at 9pm. 

I first came across it a couple of years ago when it was in its second season.  Somebody told me that I’d probably like it because the Chef (Gordon Ramsay) was more or less what I’d liked to have been in some alternate universe.  Someone who could a.) actually cook well and b.) gets paid to yell, scream and curse at people on television.  I had to check it out.

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Frank Foster wrote a great column over on MediaPost’s TV BOARD on Nielsen and how it’s time for something new.  He concluded the piece, ‘The King is Dead. Long Live the King!‘ with this:

I know it sounds ominous, but a solution inspired by the French exists. Storm the Bastille! If we simply admit that the king is no longer working for the good of the people, we can toss the family lineage in favor of a more righteous king. Or better yet, we could conduct a search for a new research company who will work without outrageously expensive, long term, staggered contracts. After all, recent events point to the obvious; the current king is only in it for the money. And last I checked, he’s not dead yet - he just wants to go public.

It was a very thoughtful piece and I recommend reading the whole thing, and I’m not saying that just because I was born on Bastille Day!   But it really got me thinking about things.   It is about the money.  But not just for Nielsen, but ABC, CBS, NBC etc, and for the advertisers too.

I think about systems of things and why things stay the same and don’t change even when there are many voices seemingly screaming for change.  I always bet on inertia.  

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Our Renew or Cancel? posts have been on hiatus since the new fall shows went dormant. Now we’ve got some data on the spring shows as well, and it’s time to look at the numbers and take some guesses on who’s coming back next fall and who’s going away permanently.

I’m going to do this on a network by network basis, so that the different shows that are in question can be looked at vs. their competition both outside and inside their own network.

In the spirit of the NCAA basketball tournament, the shows “On the Bubble” for CBS are fan favorites Jericho (Update: on 3/21/08, CBS announced it would not renew Jericho), Moonlight and Cane 5/13 Update: Both Cancelled.. Let’s take a look at their chances for being renewed or cancelled.

UPDATE: Go here to see the 2008 Fall Schedule for CBS.

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Lifetime’s Movie “Wisegal” has 372,000 DVR Viewers

For the week of March 10-16, 2008, Lifetime’s Saturday movie Wisegal was the top cable time-shifted show with an increase of 11.3% over its Live audience in its Live+7 viewing audience. It also had the largest time-shifted audience of 372,000 viewers. Neither of those are particularly high numbers for cable time-shifting, but most of the regular cable time-shifting powers were absent this week. This does mark the first time, in my recollection, that a Lifetime network show has been at the top of any of our lists.

USA’s House had an increase of 9.4% and 269,000 time-shifted viewers to place second in terms of % increase from DVR viewing, although it was bested for absolute time-shifted viewers by the three WWE Raw episodes. Filling out the top 10 were three episodes of WWE Raw, two iCarlys, a Back at the Barnyard, and a Spongebob Squarepants.

Top 20 Most Time-shifted Cable Shows, March 10-16, 2008:

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Reaper Has A 32% Increase From Time-Shifting

For the week of March 10-16, the spring season return episode of Reaper’s audience increased by 32.0% over the 2.256 million that watched it Live giving it a Live+7 audience of 2.978 million making it the leading broadcast show for % increase in viewing via DVR.

Lost had its audience increase by 30.6% over its Live airing placing it second for the week. Rounding out the top 1o were Smallville, Wednesday’s Big Brother, America’s Top Model, Beauty and The Geek, Sunday’s Big Brother, Lipstick Jungle, Jericho, and Tuesday’s Big Brother.

The CW had the most time-shifted shows on a % basis with 6 of the 20 which is quite interesting since their shows are pretty universally the lowest rated in every time slot. I’d chalk it up to the fact that CW shows are (a) watched by younger, more tech savvy folks apt to own DVRs, and (b) they are likely the “second choice” shows [or worse] in there time slots.

Top 20 Most % Time-shifted Broadcast TV Shows:

The % Time-shifting table ranks which of the Top 150 broadcast shows [by Live+7 viewers] had the largest % increase in viewing between Live audience and Live+7 audience numbers from viewers watching shows later on their digital video recorders (DVRs).

Nielsen TV Ratings Data: ©2008 Nielsen Media Research, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Tuesday’s American Idol has a Time-Shifted Audience of 3.7 Million

Tuesday’s American Idol had the largest time-shifted (DVR viewed) audience at 3.695 million of any primetime broadcast network show for the week of March 10-16, 2008. Idol was followed by Lost with 3.245 million time-shifted viewers. Rounding out the top 10 for was Wednesday’s American Idol, Survivor: Micronesia, Medium, Jericho, Sunday’s Big Brother , Wednesday’s Big Brother , Celebrity Apprentice and Law & Order.

NBC had the most shows (5) out of the top 20 in absolute time-shifted audience size.

It’s interesting how quickly new shows take hold and find a DVR audience.  The ”season’s pass” features work well, and viewers of new shows like New Amsterdam can find a sizeable DVR audience quickly.  While New Amterdam lost almost five million total viewers from its premiere the previous week (following American Idol) it only lost about 200K DVR viewers from the premiere episode.

Many new shows we don’t talk about very much (quite frankly, because they’re not ratings juggernauts) perform very steadily in DVR viewing.  Shows like Eli Stone and Lipstick Jungle have loyal followings of well over a million DVR viewers. 

The CW, which I don’t ever remember placing a single show in the absolute DVR viewing list (many CW shows are on the top time-shifted shows by % increase list) placed two shows for the week ending March 16 — both Smallville and America’s Next Top Model made the list.

At number 6, this  was Jericho’s highest showing on this list to date, but that’s a bit misleading as this wasn’t Jericho’s most DVR’d episode of the season so far – Jericho had more DVR viewers for its premiere episode on 2/12 (1.5 million). 

We’re now splitting our broadcast TV show time-shifting posts, if you’re looking for the most time-shifted shows by percentage increase, go here.

Top 20 Largest Time-shifted Audience Broadcast TV Shows:

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Scoreboard for Sun. March 30, 2008
Total Viewers (million)	10.41	10.01	5.81	5.31	1.43
Rating/Share: Adults 18-49	3.0/8	3.5/9	1.4/4	2.5/7	0.6/2

The last Sunday of March 2008 is in the books with CBS eking out a victory in total viewers, but conceding dominance in the 18-49 demographic to rival ABC.

I was surprised to learn that the NCAA coverage wasn’t going to be in primetime. It would seem CBS believes that the world will fall apart if 60 Minutes doesn’t air on a Sunday night and just isn’t willing to risk it. Had they run basketball, it surely would’ve been CBS’ best showing in primetime with it this year. America LOVES an underdog, but sadly that love didn’t spell a victory for Davidson. It did however spell 17.2 million viewers and a 5.4/16 from 7pm-7:30pm for just the overrun and post game coverage.

60 Minutes had a good showing for these days, but ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition had a few more viewers overall and many, many more viewers in the 18-49 demographic. Not even Oprah could hang with Extreme Makeover, though she did pull in over 11 million viewers and had a 3.9/9 in the demo. Oprah’s Big Give was a demo workhorse compared to 60 Minutes (3.1/8 in the demo), but Extreme Makeover: Home Edition pulled a 4.5/11 in the demo.

Let the smack talking begin: NBC ran a special one hour Countdown with Keith Olbermann and it pulled Quarterlife style numbers (3.37 million) and did even worse in the demo with a 0.5/2. I’d blame that on the basketball overrun except that a rerun of King of the Hill on Fox did about three times as well as KO in the demo. Even a rerun of America’s Next Top Model on the CW had a better 18-49 result than Olbermann. We know from our regular coverage that almost all of Olbermann’s (and O’Reilly’s too) viewers are over the age of 55 on cable, and it would seem NBC was doing their own little Katie Couric experiment to see if it could capture the youth using Keith Olbermann. The verdict is in: nope.

Dateline at 8pm pretty much doubled Countdown in viewers and tripled it in the demo. It will be interesting to see if they try this experiment again, or whether it’s “You: Stay on MSNBC, thanks!”

Probably better than being shipped off to Bravo like Quarterlife was.

Finally, I’ve seen this enough now to call it: Bart Simpson, your best days are way behind you. Once again a repeat of Family Guy pulled better numbers than a new episode of The Simpsons. Bart still pulled a 3.4/9 in the demo, but he’s no Stewie - the Family Guy rerun pulled a 3.6/8. Unhitched with a lowly 4.19 million viewers for its season finale will likely not be back on FOX ever again.

Sunday night’s full details:

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UPDATE: Fox has renewed Moment of Truth, Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles, Don’t Forget the Lyrics, Moment of Truth and ‘Til Death for Fall 2008. Fox has cancelled Back to You, Canterbury’s Law and New Amsterdam.

Moving on to Fox, which has quite a few shows with unannounced futures including Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles, New Amsterdam, Canterbury’s Law, Back to You, Don’t Forget the Lyrics, Moment of Truth, Return of Jezebel James, ‘Til Death, Kitchen Nightmares and Unhitched.

Since the lack of Fox announcements has so many shows “on the bubble” I’m going to do a more wholesale analysis than I did with the 3 CBS shows earlier.

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