Size may always matter during primetime for the big broadcast networks. Otherwise, it doesn’t always matter. Or more accurately, it depends on what you’re sizing.
Take my favorite hour of television bar none, the 5pm-6pm (EDT) block on ESPN of Around the Horn (ATH)and Pardon the Interruption (PTI).
Two of my favorite entertainers in the world are former sports columnist turned radio and TV host (as well as the Monday Night Football booth) Tony Kornheiser and sports columnist turned TV host, turned NBA TV analyst, Michael Wilbon.
I bet I’ve watched well over 90% of the airings of those shows for over six years now. 1000 airings and 2000 Uranus jokes later and it’s still my favorite guilty pleasure. I love PTI, and I love it’s lead-in ATH as well. Woody Paige, J.A. Adande, Bob Ryan, Kevin Blackistone, and yeah yeah, even Bill Plaschke and Jay Marriotti, and of course Anthony Joseph Giselle Bundchen Reali.
Heck, over time even Dan Le “Bam” Batard has grown on me.
I doubt we’ll ever see the ratings for these shows. Ever. But it’s no surprise to me they’ve been on forever. They appeal to a very, very affluent group of people. I’m not talking about dopes like me, or the less dopey Mr. Gorman,
I’m talking about Kobe, Shaq, Lebron, Tiger Woods. The super rich athletes and coaches these shows talk about, are watched by the super rich athletes and coaches these shows talk about. It’s a tiny, tiny, tiny demographic size wise, but my guess is it’s more than made up for by the average net income of the viewers. Size matters. In this case, perhaps the size of the viewers’ bank accounts more than the size of the total viewing population.
One thing is fairly certain. PTI ratings are better than the ratings for the 6pm Eastern SportsCenter.
No other reason to explain the split in PTI where they hold the last 3 minutes of the show until 6:25pm or so.
When you say “I doubt we’ll ever see ratings for these shows,” why is that? Are cable ratings not released to the media, etc. like the ratings for prime-time shows? Are they released at the whim of the cable network instead?
only the highest-rated 40 cable shows are generally released to the media. There are so many shows on cable, that even if they were getting 2.2 million viewers per airing they’d wouldn’t make the top 40 list.
Eric, when Robert says “to the media” he means “free of charge to the media”.
If you see cable ratings outside the Top 40 (the cutoff for which is about 3 million viewers) they were made public by a paying Nielsen customer.
that is what I meant, though it’s not even that simple.
I wind up “freely” getting information for *many* cable shows that don’t make the top 40 because they are released by Nielsen in other venues or the networks themselves, but I’ve never seen ESPN issue a press release on actual PTI or ATH ratings. though did see this release that indicates both PTI and ATH reached new highs last year.
So does that mean, to refer back to a previous post and my previous comment, the reason that we heard local ratings for the Caps games but not for Comcast broadcasts of the Wizards games is because Comcast didn’t want to release them (which would lead one to believe they weren’t that good)?
Eric, I don’t think that’s a fair assessment. Most of the data I got didn’t come to me directly via Comcast. Though Comcast *did* issue a press release last week about record NHL ratings. When new records were later made, it didn’t issue subsequent releases. I don’t think it makes a lot of sense for them to promote ratings heavily — there’s not much upside in talking regularly about “typical” or even better than average ratings.
I got acces to the local Capitals Nielsen data because…I got access to some Capitals Nielsen data. I am seeing what I can do wrt the Wizards data. I doubt it’s fair to assume just because there’s no press release that the ratings are BAD. Not “record-breaking” is probably a fair assumption.
Thanks, Robert. I didn’t mean to imply that the Wizards ratings were bad, just presumably nothing special, as you said.
And thanks for looking into the Wizards ratings. It’s hard to know exactly what ratings mean sometimes if you can’t compare them to the ratings of other shows on at the same time. And I think it’s a fascinating subject to compare which teams in the Washington area (or any area) draw more interest than others, and TV ratings are one way to do it. For some reason, the Washington Post chooses not to even examine the issue (they don’t even have a sports business/media reporter who writes for the print edition of the paper), even though they’ve justified lack of coverage of some sports by citing TV ratings (for instance, a couple years ago, the Caps beat reporter said he wasn’t covering the Stanley Cup finals that year because of the editors felt there was a lack of interest determined by TV ratings.)
Even without comparisons, though, I can tell that the Caps ratings last night were remarkable.
Here is an old PTI rating from the SI vault.
http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1026331/index.htm
It was a 0.43 in 2002, if you don’t want to look.
I also watch all the PTI I can, recording it and skipping past the SportsCenter opening to get to the PTI end.
I cannot stomach ATH however. I’m hapily watching “It Takes a Thief” on Discovery at that time. ATH feels very scripted to me and it seems the writers are forced to take opposing positions often, something I don’t sense with messers Kornheiser and Wilbon.
I love ATH and watch it every day. I don’t love PTI and rarely watch it as it is mainly the same topics already argued about on ATH. It’s still a good show but I like most of the guys on ATH better than Kornheiser and Wilbon. I think ATH is a very cheap show to produce so even if the ratings aren’t great, it’s still very profitable. My guess is the guys on ATH don’t get more than 100-200 dollars per show.
Daniel C., I’m with you 100%. I’ve tried to get into ATH, but I just can’t. I also FF past SportsCenter. The 6pm edition almost never has any results/highlights except for afternoon baseball part of the year.
I’m sure ATH is scripted. I view it as entertainment and I enjoy the “over-the-top” nature of it. That said, typically I watch PTI off the DVR first
Just because they might decide in advance what writers argue what side (they would only need them to change their opinion if they lack variety), that doesn’t mean the show is scripted. I don’t know what you guys are talking about.
Rob,
By scripted, I mean more what you say in your comment and not an actual line-by-line script.
I think that in an opinion show, however, I want actual opinions and not those created “for the sake of argument”.
Also, you touch on the biggest problem of ESPN during the day. PTI was created before ATH. However, since ATH is on earlier, the topics of the day are discussed over and over before PTI comes on. The scheduling is based on general work schedules of course and I understand that. If someone gets out of work at 5, they’ll be home for PTI, if 4:30, then ATH.
It isn’t only ATH since “Rome is Burning” and “First and 10″ preceed that as well. Let’s face it, the P in ESPN has become “personalities”.
My schedule often has me at home during weekdays so this is when I watch these shows. Between 5-7 my viewing schedule is “It Takes a Thief” and “Mad Money” on CNBC. Then I’m back to my taped PTI later in the evening, or later in the week.
I know what you mean Daniel, but I don’t think they change positions too often. Once in a while, everyone does agree. That being said, I do agree with you about all the other shows that are before PTI. I would be shocked if someone watched them all.
So far this year:
Around the Horn has averaged 746,000 viewers
PTI 1.0 million
6pm Sportscenter 829,000
Average age for PTI is 36 and average household income for PTI viewers is $63,000. That average income is quite high for any show and particularly for one with a relatively young audience.
I’m sure they have no trouble whatsoever finding sponsors for PTI! Any network will take as many young, male, and affluent viewers as they can get….
Ratings aside, I used to love PTI but I don’t watch too often anymore. Can’t take the frequent fill-in hosts.
Around The Horn is the worst sports-related show on television bar none.
Mikey:
Oooooh, numbers, cooooool! Are these online somewhere?
I could not agree more about the guest hosts on PTI (that personality thing again). If it ail Korn-bon, I’ll fast forward to see the topics, but I cannot take much of Bob Ryan (Really overexposed in New England) or Lebatard who, well, is Lebatard – Is he still defending Rickey Williams?
I also don’t particularly like them in some windy, empty stadium before MNF.
Mikey, Great info, thanks. And I am with you on th e fill-ins. If it’s not K&W, I’m likely to FF past most of it.
‘Average age for PTI is 36 and average household income for PTI viewers is $63,000. That average income is quite high for any show and particularly for one with a relatively young audience.”
They hit me right on the button… 23 years ago. Guess I was ahead of my time.
Oh yah… did you hear this one?
What’s the eighth planet from the Sun?
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Neptune.
I believe your evaluation to be inaccurate. Are you trying to say that PTI has stayed on the air for so long because of the athletes watching the show?
“They appeal to a very, very affluent group of people”.
They?……The show?….hosts?….athletes?….
The show has stayed on the air because it is a well produced fantastically hosted, sports half hour and it pulls a lot of well informed sports fans a chance at “Newspaper” skills on tv. Discussing the daily events in a manner that was not done on tv beforehand.
Any tv show that has a spin off and changed the sports was reported/criticized. There are people, such as say…..Sean Salisbury who indirectly owe their jobs to these two guys.
The show is great. I catch it on the tivo…….Korn needs to come back on Fridays……He didn't even shave for Thrus show.