I don’t have any posting privileges on Whedonesque.com and I couldn’t respond there, so I am responding here. Essentially, some folks are trying to rework the math I did here on Dollhouse, based on new information on advertising spot cost estimates from Ad Age’s Brian Steinberg.
I certainly never intended anyone think that the framework I posted last month was anything other than a framework for thinking about things. I noted that I was using $50,000 as a conservative estimate of what a 1.5 adults 18-49 rating would pull and that the actual revenue for a 1.5 rating was probably a bit higher.
The one thing to consider with the Ad Age numbers is that they were largely driven from the upfront sales last spring. We lack the average C3 numbers (live plus 3 day DVR commercial viewing) for season 1 of Dollhouse, but we can reasonably conclude that it was the average numbers for the season that pricing was based on.
Last season Dollhouse averaged a 1.5 live+SD program rating with adults 18-49. Since we lack the actual C3 numbers, I think it’s fair to figure that Brian’s estimate of around $56,400 roughly correlates with the 1.5 live+SD program rating averages with adults 18-49. My using $50K as a conservative baseline (and noting that it was likely a bit light for a 1.5) was fine for my rudimentary purposes.
You can use Brian’s estimates as a fair basis for approximating the revenue Dollhouse would generate if it was averaging a 1.5 adults 18-49 rating. Unfortunately you can’t just take the $56,400 number multiply it by 32 spots and say voila, $1.8 million per episode in ad revenue!
Sure, you could do that if it were averaging a 1.5, but, you know… 1.0, .9, 1.0, and .8 comes out to be around a .9. Which is only about 60% of a 1.5 and if we apply that math to Ad Age’s number, roughly $33,800 per spot.
If advertisers paid up front based on the a 1.5 adults 18-49 rating (since we lack the C3 numbers) and Dollhouse is coming in at 60 percent of that, there are two ways to settle up. Givebacks and make-goods. Givebacks almost never happen. The crowbar necessary to pry the cash the network has already received out of its hands is a tool rarely found.
Make-goods are far more common, that’s where the networks settle up with the advertisers by giving them additional commercial time at no additional cost. And that’s what they’ll likely have to do with any advertisers who made upfront buys for Dollhouse.
I’m definitely not out to get Dollhouse (and I really did like “Belonging” a lot!), and it doesn’t really much matter what the spot costs were at the upfront. The thing I think you can count on very reliably is that those spots (and published estimates) were based on the averages for season one, and unfortunately the average for season two isn’t nearly as good.
Is the 32 ad spots the total ads show during the show or the average number of national ads? And can anyone give me a rough breakdown of the averages for national, local, network in-house, and affiliate in-house ads? I know it varies per show, but is there some rule of thumb we could use?
Hey, I started the discussion over at Whedonesque, not attacking your numbers, just trying to start some healthy speculation as to what all these figures mean as a non-industry insider (no matter how much I want to be).
Make-goods is my new vocabulary word for the day, and it definitely, uh, destroys my entire line of thinking. There’s so much more I want to know but I don’t expect you to go over it all.
It seems like once a show is renewed, it’s goal is to repeat what it’s done before. So what gets a first year show going is how it fits in the networks overall package it plans to deliver at next years upfronts, right?
Anyhow, I’m not a whedonite protecting my show, and I’m obviously not a number cruncher by trade, just trying to learn.
Sorry for the off topic but I saw an update on Fox’s plans on Dollhouse, Brothers and TIL DEATH at Futon Critic
http://www.thefutoncritic.com/news.aspx?id=8350
Apparenly TIL DEATH will have a four episode marathon on Christmas Eve! Brothers will finish all its episodes by the end of the year. And Dollhouse will return on January on its regular timeslot with a show yet to be determined
Having to give away make-goods based on this season’s lousy ratings makes this show look like an even bigger disaster for Fox than it already did.
Holly, I don’t know the national averages. As a rough guideline I’ve been using 18 minutes of “time” outside of the program. Sometimes it’s a little less than 18 minutes and sometimes it’s a little more. I’ve allocated 16 minutes to national and 2 minutes to local. The network promos are included in the 16 minutes, though even in my approximation, obviously not all of the 16 minutes is made up of paid 30 second spots (edit: though I am guilty of treating all 16 minutes as paid time in an instance or 50) .
Josie, I didn’t view the posting as an attack at all, and I’m all for healthy speculation! If I could’ve responded directly on Whedonesque, I would’ve, but I still wanted to clarify.
Edit: my understanding is that pricing at the upfronts is usually based on the averages of the most recent season.
OK, according to this report from TNS Media Intelligence (no idea who they are or if they are valid), in the second quarter of 2009, there were an average of 14.05 minutes of advertising, including network promos, PSAs, and station promotions but not local ads. (scroll to the bottom).
The report also includes in-show product placements with unscripted shows clocking it at over 16 minutes (scripted at nearly 6)
Sorry for the triple post, but I just realized that the link didn’t work.
The report is here http://www.tns-mi.com/news/09162009.htm
Holly, I saw that post last month but pretty much dismissed their methods when they said an hour of Hell’s Kitchen was like 98% advertising. Having watched every episode ever of Hell’s Kitchen, it doesn’t come off like that, but since it is always branding for Hell’s Kitchen (the restaurant itself) I am wondering what the ~2% that wasn’t advertising is!
But if those numbers are right I’ve low-balled “local” in my estimates. Either way, the gap between scripted and unscripted was interesting. I think I will do my own monitoring scorecard (not including product placement) on tomorrow’s NCIS and see how closely that matches TNS’ averages.
Robert, how will you differentiate between local and national? Unless you get someone in a different market to monitor as well and compare.
Hey Robert,
I don’t have any “posting privileges on Whedonesque.com” either and I’m obviously a big fan of many things Joss. So you’re in good company (at least imo).
Julia, you’ll DVR and then track the LA market and we’ll compare notes!
No, no. It has to be someone on the other side of the country, just in case there were regional buys.
Well I do – anything you want me to tell them?
If they couldn’t do the “Til Death Independence Day Marathon, Christmas Eve is almost as good!
Fox should buy rights to MMA action from UFC instead of spike on Friday nights.
it would probably get a 3.0 or higher in 18-49…with 4-7 million viewers.
Or if it want’s to go real cheap….just rerun House and Hells Kitchen.
Dollhouse is a joke.
How is it on Broadcast while Stargate is on SyFy?
wouldn’t stargate get much higher ratings on broadcast?
I’m assuming that the TNS numbers are gross durations, so if three brands are on the screen during the same 10-second scene, they would, collectively, count as 30 seconds rather than just 10 seconds.
@Chris:
Hard to tell whether SGU would fare any better on broadcast, especially on Friday. It might even do worse since fans would be expecting Syfy (aka SighFigh, still making fun of the spelling, sorry) to carry Stargate shows. We’ll never know for sure how it might perform. I do believe House and Bones are rerunning at least once during sweeps, can’t remember if it’s the whole time though, sorry. I know there’s a post with FOX’s schedule update on-site, but I’m too lazy too scroll up right now.
Dollhouse might be viable on cable if the extremely low costs (for FOX) are actually in that $1M area. Put it on Syfy, even on another night after doing a bunch of marathons/reruns, and it might actually do decently enough to stick around. But for a Friday night on broadcast, it’s horrendous. For better or worse, the otherwise old-skewing CBS has Fridays locked up with the 1-2-3 punch of GW, Medium, and Numb3rs. Maybe that’s the saddest reality of all?
But truly, the reality is, we’re closing in on the point where the difference between “broadcast” and “cable” is increasingly minimal, outside of subscription-only fare like “Dexter” and “True Blood”. “Cable” has held much of the so-called “quality” in this last decade. Obviously this is open to opinion, but I can think of many more high-end quality shows on cable than broadcast: The Wire, The Sopranos, True Blood, Battlestar Galactica, Dexter, Californication, Damages, The Shield, Nip/Tuck, Burn Notice, Monk, etc. compared to, if anything, Lost, The Unit, The Office and (maybe) the first season of Heroes as core examples lately.
Where’s the innovation? Where’s the true groundbreaking quality? Fact is, it’s (mostly) on cable. And while it mainly ruled solely on quality for many years, ratings are starting to step up to that quality. Burn Notice was among the highest-rated non-sports broadcasts on any NBC-owned network this year (in the demo). The Sopranos was highly competitive on Sundays, even half a decade ago. Dexter has grown solidly each year (if memory serves). Just to provide some examples.
Cable is growing, and broadcast is shrinking. Eventually, it’ll all be just Television to us. That is, if it isn’t already!
On a side note, sadly, I’m guessing The Wire is about a decade away from any possible mainstream acceptance, only cause it’ll take that long for cultural trends to move towards even a basic discovery of that show, let alone any true understanding or appreciation of its value…
Sorry to go off on that rant/tangent, hopefully it provides some amalgamation of what’s going on with television quality and consumption these days. Cheers!
Whatever the real ad prices for Dollhouse may be and however many ads are shown during one episode, I believe the original article’s point was about the opportunity costs of not airing a better performing rerun and that still stands either way, doesn’t it?
Even if I were to buy that DH gets that much higher ad rates than Smallville does with equal to better numbers, that is.
You have consistently overstated the national ad loads in network programming.
A one hour primetime network program typically contains 10-11 minutes of national advertising time (20-22 :30s). The rest is network promo/ID time –about 4 minutes and local time –about 3 minutes (billboards and PSAs make up less than a half minute of the average hour). Not counted here are in-program ad and promo placements.
Fox traditionally had been giving a little more time than the other nets to their local stations and the expense of their national ad time, but that differential has been shrinking over the years.
roy,
Is that something you know or something you guess? I’m rather curious about the breakdown, but not all that willing to trust random internet comments (nothing personal
).
It’s something I know from being in the biz, but you can check yourself if you don’t believe me, cuz, ya know, this stuff is on TV.
Crank up the TiVo, get a pencil and paper and track it yourself. You just have to know the difference between a national ads and local time, and astute guys like you can probably tell.
Try it. It’s fun for the whole family!
Thank you roy