Ahead of the upfront presentations this week there were several announcements over the weekend regarding shows being renewed or cancelled and new series pickups. My link list had so many stories on it this weekend that nothing lasted long, so here’s a brief recap:

Adds/Renews:

• 90210 (CW)
• Stylista(CW)
• How To Teach Filthy Rich Girls (Maybe)(CW)
• Reaper (CW)
• Boston Legal (ABC)
• Life on Mars (ABC)
• Opportunity Knocks (ABC)
• ‘Til Death (FOX)
• The Inn (FOX)

Drops/Cancels:

• Back to You (FOX)
• New Amsterdam (FOX)
• Aliens in America (CW)

Other:

CBS considering picking up Back to You

Advertising Age is going way, way out on a limb (sarcasm) by predicting that this year’s upfront won’t be up over last years.  It cites the credit crisis and looming economic depression among the culprits.

It’s worth taking a look at, especially the PDF chart of “How It’ll All Shake Out”. It predicts only FOX will be up, but only slightly versus last years estimate of $1.9 billion.  It predicts ABC will be flat, and that CBS and NBC will be slightly down.  The prediction for the CW was a bit more dire: just “down”.

Based on the AdAge estimates CBS was the big winner last year with $2.45 billion followed by ABC with $2.4 billion.  With ABC live plus same day ratings off 16% versus last year and a “flat” prediction either scale carries a premium or they figure they’ll push the live plus seven day ratings.

The biggest surprise to me was that last year FOX only marginally beat NBC in the upfronts by AdAge’s estimate: $1.9 billion to $1.8 billion.  And amazingly they have the C-Dub pulling in $1.8 billion last year which was down from the $1.9 billion in 2006. 

That it’s even remotely possible under any circumstance that FOX only pulled in $100 million more via the upfronts last year just goes to show that I completely lack any understanding of how television advertising actually works.

I wonder how much of the CW upfront money ultimately went to staffing the phones for the barrage calls saying, “We want our money back!”  Update:  Commenter “Statlc” offers up a probable explanation below: the PDF chart on the left is incorrect.  He cites the article which states clearly: The CW’s total is expected to decline 15% to $560 million.

Contestants will serve as assistants to Elle mag fashion news director and a different assitant will be eliminated each week.

Stylista was original ordered as an 8 episode run for the spring and summer but apparently the CW liked it so much they’re saving it for the fall.

The C-dub is also reportedly considering moving forward with the soon (maybe) to be retitled “How to Teach Filthy Rich Girls” in addition to the 90210 remake.

TV Week reports there is some chatter about airing some summer-themed Gossip Girl episodes in July and August, but so far mum is the word from CW execs.

From a ratings perspective, Back to You did not perform much better than ‘Til Death. It had more viewers and households, but on an 18-49 basis both shows were tied for 104th through the week of May 4th. Back to You was #107 in overall household rating compared to 122 for ‘Til Death (ironically, tied with Jericho, but alas, Jericho was 137th in the 18-49 demo).

But production costs for Back to You may be much higher, especially given its two stars, Kelsey Grammer (of Cheers/Frasier fame) and Patricia Heaton (King of Queens Everybody Loves Raymond). CBS has been rumored to be considering a second night of comedies, and if they stuck back to you on Monday nights following Two and a Half Men it would no doubt perform considerably better than it did on FOX.

TV Week reports that CBS boss Leslie Moonves has received five episodes of Back to You to screen, and to be honest, I’m a little surprised to find that’s falling on Moonves as opposed to CBS Entertainment president, Nina Tassler. I imagine Ms. Tassler is less surprised than I am.

Update 9:25pm PDT: Here’s a Variety story from tonight that discusses CBS is considering adding another comedy block.

Variety is reporting

What exactly the deal will be with Life on Mars remains unclear, but if the Variety story is correct it appears Kelley will be leaving that show and October Road executive producers Josh Appelbaum, Andre Nemec and Scott Rosenberg are in line to take over as show runners.  Expect all the details to pour in througout the week.

Scoreboard for Sat. May 10, 2008
Total Viewers (million)	7.67	5.80	4.53	4.05
Rating/Share: Adults 18-49	2.6/8	1.3/5	1.6/6	1.0/3

Happy Mother’s Day to all you moms!  About the only good news I can give you as far as this overnight recap goes is thank goodness there will be some better TV on tonight!

NASCAR did outshine the NBA.  But then again, a rerun of CSI: Miami may well have for all I know.  I didn’t see the hourly data for the Boston Celtics vs. the Cleveland Cavaliers game, but for the night it averaged 4.54 million and a 1.6/6  (rating/share) in the 18-49 demographic vs. 7.67m and a 2.6/9 for NASCAR.  That’s kind of a beatdown.

Lebron James and Kevin Garnett?  Nobody seems to care.  Lebron is no Michael Jordon when it comes to Nielsen ratings and lately, not on the court either.  Though Cleveland won easily, Lebron again didn’t have a great night.  But I’m not here to pick on Lebron, hopefully he’s worth his Nike contract because he’s selling a lot of shoes.  He’s not bringing eyeballs to the television though and it appears that Kobe Bryant is the bigger TV star in the NBA.  

Caveats: yes, I know the game was a blowout early - I stopped watching after the first quarter myself.  But I don’t want to hear any whining about how NASCAR is only on once a week and we’d need to add up all the NBA games collectively to make any kind of comparison.  No we don’t.  More people watched NASCAR and significantly more in the 18-49 demo.  Sunday Night Football usually aired after FOURTEEN OTHER GAMES HAD BEEN PLAYED and still could pull in 11 million for its worst matchup and almost 22 for its best non playoff matchup.

At this point it’s fairly easy to declare NASCAR the better TV sport if a “who cares” no big deal race early in the season draws more viewers than an NBA playoff game.  It could be that aside from the NBA finals, nobody cares.  While I found the second half of the NBA regular season to be very exciting, so far the playoffs have been mostly kind of dull.  Suns vs. Spurs had some exciting games, and Chris Paul of the Hornets has been amazing, but otherwise mostly blah.

For now, Lebron is definitely no MJ.  In fact, he’s not even close to Tiger Woods from a Nielsen ratings perspective.  Speaking of Tiger, he was in the stands for the Detroit Pistons vs. Orlando Magic game in Orlando that aired earlier in the day to watch his Magic rally, take the lead and then still wind up losing by one at the end.  That game was at least exciting, but the problem for the NBA is that most people couldn’t name one player on either team, let alone one player on both.  And OK, so more people watched Celtics vs. Cavs than Friday Night Smackdown!  But Smackdown is taped.  More people watched WWE RAW than Celtics/Cavs.  While last week, a game featuring Kobe on ABC did beat out WWE RAW, it didn’t beat NASCAR. 

Sorry for the sports rant, but there just wasn’t much to say about the night.  See for yourself: (more…)

I believe the more likely scenario is sticking the worst performers in the Friday night wasteland.  Why?  Well, even though Friday night has less competition, I think no matter what happens the perception is that advertising pays better on Thursdays even when the shows are regularly drawing under three million. 

Weekend movies are generally released on Fridays and the studios want to get ahead of the game by promoting them right before the weekend starts.  The movie studios don’t want you home on Friday nights watching your favorite programs on TV or on DVR. They want you at the movie theaters!

I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but if I was I would wonder if the movie studios aren’t subsidizing the TV networks (especially when they’re both owned by the same company) so that they deliberately won’t program high quality programming for Friday or Saturday nights.  I think such a theory is a stretch, but when you consider the programming that’s actually on Friday and Saturday nights exactly just  how much of a stretch is hard to figure.  But either way we’ll find out the C-dub’s plans next week.

Though you can never go wrong with dogs and babies - not if you’re running for President anyway, I’m not sure what it means in terms of Nielsen ratings, (OK, actually I am sure - it means absolutely nothing) but I noted the gaggle of young girls who asked nicely for her autograph along with all the people taking cell phone pictures of her at the end as she was leaving. 

Scoreboard for Fri. May 9, 2008
Total Viewers (million)	8.52	6.42	5.38	4.12	3.39
Rating/Share: Adults 18-49	2.0/7	1.7/6	1.4/5	1.3/5	1.1/4

CBS won another May sweeps Friday night, but you know when the CW is consistently beating FOX on a Friday night, that it’s a night the networks hardly care about.  It will be very, very interesting to see how the CW programs Friday nights in the fall when it will no long have Friday Night Smackdown!.  Now that the CW will be programming neither Saturday nor Sunday nights starting in the fall, coupled with the absence of Smackdown they have some difficult choices to make. 

Will the CW stick all their worst performing programming on the vast Friday night wasteland, or will they stick those shows on Thursday against very difficult competition and move shows like Supernatural to Friday - a night with fewer viewers, but also less competition?  We’ll find out next week.

The big difference between last night and the prior Friday was that ABC ran with a clips show this week TV’s All-Time Funniest and although it was by no means stellar with 6.5 million and a 1.6/6, they got a lot better performance out of it than Duel.  Also, 20/20 fared a lot better at 10pm than it did last week.

CBS obviously lost a few viewers I’d speculate they went to the clips show on ABC and stuck with 20/20, but it’s but speculation.  Either way all CBS shows were down over last week.  And although Moonlight lost a little more than two hundred thousand viewers (the least of any CBS show week over week) with 7.68 million, it’s 1.9/6 performance is concerning for a show on the bubble. Ghost Whisperer was down about half a million viewers with 8.74m, and Numb3rs was down over a million viewers with 9.13m.

Although Moonlight still won its time slot, even in the demo.  I think had this been last year, CBS would definitely cancel Moonlight, just as it did Close to Home last year.  Weighing at least slightly in Moonlight’s favor is that this isn’t last year. The landscape has changed a little bit as seemingly most networks have completely thrown in the towel (can you say repeats of Most Outrageous Moments, even in May Sweeps!?) as far as Friday nights.  If the margins on Moonlight are right (AKA it doesn’t cost much to make), it could be a keeper in the current Friday night landscape. 

We won’t  have to wait long to find out, you’ll know by the finale next Friday whether it’s the season finale or the series finale.  

See Friday night’s details: (more…)

I’ll post the viewer numbers later in the normal overnight post, assuming I ever see them.

Notable TV premieres of the year: Eight is Enough (ABC), Three’s Company (ABC), CHiPs (NBC), Lou Grant (CBS), The Love Boat (ABC). Notable TV finales of the year: Sanford and Son, Mary Tyler Moore, McCloud, McMillian and Wife, Space:1999 and Emergency!.

And these were the top 20 shows of 1976-77: (more…)

While we can wonder if the difference is all that minimal when you actually have an outsized hit (ask FOX, even with a waning Idol), but Zucker is probably correct for most timeslots.  Then again it’s pretty clear that NBC generates less TV advertising revenue from its broadcast network during primetime than CBS, FOX or ABC. But Zucker’s comments about managing margins by putting on shows that are less expensive to make a lot of sense.   Based on NBC’s 2008-2009 schedule it certainly does not appear NBC is motivated towards finding any out-sized hits.

I recommend clicking the link above and reading the full interview, but here’s a snippet on selling the Super Bowl ads at a 10% premium vs. last year:

TVWeek: A 10% starting price increase to $3 million for a Super Bowl spot? How was that decided? And how much do you think the last-minute spots will go for?
Mr. Zucker: I’m not going to suggest-I don’t know what the last spots will go for. Look, it is clear the Super Bowl is the preeminent program in all forms of popular culture, and the advertising prices are set according to what the market will bear. It’s clear that there’s nothing anywhere in the same league with the Super Bowl, and that’s how the rates get set.

The 10% increase isn’t very surprising (arbitrary perhaps, but not surprising) but it comes on the heels of the most-watched Super Bowl ever!  A feat that will be particularly hard to pull off in consecutive years, unless against all odds, one of the participants is again 18-0 going into the final game.

Long Term Trend of O’Reilly vs. Olbermann TV Ratings:

(more…)

P2+ Total Day
FNC – 970,000 viewers
CNN – 627,000 viewers
MSNBC – 383,000 viewers
CNBC – 234,000 viewers
HLN – 247,000 viewers
(more…)

To quote Kristin: Say it with me now: halle-freaking-lujah! (Thank you, Beelzebub!)

Kristin further reports that CW will be picking up the 90210 remake (duh!) and that Aliens in America is definitely cancelled.

I’d been holding off on catching up on this season of Reaper until finding out whether it had been renewed and am now looking forward to catching up!

Kristin further reports there will be one additional pickup, either How to Teach Filthy Rich Girls (which she indicates is getting a title change) or Austin: Golden Hour.  Title change or no, my money is on the filthy rich girls. 

The 134th running of the Kentucky Derby lead the field of sports shows for the week of April 28- May 4, 2008 with a viewership of 14.2 million.

The always strong NASCAR Sprint Cup Series from Richmond was #3 with a viewership of 7.3 million.

They both lead a field of eight NBA Playoff games topped by the Sunday LA Lakers / Utah Jazz match-up. Luckily for the NBA ratings, the Lakers are cruising and don’t seem to have much competition, because their big ratings draw in the east, the Boston Celtics, struggled to beat the Atlanta Hawks in 7 games.

Top Sports Shows for the Week of April 28 - May 4, 2008:

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Scoreboard for Thurs. May 8, 2008
Total Viewers (million)	15.03	11.62	6.98	6.58	3.25
Rating/Share: Adults 18-49	4.3/12	4.4/12	2.0/5	2.8/8	1.3/4

As is typical for primetime Thursdays,  it’s mixed leadership between the Tiffanys and the Mouse with CBS having the most viewers and ABC winning the 18-49 demographic, though only barely due to the “there’s no Lindsay Lohan yet” 18-49 performance of Ugly Betty.  ABC is dominant in the 9pm and 10pm hour in the demo with Grey’s Anatomy (which outperformed CSI in the demo by 20%) and LOST.

I really enjoyed last night’s LOST.  Some of the magic for me is in the casting.  Michael Emerson is wonderful as a creepy Benjamin Linus and relatively new addition Kevin Durand is great as an evil mercenary.  Line of the night from Ben: “Destiny is a fickle bitch.”  LOST had 11.28m and a 4.9/13 in the demo.  I also watched Supernatural, and it was the best episode I remember seeing in a while and enjoyed it, but it only drew 2.53m and a 1.0/3 in the demo.  Relax people, it’s already been renewed (c’mon, it’s the CW!).

My Name is Earl,  the NBC network finale of Scrubs (soon to be appearing on an ABC network near you) and The Office all fared just a bit worse than they did in last week’s overnight report.  The season finale of 30 Rock, however picked up a smidge in total viewers, though it’s 18-49 numbers were off by half a ratings point from last week.

While DVR viewing is certainly having an impact, the dramatic drop off can’t be completely ascribed to DVRs.  Grey’s Anatomy had 15.6m viewers last night.  But at least half of the DVR viewers are already baked into the numbers.  So even if Grey’s pulls 4 million live plus seven day DVR viewers they’ll only gain back a couple million viewers at most which would put it at 17.6m.  Last year’s overnight number for the comparable Thursday was 19.58 million, so it’ll still be down 20 percent-ish over last year even after DVR is factored in, unless there was record-setting DVR viewing for it — which we won’t know for a couple of weeks. 

Grey’s also was down in the 18-49, from a 7.8/21 to a 6.1/16.  They will make up a lot of ground here via the remaining couple million or so DVR viewers who’ll almost all be in the 18-49 demographic.

CSI pulled 17.82 million and a 4.9/13, or the same demo numbers as LOST, which had about six million less viewers than CSI.  I still haven’t watched last night’s episode that was penned by the Two and a Half Men crew, but it’s on the DVR and I will definitely check it out.

CBS’s Survivor: Micronesia was down just a touch from last week with 11.98m viewers and a 4.0/12 in the 18-49 demographic.  It easily won the 8pm hour.   Last night’s Without a Trace was up almost 3 million total viewers versus last week with 14.6 million, but LOST still easily beat its 3.3/9 in the demo.

Last night’s details: (more…)

Daytime Nielsen Ratings
Total Viewers (Millions)	3.73	2.86	2.7
Rating/Viewers: Women 18-49	1.3/835,000	1.3/856,000	1.3/868,000

Top 5 Daytime Programs Women 18-49:

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The CW is close to sealing a deal with an as-yet unnamed media buyer to take over the night. Under the deal, the CW would sell the 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. block to an advertising conglom, which would turn around and develop programming and sell ad time. […] Decision to sell the Sunday primetime block is an acknowledgement that the night has been a tough one for the CW - and before that, the WB, which also struggled to gain ratings traction there.

Looks to me like the CW is just cutting its losses. The CW already doesn’t program Saturdays, and after losing Friday Night Smackdown, can Fridays be far behind? At what point to they simply become a reseller of broadcast bandwidth?

Even by their extremely low threshold for success (Gossip Girl!) they have done badly on Sundays. Looking at a season to date adults 18-49 ranking of their Sunday shows this season finds that every single one of their Sunday shows did worse than the regular airings of every single one of their other shows. Either they put all their worst shows on Sunday night on purpose, or they just got very, very unlucky. What do you think?

UPDATE: More details from TVWeek.

Season to Date Adults 18-49 Viewing, Through May 4, 2008 (more…)

P2+ Total Day
FNC – 1,010,000 viewers
CNN – 638,000 viewers
MSNBC – 440,000 viewers
CNBC – 209,000 viewers
HLN – 261,000 viewers
(more…)

If you have better / more recent info than we are showing, please post a comment and we will update.

Show by Show Status: (more…)

Full Data for NBC’s Today Show, ABC’s Good Morning America and CBS’ Early Show Ratings:

(more…)

What I do know is how much people are using their DVRs. And while DVR viewing is a small portion of prime-time broadcast TV viewing today, it’s growing very rapidly, up 64% vs. last season at this point.

In the 2006-7 primetime season through April 22, 2007, DVR viewers made up 4.3% of all primetime broadcast show viewers for the top 6 broadcast networks. The share was higher for the youth age demographics: Adults 18-49, 6.3%, Adults 18-34, 6.3%, and Adults 25-54, 6.0%.

By the 2007-8 season (through April 20, 2007), DVR viewers made up 7.5% of all primetime broadcast show viewers, an increase of 64%. For adults 18-49 DVR viewers were 10.6%, an increase of 53%. For adults 18-34 DVR viewers were 11.7%, an increase of 41%. For adults 25-54 DVR viewers were 10.2%, an increase of 59%.

DVRs are now in over 20% of US TV homes this season (up from about 9% last season), and that share will continue to increase. But while I have no data, I’d also expect the use of DVRs within households to increase. I’d guess that people use their DVRs more the longer they have them up to a point, and since the number of DVR households is growing so rapidly many people have only recently obtained one.

It’s true that DVRs are used much less to watch the most popular cable and syndicated shows than they are used on primetime broadcast shows, but if you’re in the TV business it’s not a matter of if your business will be affected by the DVR just when.

Season to Date 2007-8 Broadcast Primetime DVR Viewership Data , Top 6 Networks (more…)

Sometimes I wish I’d paid more attention in Spanish class in high school.  Sure, I’m fine ordering beers or finding a bathroom.  I can ask if Susana is home and whether she’s in the kitchen easily enough, and if you tell me, “no, she’s in the living room,” I’ll likely comprehend it.  Thirty years after the fact I still never forgot “Ay caramba, cuando arreglan mi cuarto, no encuentro nada!” (Oh darn! Whenever they clean my room I can’t find anything!).  Despite this, I can’t watch Fuego en la Sangre (Burning for Revenge) and understand it.  I wish that I could.

Univision doesn’t get much love with the traditional US media, and it’s understandable as most of the content written about ratings is produced for people who speak English.  Nielsen doesn’t even release overnight data for Univision via Marc Berman.   Again, I understand it, but the lack of inclusion is just another piece of the overall ratings puzzle that gets missed. 

Univision really is a pretty big deal.  Last night for example, in the 8pm hour it was tied for second among 18-49 year olds, and numero uno among 18-34 year olds.  Number one.  Sadly, I expect because of the way advertising works that although the 18-34 is normally considered a highly cherished demographic, it may be considered less so among Spanish language shows because of issues of average income. 

I don’t like bringing it up, but to ignore it would be folly.  Still, number one in a demo is number one.   And it’s not like the average income among those 18-34 year olds watching America’s Next Top Model (which Al Diablo con los Guapos BEAT in the 18-34 demo) is in the upper echelon either. (more…)

Scoreboard for Weds. May 7, 2008
Total Viewers (million)	14.43	11.01	7.74	6.51	3.05
Rating/Share: Adults 18-49	5.0/14	2.7/7	2.2/6	2.1/6	1.5/4

Let there be no doubt: worst May Sweeps EVER.    How bad?  Two words: Wife Swap.   ABC’s Wife Swap won the 18-49 demographic for the 8pm hour with a 2.5/8 (rating/share).  If Carl Sagan were still alive he’d be asking, “How can it be so?”

American Idol was on, so FOX won the night even though Idol has billions and billions fewer viewers this year.   OK, although Sagan was not exaggerating about the billions, I am, but you knew that.  It only lost about 6 million viewers.  Last year it pulled 28.20m, this year 22.39m.  It’s 18-49 base is eroding too it had a 10.8/28 in the demo last year, but this year only an 8.0/21.  Still, Bill Gorman will not be asking “American Idol: Renew or Cancel?” anytime soon.

FOX’s comedy lineup of ‘Til Death and Back to You is struggling a bit.  Only Back to You could even pull a 2.0 in the 18-49 demo. And Just a 2.0.  With almost three million fewer viewers America’s Next Top Model was able to pull off a 2.0 in the 18-49 year old demographic for the 8pm hour.  Go Tyra!  But that other show on the CW, the one we apparently imported from Holland, Farmer Wants a Wife lost half of those 18-49 year olds for the CW.

In the 8pm hour Deal or No Deal faced off with The Price is Right and in the 8pm hour, Deal Won!  Barely, but a win is a win.  Deal and TPIR both had 7.59 million viewers from 8pm-9pm but Deal just edged TPIR out in 18-49 viewers : 1.9/5 versus 1.8/5.  Sucks to be Drew.  Other than that CBS had a pretty good night with Criminal Minds and CSI: NY.  CSI: NY bested NBC’s Law & Order at 10pm by almost 4 million viewers.  The race was tighter in the 18-49 demographic but CSI: NY still won with a 3.3/9 vs. L&O’s 2.9/8.

Fewer cared about Barbara Walters’ Journey, but I was surprised it was able to net a 2.0 in the 18-49 demo.  I’d have bet $20 against that.  Go Babs!

The DVR will be working overdrive tonight as I plan to do something I almost never do: watch CBS’ CSI.  The crossover episode of CSI written by the folks at Two and Half Men airs tonight at 9pm and is appropriately titled “Two and a Half Deaths”.  Mostly though, I’m looking forward to LOST.

Wednesday night’s details: (more…)