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Editor's Blog

(October 11th, 2007 - Editor)          I started out my research for this week's blog by checking the ratings for the top 100 TV shows of the season as of week two. Network executives examine the data from this week very closely, as they now have the first real audience feedback about new and returning shows. How well a show debuts can be manipulated by promotion campaigns and other marketing tools, but how well a show keeps or adds to that audience for the second and third weeks is critical to the success of any series and that is what they are looking at now. Like last season, the new shows being offered this season are getting at least a trial look by the viewers, but so far there is no clear stand-out and certainly no runaway successes.

          Like last season, the shows that will eventually succeed are the ones who are able to build on the numbers week after week and several shows have the potential to connect with their audiences, once the water cooler buzz starts around some of the new offerings. Some titles predicted by the media to be potential failures have done much better than expected. Cavemen comes to mind as a series that may not ever be considered a ratings hit, but it may survive longer than the three episodes most members of the press expected from this spin-off of a not very good insurance commercial.

            I did note that the top 2 shows among new offerings this season and three of the over-all top 20 were shows that air opposite each other at the same time and day, but on different channels. On Wednesday night at 9pm, CBS has the winner by a hair with Criminal Minds. ABC's Private Practice comes in a very close second place and NBC's The Bionic Woman is also attracting respectable numbers in the time slot for third. The average total audience for this time slot over the past two weeks has been higher than the audience for The Super Bowl or an American Idol finale. It makes me wonder just how good a job the Television Industry is really doing to reach and keep the potential audience. After all, even with the amazing numbers being generated in this Wednesday time slot, the total audience is still less then half the households in the country. In fact, the three shows combined still reached just a little more than one third of the potential audience.

            It seems to me that as soon as good shows are offered, the audience comes back to network television in droves. But when there is little of interest on the network channels, we surf around the rest of the cable dial, or find something else to do. This viewer trend may change once the networks are convinced that they can reach a larger audience with a smaller roster of shows if they make better use of streaming video downloads and other digital delivery methods that allow the viewer select when they watch and what they watch. A great deal was learned last season and more data is being collected this season. Ad agencies are also learning about a world with no time slots. A world where their messages can be tailored to the tastes of each individual viewer. Some bandwidth and server speed issues still need to be addressed. But once the networks have a regular growing revenue stream from downloads, I'm sure a lot of those issues will be corrected quickly.

           If the networks embrace the future and stop fighting over time slots, the viewers will return to them in numbers like they have never seen before. The future lies beyond time slots and I'm looking forward to it.

 - Editor - 

 

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