WK 2-3 4 5 6 7 8 M: 5.7 4.3 4.9 4.7 4.6/1.3 4.3/1.3 T: 6.7 6.2 5.8 5.4 6.1/1.8 6.5/2.0 W: 6.2 5.7 6.2 5.2 5.0/1.5 4.7/1.3 Th: 4.9 4.9 5.2 5.0 4.4/1.6 4.7/1.7 F: 5.6 5.3 5.0 6.2 5.1/1.2 4.6/1.2 *AVE: 5.8 5.3 5.4 5.3 5.0/1.5 5.0/1.5 *
WK 9 10 11 12 13 14 M: 4/1.2 4.6/1.2 4.5/1.4 4.7/1.3 4.7/1.3 4.8/1.5 T: 5.7/1.4 6/1.8 4.9/1.9 DARK* 8.4/2.9 5.2/1.8 W: 4.6/1.4 5.2/1.4 5.1/1.6 5.6/1.5 4.5/1.3 5.5/1.6 Th: 4.6/1.6 4.8/1.6 5.0/1.5 4.7/1.5 5.8/1.3 5.2/1.7 F: 4.7/1.2 5.1/1.5 3.5/1 4.8/1.4 5.8/1.9 5.6/1.4 *AVE: 4.7/1.4 5.0/1.5 4.6/1.5 5.2/1.5* 5.8/1.8 5.2/1.6* This was not a horrible week for Leno, and he is still at the point where any week that can be said is a pretty good week. On my spreadsheet I calculated his average numbers for each day of the week from week 4, (when his numbers stabilized from initial curiosity look-ins) to week 12 (2 weeks ago, not counting last week's "Biggest Loser Bump"). The good news is that Leno out-performed this average for every day except for Tuesday. The bad news is, he has been benefiting so much from the big lead in on Tuesday from the Biggest Loser, that even his improved performances on the other 4 days only gave him a small weekly increase over his average (5.2/1.6 vs 5.1/1.5). Still, this was good enough to be his second best week since Week 6 (after last week's somewhat atypical week). I realize now I have been overestimating, and oversimplifying, the rerun schedule in December. Last week NBC had mostly first runs and specials, this week CBS had mostly first runs (no repeats at 10:00 M-TH). The good news for Leno: ABC had reruns at 10:00 on M, T & TH (and a first run of the weak "Eastwick" on W) and he beat ABC each of those 4 nights. From what we have seen so far, I don't think Leno will consistently beat repeats of the CBS 10:00 dramas, but he will do better against, them, and beat any rerun or weak drama ABC puts on at 10:00. That is not what NBC and Leno had been hyping (they had predicted that Leno would beat both of the other networks when they had repeats) but, in the big picture, I think NBC will take coming in second to CBS's expensive scripted dramas (though I guess that expense will have to be reduced by whatever savings CBS gets by running them twice). The bad news I think is on Friday night - while Leno beat a Numb3rs rerun on CBS, it lost to 20-20 on ABC; to me this is made even worse by the fact that NBC's Dateline beat 20-20 at 9:00 (what was going on here, a 20-20 marathon on ABC last night?). SNF continues to perform really well for NBC - when that goes away I suspect Leno's numbers will take a dip on Mondays (they seem to promote the hell out of Leno on Sunday Night Football). I will repeat yet again my prescription for Leno - but back to 3 nights a week (T-TH), run Dateline 2 more times at 9:00, push 2 9:00 shows to M & F at 10:00. If they do this, their ratings will go up on M & F, AND (more importantly) the quality of the T-TH Leno shows would improve, as he would have more time to write and produce them. They may want to keep the 9:00 shows where they are and put Dateline at 10:00 instead on M & F, given all the worry about needing a DVR proof 10:00 show, but it would essentially be the same idea. We had some question as to how well the new singing show would do as a lead in for Leno (I have not seen it, or even read much about it, does it suck much?). I think the basic answer is that it has done as well or better than NBC's other 9:00 shows - except for Tuesday night, where it is not nearly as good as Biggest Loser was. The TV By The Numbers guys report that the SNL special on Thursday equaled NBC's average for the night this season, and outperformed 30 Rock at 9:30. All of this was good enough to basically wash out the loss of viewers on Tuesday or a little better, for now, but when Leno is back up against first run shows on both other networks, he will probably be behind unless NBC can come up with at least one more good lead-in. The problem for Leno is that in a week in which half of his competition (but the weaker half) was repeats he turned in numbers that are supposed to be what he does against first run competition (a tick or two over the 5M/1.5 in the demo minimum). Against total rerun competition I think he needs to be at least in the 5.5/1.7 range - I guess we will have a chance to see that these next two weeks of Christmas and New Year's. As of his 14th week, he still has not done either well enough to be counted even a minimum success, or poorly enough to be written off as a failure. For now he is still in limbo. Meanwhile, I am starting to think about the impact of the Winter Olympics on the Jay Leno Show. I spend a few minutes searching but got tired of all the noise that came up - if anyone knows NBC's plans for Leno during the Olympic fortnight I am interested in knowing them. My advice to NBC would be to give Leno and his team as much time off during those 2 week as possible. They can promote the hell out of the show (if they are still committed to it) and maybe have Leno do 5-10 minutes of monologue every night at 10:00 just before they show their big finale events. But they need to let these guys rest a few days, then let them get a head start on writing and producing segments for the show after the Olympics, with some hope that heavy promotion during the Olympics gets a few more viewers to give Leno a second chance, and then that he has something to deliver to convince them to stay. > -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. 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