On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 4:40 PM, Kevin M. <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 4:05 PM, PGage <[email protected]> wrote: > > Conan will probably beat Stewart and Colbert (what are that > > woman's ratings like, and what station is she on?) and be the most > popular > > talk show on cable, as opposed to ther 3rd (or 4th) place talk show on > > broadcast. Not too shabby. > > And if you can find a kind-hearted TV critic other than Aaron to > report it that way, you may have a point (though it is debatable that > Conan on TBS can beat Stewart/Colbert). But, most likely, you're going > to see stories about Jay's ratings being X and Conan's ratings being > less-than-X. > Any TV Critic who reports Leno's ratings and Conan's as comparing apples with apples will not be worth reading. I doubt you will see much of that. What you will see is critics dismissing Conan as having "lost" just because he is on basic cable and not a "major network" like NBC, regardless of the numbers. I guess there are some TV critics who think Leno is a "winner" compared to Stewart just because he draws about 2.5M more viewers each night, but if there are they are not TV critics that have much credibility. With a smaller budget on a much lower profile platform Stewart has had a far greater footprint on both popular and serious culture over the last ten years than Leno - I doubt there is a comic worth half a damn who wouldn't much rather be in Stewart's shoes than Leno's. I am not predicting that Conan will have as big an impact as Stewart (he almost certainly will not). I am predicting that he will have a bigger audience that Stewart on a much more comparable platform than he has with Leno, and will have more of a pop culture influence than Leno even with an audience one third the size. Leno may give passive-aggressive quotes to the New York Times a year from now concluding that, since he has better ratings he guesses he must be declared the winner, but I think it is likely that a year from now Conan will be better off than had he either stayed with the Tonight Show or gone to Fox. TBS will also be better off than they are now, with a show that will get about a 50% higher rating than Lopez, gets them more buzz and a bit of a hipper vibe, and a connection to a production company that potentially could turn out valuable content for them for the next decade. I was thinking maybe FX would want to get into the CoCo business, or possibly A&E or Bravo; TBS did not occur to me, but I see a lot of advantages here and I think it is a good decision by Conan. -- 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. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en To unsubscribe, reply using "remove me" as the subject.
