On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 1:16 PM, Mark J. <[email protected]> wrote: > The AP's David Bauder paints a bleak portrait of the future of the > late-night talk show as we know it (i.e., desk-and-sofa/band/sidekick/ > monologue), as Leno, Letterman, Fallon, Ferguson and Lopez are all > down in the numbers and sinking: > > http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/13/latenight-tv-ratings-fadi_n_644167.html > > The hopeful signs come from ABC's Kimmel (traditional format) and E!'s > Chelsea Handler (non-traditional format)--"Nightline"'s also up and > the COM faux newsmen's numbers are flat.
Stories like this bug me because they are about the business of TV and there's next to no relevant business information in them. Ratings are public information and any reporter can write an article based on following those numbers, but the article doesn't mean anything unless we get an understanding of what those numbers mean to the networks and the future of those shows. In the late '90s Paul Farhi of the Washington Post wrote an article that was picked up and syndicated nationwide. In it he said that the ratings for CBS's Late Show were about the same as the ratings for The Pat Sajak Show when it was canceled. I don't recall if he gave any weight to the changes in the world between both shows. And he didn't spell out a conclusion, but it was clear: Dave's in big trouble. Yet neither his article nor the ratings changed anything (this was post the Rob Morton firing). Bauder isn't coming to any conclusion in his article either. We know that the late night shows are moneymakers, and just not the leader in the time period, just by seeing CBS keep its hands off the Late Show for so many years. We also know that the ratings have been in decline for years. The decline of the first 3 months of the year might have been sharper than the long term trend, but it's part of the long term trend. The real question is what the red line is for ratings - where a rating under the red line means the show is unsustainable. And the ratings consider people watching later on DVR or watching snippets as not watching at all which distorts the popularity of a show. The other business question, after the ratings red line, is would a network prefer to cut budgets or replace a host. I assume this information never makes it into an article because networks don't want to share it. Without it, though, articles about late night talk show ratings are pretty worthless. Tom -- 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
