On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 9:31 AM, Greg Diener <[email protected]> wrote:
> What the article notoriously ignores is that Leno's numbers in the > money demo are still below what Conan's numbers were this time last > year. > > Robert Seidman of tvbythenumbers writes about this. > > > http://tvbythenumbers.com/2010/08/13/how-come-the-media-gets-it-wrong-with-leno-and-tiger-woods-ratings/59921 > > (SNIP) Also the Variety article ignores that Letterman was in reruns that > week. > I was going to point out the same thing. I can't read the entire original Variety article, but it seems like it is little more than a re-write of the NBC press release. In addition to the page Greg links to, it is always good to look at the TVBTN chart here: http://tvbythenumbers.com/2010/08/12/lenos-tonight-show-ratings-once-again-trail-conans-on-a-calendar-basis/59799 Conan premiered June 1 2009, and had atypically high ratings for 4 weeks driven by curiosity check-ins. It is not surprising that his ratings were better than Leno's for the same weeks in 2010. But, if you start with week 5 of Conan (last week of June) and track through to the end of the first week in August, you will see that Conan out performed Leno three times, and tied him three times. Also, as noted in TVBTN: "As has been the case in all but a couple of weeks since returning to late night in March, Leno came out ahead of Letterman, though Letterman was flat vs. last summer while *Tonight Show *was down 0.1. with adults 18-49." If NBC was worried that Leno's failure in primetime, and loss of his "good guy" image in the media wars with Conan was going to result in a ratings loss to Dave, then I guess they are relieved - but I doubt anyone familiar with the late night battles over the years seriously expected that to happen. The real story has always been Leno vs Conan, not Leno vs Dave (as we know, Dave is doing quite well and making CBS a lot of money at his current numbers). Leno and NBC argued that Conan had to go because he was a ratings failure. What has been embarrassing for them is that Leno has not improved on Conan's performance, and as often as not does worse, both in absolute numbers, and in the magnitude of the margin vs Dave. I think though that Greg is wrong about Dave being in reruns in the week in question (August 2-6) - at least, according to the TVBTN page, their point was that Variety was ignoring the fact that Dave is in reruns every friday during the summer, which lowers his weekly average vs Leno when both are otherwise in first run. As I have mentioned before, what I am looking forward to is the ratings numbers starting mid September. Two things happened then last year: 1 - Dave got a big bump with this extortion announcement, and 2 - Conan starting really getting hurt soon after by a weak 10:00 pm lead-in. This combo led to a neck and neck race between Conan and Dave for the next 15 weeks or so, though for all the teeth gnashing at NBC Dave only actually beat Conan 5 or 6 times during that period. Presumably Leno will outperform Conan for the same 15 week period this year, as he will have a much better 10:00 pm lead-in, and Dave is unlikely to have another media flare. So I expect that this fall Leno will start looking better vs Conan, and at that time NBC will suddenly discover the importance of that comparison and begin featuring it in their press releases (and, I guess, we will start seeing it in Variety too). Then we will see what happens in November. -- 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
