On Tue, Jul 17, 2012 at 2:41 PM, Brad Beam <[email protected]> wrote:
> ** > The "LA Times" did a sampled survey of 24 celebrities to determine their > per-customer efficiency. > > The top 3 in per-viewer spending: > 1 Chelsea Handler: $16.70 > 2 Anderson Cooper: $13.54 > 3 David Letterman: $9.69 > > The bottom 3: > 22 Christina Aguilera: $0.17 > 23 Snooki: $0.16 > 24 Ty Burrell: $0.08 > > K.O. was listed, but not included, in the article for his time at Current > -- his $10+ million salary worked out to $56/viewer. > > > http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/showtracker/la-et-st-star-pay-20120715,0,3421786.story > (summary > chart linked within the story) > I like quantitative analyses like this, but this one seems so simplistic as to not be much help. For one thing, they used total viewers as their denominator, when we know that not all viewers are equal in terms of their economic value. Second, they don't try to approximate what many sports analyses term "replacement value" - how many extra viewers does a particular performer deliver over and above what a generic replacement would? I have never seen the Handler show, but if she gets significantly more viewers than an average replacement would for E!, then she may deserve to make more money than someone who gets higher ratings on another show who is delivering about the same number of viewers as an average replacement would. All of this would depend on yet another variable, which is the value each organization places on establishing a viable beachhead at a particular time slot - something the article does at least mention in passing (re Letterman for example). Related to this is the number of viewers attracted compared to the number available. Ashton Kutcher attracts a lot of viewers, but then there are a lot of potential viewers available at 9:00 on Monday night (or whenever his show is on). There are much fewer viewers available at 11:00 at night, when Chelsey Handler is on, so of course it will cost more dollars per viewer to attract them. They also note, but do not seem to have incorporated, that some of the performers do one show a week for a restricted season, while others do 4 or 5 shows a week for a much longer season. It would be more informative to sum the late night and early morning audiences over an entire week, and use that in the denominator (I can't tell for sure, but it does not look like they did this). For example, they got Dave's $9.61/viewer figure by dividing his $31M salary by his average of 3.2M viewers per night. But Dave does 5 shows a week, 40 weeks a year. At least it seems like they should divide his $31M salary by 16M viewers (3.2M X 5), which would yield $1.94/viewer, which would put him at #14 on this list (between Simon and Ellen, though presumable Ellen's number would have to be adjusted in the same way, and would then be even lower). From what I can tell, 13 of the top 14 in terms of "dollars per viewer" ratio are performers who appear 4 or 5 days a week, either in late night, news, talk or some other format. I suspect if their ratios were adjusted with weekly viewership, and compared to an equal number of performers in weekly entertainment programs, we would see a different ordering. BTW, where is Leno on this list? -- 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
