This week all the major broadcast networks held their upfront presentations, announcing their upcoming fall schedules and subsequently the new shows they would be presenting. I put together some handy-dandy color-coded charts to navigate the new landscape. It looks like ABC and NBC are going to presenting the most new material, while Fox has managed to do quite a bit of rearranging with their existing shows. CBS is making the least changes since they’ve performed the best this season.

Update: You may be interested in new online calendar that I’ve published for the Fall 2009 TV season. More about that at this posting.

One of this year’s most promising shows, Fringe is widely considered to be returning next season due to its decent ratings. Some viewers have often said the show has benefited largely from its current lead-in, American Idol, which often surpasses 20 million viewers. In order to properly judge the ‘Idol Effect,’ I compiled all of the ratings for the current season of Fringe.

Looking at the current season to date, Fringe has averaged 8.9 million viewers per episode. Within the 18-49 and 18-34 demos, the show has averaged 4.75 and 2.02 million viewers respectively.

The dark areas in graph above, during late October and between early December and early January, are days that repeat episodes of Fringe were aired. The average total audience for these episodes is 5.1 million viewers, 42% less than the season average. The light areas are days that Fringe followed an episode of American Idol. These days the show had an average audience of 11.46 million, 29% greater than the season average. Note the change in lead-in audience the American Idol portion.

Since Fringe has not aired a single repeat episode after American Idol, I decided to look at only new episode ratings in order to properly gauge the ‘Idol Effect.’

Taking into account only new episodes, Fringe had an overall audience 18% greater after American Idol than after House. However, in the 18-34 and 18-49 demos the difference was much less, only 2% and 10% greater, respectively. I had imagined that the effect would be much greater in these younger demos where American Idol is very popular, but the younger audience simply dropped off at a greater rate.

In any case, both House and American Idol are popular shows, and it is evident that Fringe was well positioned in its premiere season to succeed.

A couple of articles last week about network television caught my eye. The first, in The Economist looked at how the ‘big four’ broadcast networks have lost ratings during the past ten years. The most dramatic decline has been for NBC; their ratings are been reduced by half. CBS and ABC have fared almost as bad, while Fox has lost about a third. The second article I noted was in Fortune about ‘TV’s Biggest Moneymakers,’ detailing the top 10 revenue generators on broadcast network television. The results are as follows.

What I noticed was how audience size did not completely correlate to revenues. I figured that this was due to two factors: 1) advertisers were not interested in the general audience, and targeting segments like the 18-49 demographic (this explains the revenue powerhouse American Idol) and 2) certain shows with relatively lower audiences, like Private Practice and Heroes, were sold on expectations of higher ratings before their current season began.

Given The Economist article, I was also interested in looking at how network TV ad costs have changed. I found the historical prices for network TV primetime ad spots at the Television Bureau of Advertising’s website, and I also found a chart of Advertising Age’s reports of 30-second spot costs for network TV’s top 10 shows, between 2000 and 2008, at this useful website. Consolidating the two gives us the following picture.

Just as The Economist highlights, ratings have gone down as a whole, and so have primetime ad costs, particularly during the past four years. However, the decrease in ad costs hasn’t been enough to compensate for the decreasing audience, resulting in higher overall CPM’s. It would be interesting to see how the networks will handle the situation with their clients during the  upcoming upfront.

Last week it was announced by much fanfare at Fox News and MSNBC that CNN had finished in third place behind the other news networks for the month of March. How is possible that the founder and brand leader for broadcast news had diminished so much in the market?

I believe that this is a result of a broad sociological change in the United States that has dramatically shifted the marketplace towards polarized political stances, ocurring in part to due voter redistricting, as explained in this Economist article from 2002. This broad shift has subsequently led consumers to prefer opinionated and almost ‘biased’ news, which first led to the rise of Fox News, and later of MSNBC. As a result, media like CNN that are less opinionated and run the middle road become the ‘alternative’ in the marketplace and risk losing audience.

Personally, I am not a constant viewer of any of these three networks, but I do find CNN’s GPS with Fareed Zakaria to be an excellent program that always provides a distinct and serious look at current news topics. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a fresh perspective.

Last Thursday was the showdown between Comedy Central’s John Stewart and CNBC’s Jim Cramer. The interview of the latter by the former on The Dailly Show was the climax of an unexpected exchange between the two cable stars, begun when Stewart took aim at CNBC’s financial news coverage. I was looking forward to the show and was somewhat surprised to see how much of the encounter seemed to be more of an oversight hearing on financial reporting, and less of a funny interview.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwUXx4DR0wo&hl=en&fs=1]

This editorial stance reminded me of John Stewart’s criticism in 2004 of CNN’s Crossfire, whose senstional news and style he said was “hurting America.” During that incident John Stewart held that The Daily Show inherently lacked the same responsibilities as Crossfire since “the show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls.” Still, The Daily Show is clearly not just a comedy show, not since 1999, when John Stewart and Ben Karlin from The Onion arrived, and changed the show’s tack, to focus on more political topics, also while striving to be more socially conscious. With these changes the show’s audience more than tripled and subsequently the show regularly has A-list guests like Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, John McCain and Barack Obama.

THE DAILY SHOW VIEWERSHIP
Pre-1999 average (Pre-John Stewart): 0.3 million viewers
2003 average: 1.0 million viewers
October 2007 average: 3.0 million viewers
January 7, 2008 (first show post writer’s strike): 1.45 million viewers
September 15-19, 2008 average (week with Tony Blair): 2.0 million viewers
October 8,2008 (interview with Michelle Obama): 3.0 million viewers
October 29, 2008 (interview with Barack Obama): 3.6 million viewers
January 19, 2009 (Inauguration Day): 2.6 million viewers
March 12, 2009 (interview with Jim Cramer): 2.3 million viewers

The rise in ratings has occurred somewhat in parallel to the Bush Presidency. Given the end of that Presidency, I had been wondering if The Daily Show would no longer have as much source material, and that it might lose its relevance and popularity. This last incident with CNBC proves the show will maintain both.

For the second time in two years, the Solutions Research Group did a survey asking consumers to choose their ‘must keep TV brands if they could keep only a limited number of channels to watch in their households.’ The top 10 results are as follows.

1. ABC
2. CBS
3. NBC
4. Fox
5. ESPN
6. Discovery Channel
7. History
8. Sci Fi Channel (up from No. 14 a year earlier)
9. HBO (down one position from a year earlier)
10. Food Network (first time in Top 10)

I find it surprising to see History and the Sci Fi Chanel to be higher on the list than HBO. This may be a result of the added cost that HBO incurs, even though it is unclear how this factored into the survey. In any case, it is clear that the History and Sci Fi have attained an important position in the market during the past five years- Battlestar Galactica was launched in 2003. Other top risers in the survey were USA and TNT.

During my last posting I took a look at the audience levels for the Academy Awards since 1974. Since I had the data handy I decided to compare the viewing trends to the Superbowl.

It’s fascinating to see how the audience levels have diverged. Although slightly more popular in 1974, the Superbowl now attracts more than double the audience of the Oscars. Perhaps this is a reflection of the diminishing value of the Oscars, now that there are more opportunities now to see celebrities and movie stars, be it through other awards telecasts, multiple magazines, specialty cable channels and hundreds of web sites.

I was also interested in comparing the relative ad pricing between the two events, especially since it was recently reported in Mediapost that there has been some discounting and special packages offered for advertising in this year’s Oscars. Comparing the ad prices between the two events since 1983, the CPM per household was relatively similar until the last three years.

Last year a 30-second national spot in the Oscars cost $1.8 million and had an effective CPM of approximately $86. This year the prices for a national spot have dropped to $1.4 million. If the broadcast maintains the same ratings, it will have an effective CPM of $66, 23% lower than last year but still higher than the mid 50′s CPM for the Superbowl. Perhaps certain clients will opt to pay more for certain female or upper-income segments that more commonly tune into the Oscars rather than the Superbowl.

UPDATE: The Oscars averaged 36.3 million viewers, well above my predicition and much higher than the audience of 32 million last year. More on this later.

I recently saw this posting on TV By the Numbers regarding the historical ratings of the Oscars. Much has been made over how the event’s ratings are tied to how popular the nominated movies are so I decided to take a closer look. Since TV By the Numbers had the ratings information for all the Academy Awards broadcasts between 1974 and 2008, I compiled out the domestic grosses for all the Best Picture nominees for all those years and then compared the two sets.

The peak for 1974 is not completely accurate since the domestic figures for the two nominees, A Touch of Class and Cries and Whispers, are not available. Still, what is apparent from the chart is that the Oscar ratings do rise and fall somewhat with the best picture nominees’ gross. Looking at the results, I noted the following:

Average gross, 1974-2008: $85.1 million
Average audience, 1974-2008: 43.02 million viewers
Peak average gross: $199.5 million (1998)
Peak audience: 55.2 million viewers (1998)

I also calculated some ratios based on the relationship between viewers and the average gross.

Ratio 1 (1974-2008): 0.59
Ratio 2 (gross<$85 million, 2000-2008): 0.61
Ratio 3 (2008): 0.45

I then tried to figure out what size audience this year’s Oscars would have based on these parameters. This year the Best Picture nominees are currently running a below-average gross of $54.7 million.

Current total U.S. Box Office Gross for 2009 Oscar Best Picture Nominees
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: $122.6 million
Frost/Nixon: $16.6 million
Milk: $26.7 million
The Reader: $19.6 million
Slumdog Millionaire: $88.1 million

However, this average will rise since the movies haven’t finished their box office run yet. This is especially relevant for the finally tallies of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Slumdog Millionaire whose totals I believe will respectively approximate $150 and $100 million. This would render an average nominee gross of around $61 million. Based upon a ratio#2 of 0.61 this year’s Oscars would yield approximately 33 million viewers. However, since the ratings have been dropping over the past few years, and last year’s ratio was only 0.45, I would substitute this ratio to predict this year’s audience will be around 28 million.

I recently read an Ad Age article regarding the popularity of Univision’s content on YouTube. It focuses on how popular certain network content is on YouTube. A major point is how Univision’s telenovelas (Latin soap operas) are the most popular fare by far.

Number of views of clips from the 10 most-pirated shows on each major network

1. Univision: 583,750,247 views
2. Fox: 289,074,325 views
3. ABC: 260,299,418 views
4. CBS: 127,334,729 views
5. NBC: 120,890,835 views

However, as one of the commentators noted, many of the Univision videos didn’t seem to come from that network since they had an embedded logo bug for El Canal de las Estrellas, Televisa-owned Channel 2 from Mexico. It is easy to confuse the two network since they broadcast many of the same telenovelas, produced in Mexico and very popular with Univision’s Hispanic audience as well as in many other foreign markets.

As I searched YouTube’s site for telenovelas I also noticed that many of these telenovela videos were hosted by a few specialty YouTube ‘channels,’ who seemed to specialize in the telenovela genre.

YouTube Channels with Telenovela content

1. Laurisgar: 1,415 videos
2. Tvnovelasmx: 1,414 videos
3. Mundomexicotv: 1,077 videos
4. Felsesnovela: 418 videos
5. rBd24RbD: 434 videos

The hosts of these channels seemed to be based in Mexico, and some of them even explained how they posted the videos ‘as soon as the programs were transmitted’ by Canal 2 in Mexico. What’s noteworthy was although these channels originate in Mexico their content seems to draw more traffic from outside that country. For example the Laurisgar channel is currently ranked as the #5 YouTube channel worlwide, but it doesn’t even place in the Mexican rankings (YouTube channel rankings after changing the ‘country of content preference’). I believe this discrepancy is due to Televisa’s new online video site, TVolucion. This site, launched in October 2008 is sort of a Mexican version of Hulu, so it’s been a major draw for Mexican telenovela watchers. Also similar to Hulu, this site cannot be utilized by outside of its home country so ‘foreign’ telenovela fans need to get their fix elsewhere, hence YouTube’s attraction.

However, as the Ad Age article also mentions, this situation will probably not last much longer. Univision doesn’t currently offer any telenovela video online since the rights have not been cleared with Televisa but talks have been ongoing for some time. Also, just last month, Univision named Kevin Conroy as the President of Univision Interactive Media; previously Mr. Conroy was AOL’s Executive VP of Global Proudcts and Marketing. Expect further online developments from Univision soon, as well as clean-up of YouTube’s telenovela material.

CrunchBase Information on Televisa

CrunchBase Information on YouTube

This morning I looked at this MediaPost article concerning a recent study by Magna Global of C3 and “live-only” 18-49 ratings for the major TV broadcast networks.

There are little if any differences between C3 and live ratings for the current television season. However, there is a noticable drop in C3 ratings from 2007 to 2008. Fox dropped 14% from 2.9 to 2.5, but I consider this to be somewhat inaccurate since it doesn’t take American Idol into account. Somewhat more concerning is ABC’s 13% drop from 3.1 to 2.7.

As I mentioned in a recent posting of top-rated TV “cash cows,” ABC’s pack of hit shows is diminishing in share. Ugly Betty, Grey’s Anatomy, Desperate Housewives and even Dancing With the Stars have lost audience this season, perhaps in certain cases by the writer’s strike, or perhaps by what some fans have determined to be significant change in the shows’ quality or attractiveness. I for one have not loved Grey’s Anatomy recent plot line involving a romance between Denny the Ghost (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and Doctor Izzie (Katherin Heigl).

In response ABC is certainly trying to tweak their shows (last week it was anounced that cast members at Ugly Betty and Grey’s Anatomy are leaving). Cast and plot changes might help, as might the return of Lost; the fifth and penultimate season begins tomorrow night. I am also curious about  suspect next season’s crop of programming at ABC, which may include a return to primetime of the hit game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. In any case, what is certain is that ABC will try to stop their current momentum by whatever means necessary.