October 13-17, 2008

[SteveFrame]

Yeah Heroes hasn't lost a lot of it's audience, but many reports are sayign that they will still lose ad dollars this year. Even if NBC shows the advertisers the DVR rating it won't matter to them.

I just got a DVR. First one I have ever had. I have had it for 2 days now and I haven't watched the first commercial since I got it. I record everything on my DVR that is on a commercial network and play it back on my DVR and guess what I skip through all the advertising. I doubt I will ever watch a commercial again - if I can get by with it.

And that is why you won't see DVR ratings matter that much until there is some way to not allow us to skip the commercials.

So even in the end Heroes having a big DVR rating is not going to help them out a lot. Advertisers just don't care that much about that rating yet. They are looking at it some but I see it a long time before they put a lot of credit in it. They did start this year having Nielsen put a switch into the DVR's that lets them know how many people are skipping the comercials and how many are watching them. So they are looking at it.

I predict if it starts to grow more to that way either they will come up with some agreement with the DVR companies to not allow skipping - in much the same way that some CD companies are making their CD's not recordable and non-uploadable to the computer. Or like some DVD's have a block on them so they can't be copied.

[Sylph]

Sara Bibel talks about Night Shift's disappointing ratings.

[Darn]

Well, it's a terrible, badly written show. On SoapNet. So this isn't surprising.

[MarkH]

Hold the fort! (I disagree Night Shift is bad, but this is a topic shift).

Did you see Roger Newcomb's post of the Soapnet ratings? I realize this comes from ABCD publicity, but these are the first hard numbers I recall seeing. ALSO, they reveal something fascinating!!

Now, to give you a sense of how many viewers this adds to the base for each show, I'm going to plot total viewers of each show for the October 13 week, and then add in the extra total viewers due to Soapnet. (I know the 18-39 demo matters most, I know there is all kinds of fudge in these numbers...but let's just look at this as a crude approximation, okay?)

(Unspoken: It is sad that neither Days nor GH:NS appear in this self-congratulatory release)

Now, the above figure doesn't adequately convey, IMO, how much the viewership increase represents. So, the next figure does something a little different.

I standardized it so that each soap's network viewership represented "100%" of its typical viewership. Then, I plotted the proportional increase ABOVE network numbers (Toups' Live + Same Day) that Soapnet represented. As you can see, Soapnet adds between 14% (Y&R) and 18% (AMC) beyond the typical network viewership.

There is much of interested here to me.

1. Are any of the "declining" viewers we see on the network ratings due to Soapnet (or online) viewership? Again, this makes me WISH we could get those numbers.

2. If the network declines are partly due to this shifting viewership pattern, does that mean that Soapnet/legal online are HURTING the soaps, or that the soaps are being successfully saved (by preparing them for the post-broadcast-network world)?

Who do I have to do favors for to get CBS' aggregate numbers for their CBS.com/Hulu.com/fancast.com/Msn.com/Youtube.com viewership numbers??? I NEED those numbers .

[marceline]

*dabs Mark's feverish brow with cold washcloth and whispers gently*

We can't get those number for you, honey. We just can't. You'll have to learn to do without them. Shhhh I know it hurts...I know...

Seriously though if somebody can find a way to pull and combine that data and sell it potential advertisers they'd have a gold mine on their hands.

[MarkH]

LOL

I would be shocked if CBS didn't get those online numbers from each source it licenses streaming to. I find that when there is a sponsor on a particular episode of Y&R or GL (often just one for the whole episode--say--Blackberry), that same sponsor sponsors that episode at EACH streaming source.

I don't know how they are serving those ads...but I do know the online ad servers have a very good sense of number of views/unique views. CBS, I would suspect, is getting DAILY reports on this.

The fact that CBS has been actively expanding online venues for its shows, and the fact that Brad Bell agreed to stream his, suggests to me that (a) these numbers are GOOD, and ( they have managed to reduce international piracy.

But this is the two edged sword. If you grow a platform (online), is it coming at the cost of broadcast numbers?? Gosh darn if I wouldn't like to study that! (But that would require a direct data collection to directly address that issue).

This last weekend, I travelled on business, missing the Thurs/Fri shows of Y&R (and B&B...but I've been ignoring that lately--except yesterday's Betty White episode--which got no promotion). I never did have time to watch Friday's show (until I got home to my trusty DVR), but I watched Thursday's show during a brief 38 minute break Monday morning.

My point is this: The online offering kept me up to date, and it was likely "counted". But it also meant there was one less viewer for the broadcast offering on Friday. It makes me wonder if those Friday "drops" we are seeing are because people travel/go out on Fridays, and they catch up later via the online broadcast.

This isn't just academic speculating. The answer to that question has direct implications for the future viability of soaps.

Let me say that -- even if they are spinning -- I am delighted that Soapnet is not in decline. I wish we could see those figures monthly.

[JackPeyton]

heres the thing tho, it doesnt matter how many people watch them on soapnet, hulu, sbc.com, youtube, etc...

why?

because ratings are used for advertisers. therefor they dont care about any of that [!@#$%^&*] unless they are paying for ad space on those outlets.

thats why ad companies do not care about DVR ratings.

i dont think people doubt the audiance is there, just now speard out over all the above outlets for soaps. but the people need to be there in the daytime on the networks for the ratings to count to get the ads.

jmho.

[MarkH]

You're obviously right, in terms of TV ads.

But my point is...if you can show the audience is still there, and many ARE watching ads (e.g., Soapnet tends to get a lot of live views, with high viewer loyalty, meaning they don't switch the channel; Internet has forced ads), then you can show that the TOTAL NUMBERS are there, and you can offer the advertisers a multi-platform deal.

"You can advertise on CBS daytime. If you ALSO want to hook the online viewers, this is how many more viewers you would get there...." and so forth.

Anyway, my interest is selfish. I just want to prove that Y&R in the US gets at least 6 million viewers a day :-).

[marceline]

It's true that these numbers don't count for tradition TV ads but if you look at all those viewing opportunities as a whole other options like product placement become much more attractive. It opens up other potential revenue streams.

[MarkH]

Bingo!

There is another thread on this in "DTS". I made a similar point there (before seeing this). What it shows is that the soap audience may not be dying as fast as we think...they're just MOVING _and_ soaps may be catching up with them (via soapnet, online). That's important. Over time, it means the networks should pay LESS for these shows, but the other media should pay MORE.

I think it is also informative, as I said in the other thread, that Soapnet fails at 11 pm no matter what...Soaptalk, Y&R, Days, GH:NS. They need to abandon that slot.

I feel badly for Days, sincerely. It is not really thriving in ANY platform (though it seems to be rebounding a little in the daytime). I suspect the I-Tunes thing ain't doing too well (NBC should stream it, just like they do EXCELLENTLY with their primetime shows). Days has not received "laudable" ratings on Soapnet at either 7 pm or 11 pm.

Another lesson from this, I think, is that ROUGHLY the success of the shows is daytime is mirrored on Soapnet. Y&R is the big daytime winner...and it is the big winner on Soapnet. AMC/OLTL/GH are all pretty close to each other in daytime...and they are on Soapnet too.

This means that the nets can't ABANDON daytime or promotion. Because it seems clear that Soapnet is getting viewers who WOULD watch daytime but can't.

[sheilaforever]

SoapNet ratings matter to soaps because Disney gets ad money and Sony licensing fees on their show's performances...

Even with those SoapNet numbers all ABC soaps are in the dumps. Remember the days when GH pulled in 4 million viewers a day - on network TV. Now they can't even pull in 3 million - including SoapNet! Driving off 25+% of your audience in not even 5 years is amazing and unseen of I guess, at least with TPTB still being in charge. Y&R's numbers look rather ok including SoapNet's figure. WIth CBS in general I suppose a good chunk of 0.1 million (Y&R could be more, since CBS has streaming links for it on it's front page along with the CSIs...) viewers watch their shows now online, which doesn't matter taht much, though.

[miajere]

This all sounds great....but is it just me, or does it seem the fans are the only ones doing their homework??...These networks (outside of Y&R and B& seem to be busy looking for ways to make more excuses.