May be more compatible but wouldn't help ratings-wise. Cheers was notoriously low-rated its first season.
Sure, and the article I linked says that, but Cheers stayed on for a long run because NBC saw that it was attracting the right kind of viewers, and that its audience was growing. Taxi was an established niche hit, probably there to help the night, not be helped by it.
Why talk about lead-in when the point of my mentioning Taxi is that it went from one major network to another major network, and a large percentage of its fourth season audience failed to go with it? I was watching Cheers and Taxi that season--I enjoyed both, but Taxi was clearly a show on the way out.
quote:
Winning an Emmy helped save it.
NBC correctly reading the ratings tea leaves saved it. Better a show that starts poorly and grows than a show that starts well and fades.
quote:
This is NBC's thursday night lineup pre-Cosby Show invigoration.
None of which changes the fact that much of Taxi's ABC audience didn't follow it to NBC. Which destroys the ridiculous notion that CW could count on getting most or even half of the audience of failed CBS shows if they moved there.
If they are going to spend money to make money, I suggest bringing over a show or two from CBS. For some reason, it appears as though they are so fixated on the young base, they are driving away everyone overall. Young people do watch things other than gossip girl, supernatural, or reality. Also, I remember when Buffy came over from UPN. Although this was weblet to weblet, the show did fine as I recall. Unfortunately, it was not pulling down 30 million or even 10 million but it was solid by UPN or WB numbers. The challenge is that some shows are moving over to new networks when they have already peaked. So, the ratings were going to decrease anyway. Hence, you cannot blame that on it being on a different network. Out of curiousity, I wonder what an AI, NCIS, DH, or CSI would do on the CW. Could they get above 10 million viewers consistently?
Not surprising. The ratings have not been all that good the last couple of years. Even the cast overhall of this season didn't generate any additional viewers.
quote:
Originally posted by TPlums: Any thoughts on Las Vegas getting canceled ?
Most of SBC's shows get 10+ million, so I would think, if the CW reinvented itself, that about 1/2 could switch over.
If it is just a show or 2 and the CW stays the same as it is now, then you are right. 3-4 million is all they will get.
quote:
Originally posted by Texas Bound:
quote:
Originally posted by TV-aholic: True, but the CW would grow froma 2.3 million viewer average and a .9 demo rating to a 5 million average and a 1.8 demo rating.
They would start getting shows that have 6-7 million viewers, regularly. Then that could then roll into more eyes checking out shows like Smallville and Reaper.
quote:
Originally posted by Chimera: Even if they move those shows from CBS to the CW, they wouldn't bring along the ratings they had while airing on CBS. The CW has a far smaller reach, far smaller advertising platform, and the ratings of ANTM is about as high they can get without significantly altering who they are (stations, reach, etc).
In no way can you assume that 90% of a show's audience move to a new network. I don't know if you can assume 50% would move with it.
This review/recap of American Idol's girl performances last night is hilarious -- here's the start, then the link for the entire article is at the bottom:
quote:
'American Idol': Where the Girls Are Wednesday evening is all about girl power, "American Idol" host Ryan Seacrest says. The 12 girls quickly divide into two camps: the good performers and the non-good performers, who, it seems, are victims of mean old nerves and mean old colds, possibly the worst flu in the history of the country. Really, it's tragic.
Like Kristy Lee Cook, who's getting her just deserts for having hocked "my really good barrel horse" to raise money for her audition trip to Philly -- because apparently she blew through all the money she got for that recording contract she once had.
Kristy Lee Cook (Frank Micelotta - Fox)"Hopefully, if I win this thing and get enough money I really want go buy my horse back," she says, smiling her bright, bright smile and tossing her blonde, blonde hair. ". . . One of the number one things I'm gonna do, is buy him back."
Excuse me? ONE of the No. 1 things she's gonna do? Dead to us.
For the record, the Horse Pawner robotically slogs through "Rescue Me" while doing the Carrie Underwood American Idol Squat, crinkling her pretty little nose, and opening her pretty eyes very big. Judges Randy Jackson and Paula Abdul rush in with their bag of excuses:
Randy: "Dude, I know the pressure's crazy -- Season 7, first one out in Girls Night."
Paula: "That's okay because being sick and being the first one -- that's a double whammy . . . don't ever let that get in the way of your shine."
Simon Cowell is unimpressed, calling Kristy's performance robotic.
Joanne Borgella's lecture on how hard it is for plus-size women to have thin little voices is followed by a perfectly off-key performance of "Say a Little Prayer." Randy retrieves the Excuse Bag and pulls out: "Maybe it's just the nerves, you know what I'm saying?"
Paula, meanwhile, has discovered: "It's very nerve-racking doing what you're doing now."
Simon continues to be a nerve skeptic: "I don't accept this thing about nerves at all at this point," he says. "Every one of you has got a head start to become a star through this show; if you don't grab hold of it now, you don't deserve to win."
"Well, it's 33-some-odd million watching," Joanne tells Ryan, in re nerves.
Alaina Whitaker's 17th birthday is the next day so she hopes viewers will vote for her while her family can get her "some great shoes." Me? -- I'd have asked for a top with two sleeves. On the bright side, her "More Today Than Yesterday" is far superior to Chikezie Eze's of the previous night.
"Hahaha -- you know why I'm laughing?" Randy asks rhetorically.
Me too, but kind of hard to see how anyone could have done worse than Ostroff & Co.
quote:
Many of the suggestions made here with regards to the CW programming are absolutely ludicrous.
Absolutely true, but only because those people are only interested in 'their' shows--all of which were inherited from WB or UPN, and none of which were created for CW. Those people are making ludicrous suggestions from a network's POV because they don't CARE about the network. And CW has done nothing to make them care. It's an incompatible collection of tiny niche audiences who don't like each other.
quote:
people here can complain all they want about how poorly Dawn is doing,
I'm not complaining. For me to complain, I'd have to give a damn. I'm just OBSERVING. And again, so are many many people in the entertainment biz, and I've no doubt many of them are far less kind--in private.
quote:
but given the confines of the budget, she is doing far better than any of the people here could do.
For the record, I wasn't suggesting anyone here be hired to replace her. So for the record, you're defending her by saying "She does a better job than some bozos wasting time on an obscure message board could do!"?
quote:
The major failing on her part is that she has not been able to convince the 'higher ups' that they need to spend money in order to eventually make money.
Baloney. WB managed to create quite a few successful shows that influenced the industry without any more money. And she's still living off the last dregs of WB, at least as far as scripted TV is concerned.
quote:
She needs to make them see CW as a new startup, not a continuation of the WB/UPN experiment.
Show me any proof she seriously tried to do that, back when CW was starting up. Seems to me she was the one insisting on bringing even failed shows like Veronica Mars over from UPN--because she was involved in developing them.
quote:
The latest example: saving new episodes of many of their shows during the strike. Why save them? It wasn't for sweeps. Instead, it was just a way to get through this season on the lowest budget possible while blaming the writer's strike for the lack of new product. Now, they will be airing those new epiosdes against first run competition on the other nets rather than against strike programming on the other nets.
You have not provided one dram of evidence that Ostroff has been arguing for sane policies--or why she would remain in power there, after such a string of failures, if she was constantly bucking the higher-ups.
You're trying to sound like an insider--care to reveal your sources?
Me, I've got none--and need none. The truth is obvious. And plenty of genuine insiders would agree.
Originally posted by KSO: That's too bad about Las Vegas. I doubt there is a prayer for Friday Night Lights, when they're cancelling a show that has done so much better.
Friday Night Lights as a lead-in is a major reason that Las Vegas has fallen apart and is now being cancelled. FNL and 30 Rock are both poison to successful ratings.
It consistently built on its lead in and aired during one of the least watched hours of television.
I can't imagine they will find a show for a Friday night that will get the ratings Las Vegas had. Trying a new show on a Friday night is the kiss of death, and NBC does not have a strong enough show to move there. Maybe they will just 2 hours of gameshows and Dateline next season. A mistake if you ask me.
1 vs 100 was doing just as well, if not better than Las Vegas in the ratings with lower production costs.
Las Vegas usually fought with 20/20 for 2nd/3rd place in the hour. I think NBC could find another show that draws 6 million viewers
FOX Runs Up the Score While NBC Accelerates to Pass CBS After Three Weeks of the 2008 February Sweep:
After three weeks of the February Sweep, FOX is now running up the score of its unprecedented first place in all key measures. The mammoth FOX lead over its rivals has been fueled by the enormous, record-breaking Super Bowl numbers, the powerhouse American Idol numbers on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and reliable ratings strength on every other night.
In the young audience A18-49 demo that advertisers crave and seek to place their ads within, FOX has the most nightly wins, having beaten the other networks on 13 out of 21 nights so far (one tie), followed by NBC with five nightly wins (one NBC win was a tie with FOX).
After 21 days, NBC holds second place in the A18-49 demo with a .17 advantage over third place ABC. In the households and viewership measures, CBS is losing its grip on second place as its numbers erode and NBC makes nightly gains and may well pass CBS with its stronger-performing schedule by the end of the Sweep.
After 21 days, the two News Corporation networks FOX and MyNetworkTV are both showing solid double-digit improvement over their numbers from last year. All the remaining networks are showing significant double-digit year-over-year declines, with NBC showing the least year-over-year slippage (-10% in demo, -10% in households, and -7% in viewers) while CBS, who were last year's Super Bowl broadcaster, is faring worst (-59% in demo, -47% in households, -52% in viewers) due to its large proportion of encore programming as a result of the writers strike.
After 21 days, the six networks are showing smaller-than-expected (given the strike and increased use of DVR's) year-over-year erosion: the young adult demo down by -12%, households are down by -11% on a year-over-year basis, while viewership is down by -9% year-over-year.
nights nights
demo web demo demo % won won
Rank web 2008 2007 chg 2008 2007
1 FOX 7.41 4.93 50% 13 10
2 NBC 2.58 2.86 -10% 5
3 ABC 2.41 3.44 -30% 3 4
4 CBS 2.25 5.42 -59% 1 7
5 CW 0.89 1.32 -33%
6 MNT* 0.48 0.27 79%
total 16.01 18.24 -12% 22 21
nights nights
HH web HH HH HH won won
rank web 2008 2007 chg 2008 2007
1 FOX 10.2 7.1 44% 11 7
2 CBS 5.3 9.9 -47% 4 12
3 NBC 5.0 5.5 -10% 5 1
4 ABC 4.6 5.8 -21% 3 2
5 CW 1.5 2.1 -28%
6 MNT* 0.8 0.5 53%
total 27.4 30.9 -11% 23 22
nights nights
viewers web viewers viewers viewers won won
rank web 2008 2007 chg 2008 2007
1 FOX 19.177 12.085 59% 11 7
2 CBS 8.128 16.834 -52% 3 12
3 NBC 7.846 8.475 -7% 4
4 ABC 7.229 9.134 -21% 3 2
5 CW 2.307 3.285 -30%
6 MNT* 1.198 0.777 54%
total 45.88 50.59 -9% 21 21
* MyNetworkTV for first 20 nights only.
This years and last years numbers are based upon final Nielsen numbers, except for last nights data which is based on FAST national numbers.
Originally posted by pisher: It's funny how fans of a show will insist that its falling ratings were caused by a timeslot change (which certainly does happen, though it's rarely the only reason), then blithely state that the same audience which couldn't figure out their show was airing an hour later would have no trouble seeking it out on an entirely different network (and presumably a different day and time as well).
Taxi, as you may recall, moved from ABC to NBC for its fifth and final season. ABC had taken it out of its nice safe hammock, and it fell to 53rd place in its fourth season. NBC put it on Thursdays, right after the first season of Cheers, and just before Hill Street Blues. Could you hope for a more compatible lineup?
Apparently you could, because Taxi could only manage 73rd place in its fifth season, and that was that. And honestly, that was all there needed to be--we got it in syndication, and there really was no need for it to continue. It wasn't as funny as it used to be, and they'd done all they could do with the characters. What was left--Latka and Simka have a kid who talks baby talk in a weird accent? Louie becomes a nice person? Alex finally goes to bed with Nardo? How many sharkjumpings do you want for one show?
NBC put it in the same time slot it had when it ended its run on ABC. Even bragged about that fact in the promos. The trouble was that it went from having "Barney Miller" as a lead-in (which, even though it was fading rapidly, still had something of an audience in its final season) to having "Cheers" -- which had no audience to speak of at that time. (Neither did NBC, for that matter, so I guess they could be considered the CW of 1982.) The other problem was, as noted, quality issues. I thought the fourth season of "Taxi" was rather spotty, but the fifth season, most of the best people left the show to do "Cheers" instead, and the few writers who stayed behind or tried to do double duty were forced to do too much and were spread too thin. (Ken Estin and Sam Simon wrote a third of the NBC season, most of their episodes were rush-jobs -- and it showed.) So, yeah, there weren't many bright spots the NBC year, and Brandon Tartikoff and Grant Tinker certainly took notice of that.
"Taxi" did still manage to build on "Cheers" the first half of its last season (before Tartikoff started bouncing it all over the place), suggesting some of its old fans had no trouble seeking it out on a "better network" and were willing to do so, but contrary to James Brooks' opinion, it was a dying dog (hey, more dog refs!) and deserved to be put down... even if "Cheers" had been a good lead-in.
On the other end of the coin was the switch of "The Hogan Family" from NBC to CBS. Not that it was ever a good show, but it was doing fairly well for NBC (not peak year well, but well enough that they certainly could have used it to help their disastrous 1990-1991 season) when the production company, Lorimar, got cocky and pointed to a clause in their contract that said NBC had to make a decision on renewal early. Like, a month or two before upfronts -- something like that. NBC wasn't willing to make the decision early (presumably because the show was down year to year), Lorimar said, "Screw you," and took it to CBS. It was airing Mondays 8:30-9:00 on NBC. CBS had a gaping hole in that time slot due to the failures of "The People Next Door" and "The Famous Teddy Z." I truly believe the show would have done well for CBS had they kept it where it had been on NBC and slotted it in between "Major Dad" and "Murphy Brown." Unfortunately for the show, even though Jeff Sagansky jumped at the chance to have it, he was a complete idiot who couldn't schedule a test pattern, let alone a network, and he buried it on Saturday after this horrible piece of crap called "Family Man" (which was so bad, it made "The Hogan Family" look Emmy-worthy in comparison). Nobody watched CBS on Saturday at that time, and nobody watched it accordingly, and it was cancelled 2 months into its final, CBS, season. Meanwhile, Sagansky chose to fill the hole they had on Monday with the TV adaptation of "Uncle Buck." Which made "Family Man" look Emmy-worthy in comparison.
Originally posted by blackfury: If they are going to spend money to make money, I suggest bringing over a show or two from CBS. For some reason, it appears as though they are so fixated on the young base, they are driving away everyone overall. Young people do watch things other than gossip girl, supernatural, or reality. Also, I remember when Buffy came over from UPN. Although this was weblet to weblet, the show did fine as I recall. Unfortunately, it was not pulling down 30 million or even 10 million but it was solid by UPN or WB numbers. The challenge is that some shows are moving over to new networks when they have already peaked. So, the ratings were going to decrease anyway. Hence, you cannot blame that on it being on a different network. Out of curiousity, I wonder what an AI, NCIS, DH, or CSI would do on the CW. Could they get above 10 million viewers consistently?
Well the only show (that I am aware of switching) was the CBS show Wolflake (not sure on the title), and it suffered a large drop in viewers.
As to Buffy (and Roswell) switcing from the WB to UPN, its a different comparison. At the time UPN and the WB roughly had a similar market share. So it wasn't a matter of worrying to much about a show losing a large number of stations that they air on.
And Buffy was a huge signiture show, it had a tremendous amount (based onits viewer numbers) of media coverage to help give it a huge push.
This typically wouldn't happen for most "cast offs" from other networks. Unless the show was already a big media darling. And even though Friday Night Lights (as a current example) is a critically loved show, it doesn't get much attention in the public's eye.
And yes, some of the big name shows on the other networks could manage viewers over 10 million on the CW, but it is far and away not what most struggling shows would do.
You can tell based on the huge numbers that Star Trek was able to generate with their two pilots that netlets can with a huge Brand name (and lets face it while Trek hasn't been a good weekly performer on tv, it was still a huge brand for people to check out) deliver an audience over 10 million. Then you just have to manage to keep it.
NBC put it in the same time slot it had when it ended its run on ABC. Even bragged about that fact in the promos. The trouble was that it went from having "Barney Miller" as a lead-in (which, even though it was fading rapidly, still had something of an audience in its final season) to having "Cheers" -- which had no audience to speak of at that time. (
But had more of an audience, week after week. There was just an aura around it. You knew it was going to be a hit, even while looking at the ratings.
Again, the lead-in is beside the point. Taxi moved from one major network to another major network, and there was tons of promotion, and as an established show, it was supposed to be helping out the new shows, not the other way around. It didn't do that. Because much of its ABC audience went on watching whatever came on after Barney Miller, and didn't make the jump to NBC. Taxi had many ardent fans, but it did not have a large audience that would follow it anywhere. Few shows do.
And honestly, when you think of the classic Taxi eps--do you think of ONE that premiered on NBC? The show changed very little, but somehow it was never the same. The energy was gone.
Network switches very VERY rarely work. And when you're talking about switching a failed major network show to a weblet, you're talking about something that has NEVER worked.
Agreed, or do we have to further dazzle the other posters with our arcane and pointless knowledge of TV history?
Daily Game for 
