With the growth of Tivo and On Demand and online viewing, do head-to-head matchups really matter anymore?

jemagee wrote:

Bill McNeal wrote:I hate what american idol has done to TV. The other networks are so afraid of it NOTHING good is on at all when ever Idol airs. I tried to watch it this week and it SUCKS worse than a 2 dollar whore with broken teeth.

YOu say it like it's a new phenomenon to avoid programming against big shows that get high ratings...it's just not a smart thing to do with a new show...Greys anatomy started on a sunday, got a big following and then ABC moved it to thursday to fight it out with CSI...CSI didn't start on Thursday at 9 either...X-Files which was a sunday staple on Fox stared on Fridys until the audience built.

The problem is more that nuturing quality but underappreciated shows that build audiences is a dead art...shows like cosby, cheers, seinfeld...they'd never make it in todays arena cause they started off slow and audiences slowly found them.

I know its not a new thing, it's just frustrating when there is nothing to watch on TV two nights in a row every week because of one suckass show.

Bill McNeal wrote:When the hell is Notes from the Underbelly on? My wife wanted to check it out

I saw the first two episodes and was done with it. It sucks.

Grotewold wrote:With the growth of Tivo and On Demand and online viewing, do head-to-head matchups really matter anymore?

Kind of. I'm don't know much about advertising, perhaps LA can chime on in here.

The thing is, right now, advertisers aren't paying too much attention to DVR usage. But it is effective, shows are getting upwards of 2 million extra viewers when that is factored in. Advertisers have no role in DVD sales, itunes sales or On-Demand viewing. But they also factor into a shows overall audience, and numbers dictate that overall interest in TV is about the same as it once was, it's just that less people are watching shows live.

But networks make the most money off of ad rates than any other form of getting the show out there, so they remain first. And if they only care about how a show does in its live broadcoast, than head to head number and stuff like that do matter.

dsp wrote:

Grotewold wrote:With the growth of Tivo and On Demand and online viewing, do head-to-head matchups really matter anymore?

Kind of. I'm don't know much about advertising, perhaps LA can chime on in here.

The thing is, right now, advertisers aren't paying too much attention to DVR usage. But it is effective, shows are getting upwards of 2 million extra viewers when that is factored in. Advertisers have no role in DVD sales, itunes sales or On-Demand viewing. But they also factor into a shows overall audience, and numbers dictate that overall interest in TV is about the same as it once was, it's just that less people are watching shows live.

But networks make the most money off of ad rates than any other form of getting the show out there, so they remain first. And if they only care about how a show does in its live broadcoast, than head to head number and stuff like that do matter.

Advertisers probably shouldn't care about DVR viewers too much. They tend to skip the commercials much of the time. Now, perhaps an innovative advertiser can take advantage of high DVR numbers and place a DVR specific ad (I think KFC tried this last year) that would entice people to watch the commercial (perhaps repeatedly and in slo-mo).

They don't ignore the commercials, exactly. Studies showed that they did watch and/or pay attention to the commercials (although not all), and many have said that they will definitely stop fast forwarding and watch a commercial if it catches their eye.

Although, many simply skip the commercials. That is what scares advertisers from investing into DVR usage, they figure people aren't paying attention.

The networks should slip in fake commercials into the regular breaks. Like the way lost did last season. The office could have a Dunder-Mifflin commercial worked in, stuff like that, keep people talking and paying attention while the FF throuhg the commercials.

Tivo itself just started a new ad campaign featuring "Tivo proof" ads, promising to be interesting enough so that DVR users don't skip past them. I belive the campaign is called "My Tivo gets me"

And this is from one of the articles I read about the Tivo proof ads...

The proliferation of DVRs means that viewers are increasingly watching TV programs on a delayed basis rather than live. That in turn is leading Nielsen to rework its longtime methods for measuring viewership to count people who play back a program within one, three or seven days after it ran.

And because so many DVR owners fast-forward through spots rather than watch them, Nielsen plans to start providing by the end of May ratings for commercials in addition to its traditional program ratings. (TiVo has started supplying its own data to advertising agencies, showing second-by-second viewing patterns among its subscribers.)

From an advertisers' standpoint, we only care about how many viewers are watching our ads and what their demographics are. If the show is downloaded or sold in DVD without our commercials it doesn't matter to us. We've never cared about head-to-head viewing.

The networks don't make their decisions based on how we make the decisions. They care about viewership and that's how they determine the cost of a :30. The networks' decisions on renewal also factor in foreign sales, DVD, downloads, et al.

Head-to-head is relevant to the networks because they take some pride in "winning their time slot." But it's also important because ratings are heavily influenced by HUT/PUT levels (households using television/people using television). No one expects the same ratings for Friday night that they get for Thursday night. Ten PM has lower HUT levels than Nine PM.

The Nielsen ratings you see in the newspaper are based on households. These are the only ratings Nielsen allows to be published, because the information is proprietary. Networks try to win the time slot/night/week in household ratings and overall viewership.

Yet household ratings and overall viewership are irrelevant. In all the years I've been doing this no client has every bought media based on households or overall viewership. We target the demographic group we want to reach. So those ratings, which you don't see, are the important ones.

dsp wrote:They don't ignore the commercials, exactly. Studies showed that they did watch and/or pay attention to the commercials (although not all), and many have said that they will definitely stop fast forwarding and watch a commercial if it catches their eye.

Although, many simply skip the commercials. That is what scares advertisers from investing into DVR usage, they figure people aren't paying attention.

Some advertisers have done commercials which cater to the DVR viewership. DVRs are an interesting thing. Many people do fast forward through the commercials, and that's bad for advertisers. On the other hand, they have to actually watch the TV to see when the commercials end. In traditional viewing you don't know how many people go to the bathroom, check the email, or go to the fridge. If you know you have two or three minutes, you can take two or three minutes. So you might see no ad at all.

TiVo has that 30 second skip easter egg. I don't even see any part of the commercial to see if it is interesting. I assume I'm not in the majority, but even if that's a substantial minority, advertisers should care and ignore DVR numbers until there's more data on the commercial viewing habits of those users.

But yeah, if the networks snuck in fake commercials within the commercial breaks, that's entice me to watch the whole commercial breaks.

Friday Night Lights gets a second season. NBC said they've found a place for it, probably on Friday nights. Whatever. Emmy nominations should give it a boost.

Also NBC picked up Journeyman (Kevin McKidd as a traveling back in time, with the hot chick from Daybreak), Chuck (Adam Baldwin as a nerd who accidentally learns government secrets from his CIA best friend), Life (detective wrongly accused of crime serves his prison time and returns to job) and The Bionic Woman (features Ann [Paul Veal] from Arrested Development).

The later should get the post-Heroes time slot on Mondays.
FNL will probably get a 6 episode order with 7 more scripts, what The Office got in its second season (essentially it has a couple of weeks to do well enough in its timeslot, if not, its toast).

FNL makes it and Jericho may not?

No justice in the world at all.

FX picked up 'Dirt' and 'The Riches' for a second season.

Adam Baldwin and nerdy? I just don't see it
this is the dude who said pain is scary

As far as commercial skipping on my dvr...i usually only pause when it's a movie trailer (seeming) that i might be interested in watching.

Sadly, from everything i've read i've already seen the best of FF2

FNL>>>>> Jericho

sorry mp, it just is. There's too much extraneous, unnecessary crap in Jericho...but I must say that the last couple episodes greatly improved

But I hope both come back.

I want to see Traveler.

pacino wrote:FNL>>>>> Jericho

sorry mp, it just is. There's too much extraneous, unnecessary crap in Jericho...but I must say that the last couple episodes greatly improved

But I hope both come back.

I want to see Traveler.

I really hope Jericho comes back also but FNL is a lot better then Jericho

I really hate Friday Night Lights.

I just do.

I watched the first 13/14 episodes of Friday Night Lights on nbc.com and was loving it for a while, but just forgot about it, regrettably. I'd like to think I'll pick up the rest but that almost never happens in these instances. 24 episodes just seems too long for tv shows. The only shows I've been able to watch consistently, for the last five years or so, were Sopranos and the Wire, I think partly because it's easier to set a tv watching routine on Sundany than Wednesday or Thursday.

To each his own, but FNL is simply a better show than Jericho. Billy is rarely right, so yea, it comes as no shock.