The Emmys broadcast last Sunday on NBC attracted 13.5 million viewers, making it the largest non-sports audience so far in 2010, at least since the airing of FOX’s American Idol finale on May 26. This is also the largest audience the Emmys has had in four years but it’s still over a quarter less than what the awards attracted 10 years ago.

Continue reading Emmys versus Oscars

Two telenovelas have made waves recently in the U.S., for each of the major Hispanic broadcasters. ¿Dónde está Elisa?, based on a Chilean soap of the same name, aired on Telemundo at 10 p.m. between March and August and improved the ratings for the time period 30% over the previous telenovela, Los Victorinos. Elisa even managed to tie or beat Univision programming during two evenings during its run, a pretty fair feat in primetime for Telemundo.

Continue reading Tale of Two Telenovelas

Last week the fourth season of Mad Men premiered and while the episode was entertaining as always (I am a fan) the ratings were a mere 5% above last season’s premiere. This growth was also significantly lower than previous season premieres: 167% from Season 1 to 2, and 44% from Season 2 to 3. Also of concern is that the 18-49 demo rating remained flat at 0.9 ratings points or approximately 1.2 million viewers.

Continue reading Mad Men peaking

Facebook has been in the news a lot lately, sometimes making good headlines, other times bad, and still other times it’s gotten ugly. The good news was actually great- Facebook announced that it had reached 500 million registered users. This is especially impressive since two years ago they had only 100 million users. The 300% growth has mostly resulted from expansion into older demos and within foreign markets. At the same time MySpace has actually been losing users.

Although Facebook membership has grown as a whole, the bad news is that certain key segments are shrinking. Inside Facebook reported a decline for active 18- to 44-year-old U.S. users for the month of June. This could be a sign of “Facebook fatigue” by early adopters that have outgrown the site. Perhaps un-coincidentally, the American Customer Satisfaction Index also reported that Facebook is perceived to to offer poor service due to issues related with privacy, spam and functionality.

Another bit of bad news hit Facebook when a businessman said that he had an old contract signed by Mark Zuckerberg granting him a majority stake in the company. While one Facebook lawyer said that they were “unsure” if a contract had been signed, Zuckerberg later clarified in an ABC interview that “…we are quite sure that we did not sign a contract that says that they have any right or ownership over Facebook.”

All of these news stories coincided with the release of a new trailer for “The Social Network,” an “unauthorized” movie about Facebook that comes out in October. The movie is directed by David Fincher whose previous work (Seven, The Game, Fight Club, etc.) is dark and largely of society. Unsurprisingly the trailer paints an ugly portrait, not just of Zuckerberg but also of social networks.

Continue reading Facebook: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

The World Cup is almost into the second round but the real competition might be taking place behind the cameras, between the broadcasters. In the U.S., two companies have television broadcast rights: Disney (ABC and ESPN) has the English-language rights and Univision (Univision, Telefutura and Galavision) has the Spanish-language rights.

It was expected that Unvision would do well in the ratings since their Latino audience is generally regarded as being more fanatical about soccer than the “gringo” viewers of ABC or even ESPN audience. This proved to be the case during the inaugural match when Univision drew 5.6 million viewers, almost double the audience of ESPN. However, Univision did not beat ESPN during any of the following seven matches, and got especially trounced during the England versus USA match which was attracted 10.8 million viewers on ABC; the largest audience for any U.S. World Cup match since 1994 .

Continue reading Soccer contra Fútbol

Two weeks ago ABC broadcast the final episode of Lost, a popular show that whose ratings I’ve been posting about every now and then. The last episode tallied 13.5 million viewers, which was more viewers than the season’s premiere (something that hasn’t happened since the first season) and the most viewers for any episode within two years.

As I’ve noted before, Lost consolidated a strong fan base during the first season, which led to a strong second season premiere. Over the course of that and later seasons however, the show steadily “lost” ratings. This could be attributed to a number of factors including its convoluted plot line, the 12 week hiatus the show took in the middle of the third season, the writers’ strike in 2007 which led to short fourth season, etc.

The show hit a ratings bottom in the twelth episode of the fifth season which had only 8.29 million viewers. The final sixth season saw a significant ratings bounce back, probably since a lot of viewers were interested in how the series was going to conclude.

Another factor that may have affected Lost’s downward ratings was overall viewership at ABC. The network was strong during the 2004-2005 season when Lost, Desperate Housewives and Grey’s Anatomy all premiered. Since then the network has had a few more hits, notably Dancing with the Stars, but has yet to produce another critically acclaimed drama. This season ABC did break out Modern Family this season, which I believe will run at least three seasons, but the “alphabet network” also lost the most viewers, both in general and in key advertising demos. It seems critical that ABC find some new strong shows during the 2010-2011 season.

Although I really love my new job in online advertising sales, as I previously worked for 12 years in TV, I am still irked when I hear media pundits declare the inevitability of television’s demise. It was thus with some sense of reassurance and satisfaction that I recently read the positive report by The Economist of the TV industry “Changing The Channel,” but perhaps it would be more aptly titled “TV Ain’t Dead Yet.” Among the report’s key points:

• Increased and better programming options: Clearly television is no longer the domain of the “big three” networks. A myriad of networks now proliferate resulting in greater programming options which satisfies more diverse interests, but also creates increased competition which improves overall quality.
• Increased viewing options: Besides having more things to watch consumers now have more options on how or when to view it. First of all there are more sets now in households. Secondly there are other platforms for viewing (iPods, Hulu, etc.). And finally there are also adjunct devices which allow consumers to record programming or view it on demand.
• Increased consumption: Programming and viewing improvemetns have yielded greater total consumption. On average a U.S. viewer watches over five hours of television per day, about a third more than what a person normally estimates.

Continue reading TV ain’t dead yet

During 2008 and 2009 the domestic box office grew by double digits, outpacing the overall annual growth. This trend is likely to repeat this year as first quarter results passed $2.4 billion, 10.2% over last year and over a third bigger than where it was in 2006.

Continue reading Q1 box office gets bigger

I wanted to follow my last post on U.S. Spanish language TV ratings by focusing just on telenovelas, and how their similar storylines draw similar audience flows.

This analysis is based on the same data as the previous post, a consolidation of household (HH) ratings data from archived newsletters, dating back to April 3, 2009. Ratings were not available for certain dates when the newsletter was on hiatus, most importantly between December 18th and the 28th.

The following graph charts the ratings from beginning to end for various 8 p.m and 9 p.m. telenovelas on Univision. Initial episode ratings for certain titles are not shown since they began before April. The biggest performer within this group is Mañana Es Para Siempre, who began to rise in viewership during its last 46 episodes.  Similar audience increases are also seen for Sortilegio and slightly for En Nombre del Amor. These rises demonstrate how viewers tune in more often once a telenovela becomes “caliente,” once the viewers have become engaged with its characters and the plotline begins to reach climactic points before reaching a big finish. It’s the natural cycle of telenovelas. Not all titles follow this rule however, as in the case of this group’s underperfomer, Ciudado con el Angel. This title market the lowest rating (1.5 on April 10) and also experienced a gradual ratings decline during its final episodes, an unusual reversal of the norm.

Continue reading Ratings en Español, parte dos

I love reading about television ratings but not much coverage is given to Hispanic channels, an unusual discrepancy considering that 16% of the U.S. population and 11% of TV households are Hispanic. The lack of coverage may be due to the fact that Hispanic programming is so diferente. During weekday primetime Univision and Telemundo program mostly telenovelas, which run around 120 episodes or five months long. This stripped programming results in a more stable audience flow, which occasionally changes in the event of substituted programming or as a telenovela becomes frio or caliente.

Utilizin email newsletters archives between April 2009 and February 2010 I compiled the weekday ratings for these Univision and Telemundo during the 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. time periods. Certain dates were not available but I believe that an overall performance picture emerged. The numbered points in the graph indicate notable highs and lows.

Continue reading Ratings en Español, parte uno