I wanted to follow up yesterday’s note on cable carriage fees by imagining a model that would determine such fees, at least partly, on the relative amount of audience that a channel attracts.
It occurred to me that such a model would be well suited for a digital subscription service, since it could faithfully measure the [...]

This past week Time Warner Cable came close to dropping the Fox Network from its system due to a dispute concerning retransmission fees. In case you aren’t aware, cable companies like Time Warner and Comcast often pay cable programmers (at least those that opt out of must-carry regulation) for transmitting their channels on their systems. [...]

On Sunday night my favorite TV show Mad Men ended its third season. It was a terrific finale and I recommend watching it if you haven’t done so already. The episode’s initial airing had an average audience of 2.3 million, about 31% more than last season’s finale, and the highest audience the show has had [...]

Last week the tenth episode of the second season on HBO’s True Blood attracted 5.3 million viewers, 20% more people than the previous episode and the best audience HBO has had for any show other than The Sopranos in five years. Looking at the viewership for the first Sunday airing of each episode, True Blood has steadily drawn [...]

Last Thursday the sixth season of the popular reality TV show Project Runway premiered on Lifetime Television to a record premiere audience of 4.2 million people, 45% greater than last season’s premiere. The show originally launched on Bravo in 2004 to a small audience of  350,000 for its first episode, but quickly prospered over the next [...]

Last night the third season of Mad Men premiered on AMC. The 10:00 p.m. EST airing drew an audience of 2.8 million, a new record for the series.

Earlier this year a new premium cable channel, Epix, was announced as a joint venture between Viacom (Paramount), Lionsgate and MGM. This initiative was formed, at least in part, because of pressure in 2008 by Showtime to lower the fees it paid to these same three movie studios. Initially the new channel’s prospects were met with skepticism, but [...]

Yesterday the nominees for the 61st Annual Emmy Awards were announced. This year amount of the nominees for the Outstanding Drama and Outsanding Comedy were expanded from five to seven. The nominees are as follows:
Outstanding Drama: Big Love, Breaking Bad, Damages, Dexter, House, Lost, Mad Men
Outstanding Comedy: Entourage, Family Guy, Flight of the Conchords, How [...]

Last week the second season of True Blood premiered on HBO, receiving the best audience levels of any show since The Sopranos series finale in June 2007.
It’s difficult to get much audience information on HBO, but I did manage to compile the following list. Nielsen adjusted its ratings measurements of HBO after 2004, so its hard [...]