Fox had been asking Time Warner Cable for $1 per subscriber. The counter offer was only $0.30 and SNL Kagan believes that they settled at $0.50 with a likely “increase over the life of the new agreement.” Since most networks receive less than $0.50 per subscriber Fox’s deal seems pretty good but based on Fox’s large audience it’s arguable that they should have gotten more. Fox’s primetime audience is double that of ESPN but its carriage fee is less than a fifth. Using a ratio of carriage fees to primetime ratings points, Fox stands at 0.22, below most networks.

Negotiations between service providers and networks are closely guarded so it is very difficult to ascertain just how deals are struck. Audience ratings are certainly not the only factor. ESPN attracts a lot of “hard-to-get male viewers, and even harder-to-get young male viewers” and its relatively high carriage fee is often justified because of this. Network bundling and company associations can also help boost fees. In any case it does seem that the difference in network carriage fees, in proportion to respective audiences, will lessen in the future.

The number one show in terms of overall viewers was NCIS, with a total audience of 18.9 million. Unsurprisingly, NCIS‘s lead-out and spin-off, NCIS: Los Angeles, also had a strong premiere with 1.74 million viewers and placed in third. In between at second place The Jay Leno Show drew 17.7 million viewers. ABC placed two shows in fourth and fifth place (Dancing With the Stars and Grey’s Anatomy), but CBS nabbed by far the most spots in this list with six spots.

The 18-49 demo ratings tell a much different and more important story. CBS loses its top position, placing half as many shows. The top spots here are for Grey’s Anatomy, House, The Jay Leno Show, Family Guy and The Cleveland Show. That’s three out of the top five for Fox.

In terms of overall performance I don’t have enough data to draw much information. TVbytheNumbers.com does have an excellent post comparing the broadcast network performance during the first week of this Fall season to last year. The only networks that are showing positive growth in overall viewership and within the 18-49 demo are MyNetworkTV and CBS.

I did draw a comparison between the network ratings by averaging out results within three time slots. While not indicating that a particular network is leading, these results do show that the highest ratings were drawn around 9:00 p.m.

This result probably has a lot to do with DVR viewership. These ratings are Live+SD (same day) meaning that time-shifted viewing before 3:00 a.m. the same “night” is included. Furthermore, it has also been reported that during this Fall season DVR viewing increased from two hours to four or five per night and given that shows in the 9:00 p.m. time slot have normally been the most popular for DVR use, these heightened ratings at 9:00 p.m. make sense.

The downside is that shows at 10:00 p.m. suffer, competing not only with shows in their own time slot but also with time-shifted programming from 8 or 9:00 p.m. There might be an exception to this trends and it’s The Jay Leno Show‘s whose timely content may stave the DVR push from earlier time periods and attract audiences for live viewing. The Jay Leno Show has lowered DVR viewing within its time slot from 70% to 46%. A higher proportion of live viewing may also mean that the show’s audience is opting away from watching other timeshifted programming, but that could only be proven by measuring overall timeshifted viewing at 10:00 p.m.

Instead of writing out a long, tedious list of the shows’ premiere dates I’ve decided to publish an online calendar with all the information.

This calendar is an iCalendar Calendar Data file (.ics)  and can be easily subscribed to, turned off and managed in iCalendar, Google Calendar or Outlook. Here is the link to subscribe to:

http://betweenthescreens.com/calendars/Fall_2009_TV.ics

The calendar is currently updated with all the series debuts and season premieres for the five broadcast networks I mentioned before. The biggest clashes seems to be occurring during the third week of September when 33 new or returning shows will premiere during the span of five days.

I will be adding more networks in the near future; all updates will automatically be sent to subscribed users.

Update: You may be interested in new online calendar that I’ve published for the Fall 2009 TV season. More about that at this posting.

During this season there has been talk about how the show has lost some of its luster. There were even rumors about two of the judges leaving the show. Compared to past seasons the show’s audience has somewhat diminished recently…

…but it has holds the #1 spot among the most popular network programs, every year since 2004, and it is still attracting between 27% and 127% more viewers than the other top 20 competitors.

More than a comfortable lead in any race and a sure sign that American Idol will continue well into the future.

It probably helped that the series had American Idol as its lead-in since January 20th, during its last 10 episodes. Note the substantial spring in the following graph.

Episodes that followed American Idol are demarcated by a light background in the following graph. Before January 20th, House was the lead-in at 8:00 p.m. It should also be noted that repeat episodes of Fringe are demarcated by a dark background in the graph, aired in October, December and January.

Looking at just new episodes of Fringe, it seems that American Idol boosted its total audience 18% more than House (also no ratings slouch), giving Fringe an extra boost during its infant season.

It is not surprising therefore that Fox anounced today that next season two of its most promiment new dramas, Past Life and Human Target, are respectively programmed Tuesday and Wednesday at 9:00 p.m., following American Idol.

Fringe, incidentally, is being cut loose of its training wheels, and moving on to Thursdays at 9:00 p.m., following Bones.

Looking at the current season to date, Fringe has averaged 8.9 million viewers per episode. Within the 18-49 and 18-34 demos, the show has averaged 4.75 and 2.02 million viewers respectively.

The dark areas in graph above, during late October and between early December and early January, are days that repeat episodes of Fringe were aired. The average total audience for these episodes is 5.1 million viewers, 42% less than the season average. The light areas are days that Fringe followed an episode of American Idol. These days the show had an average audience of 11.46 million, 29% greater than the season average. Note the change in lead-in audience the American Idol portion.

Since Fringe has not aired a single repeat episode after American Idol, I decided to look at only new episode ratings in order to properly gauge the ‘Idol Effect.’

Taking into account only new episodes, Fringe had an overall audience 18% greater after American Idol than after House. However, in the 18-34 and 18-49 demos the difference was much less, only 2% and 10% greater, respectively. I had imagined that the effect would be much greater in these younger demos where American Idol is very popular, but the younger audience simply dropped off at a greater rate.

In any case, both House and American Idol are popular shows, and it is evident that Fringe was well positioned in its premiere season to succeed.

I believe that this is a result of a broad sociological change in the United States that has dramatically shifted the marketplace towards polarized political stances, ocurring in part to due voter redistricting, as explained in this Economist article from 2002. This broad shift has subsequently led consumers to prefer opinionated and almost ‘biased’ news, which first led to the rise of Fox News, and later of MSNBC. As a result, media like CNN that are less opinionated and run the middle road become the ‘alternative’ in the marketplace and risk losing audience.

Personally, I am not a constant viewer of any of these three networks, but I do find CNN’s GPS with Fareed Zakaria to be an excellent program that always provides a distinct and serious look at current news topics. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a fresh perspective.

Most important has been Fox’s steady buildup in the movie’s distribution, which has taken place in four major points.

1. November 12, when it opened up at 10 theaters
2. December 19 ,when it expanded to 589 theaters. This is just before Christmas.
3. January 23, when it further expanded to 1,411 theaters. This is one day after the Oscar nominations were announced and was probably intended to anticipate prospective awards audience.
4. February 20, when it reached 2,243 theaters. This is two days before the Oscars and is probably intended to capture interest after the movie, hopefully, won several awards.

This last distribution tier, above 2,000 theaters is the the normal opening distribution for major comedies, and it is interesting to see how Fox has reversed the normal path for distribution for Slumdog Millionaire.

This organic buildup is an alternative distribution model followed by movies can’t be expected to immediately attract a mass audience. A similar path was also followed for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which opened up at only 16 theaters on December 8, 2000, and finally reached its distribution peak of 2,027 theaters on March 23, 2001, two days before the 2001 Oscars when it won four awards out of the ten it was nominated for. Subsequently the film’s distribution dropped to 1,628 two weeks later, and I am curious to see if Slumdog Millionaire will maintain a wide distribution for longer since it won so many awards including Best Picture.

In any case these tiers of distribution shown above have resulted in new peaks for the daily gross.

The latest peak will not be reached until next Saturday, since the Oscars took place on Sunday night. I estimate that it should be around $5.25 million.

Finally the movie is just about pass the $100 million mark. The movie’s growth should continue for some time and I will be sure to write up another posting when it begins to close its theatrical run.

Well, this little movie, with a mere product budget of $15 million seems to be destined to achieve greatness. The movie recently won four Golden Globes including Best Drama and Best Director, and today was nominated today for 10 Academy Awards, all while already grossing close to $45 million domestically.

Originally the film was to be distributed by Warner Independent Pictures but that division of Warner Bros. was shuttered in early May.  Fortunately the movie was later picked up by Fox Searchlight Pictures, who worked out a distribution deal with Warner Bros. As early as September, as noted in this LA Times article, the film was deemed to be of high quality, have the potential to attract audiences, and considered to be a strong contender for the Oscars.

All this indicates that Fox knew the caliber of film they were dealing with, and handled the distribution in a way to allow for positive reviews and word of mouth to carry the movie higher and higher. The film began being show at only 10 theaters on November 12, gradually expanding to over 580 theaters by December 19.  This method of distribution has also been utilized for other independent films including recent releases such as Changeling and Gran Torino, with varying degrees of success.

Looking at the daily gross per theater for Slumdog Millionaire it is more obvious to note how there was a concentration of audiences during the first month. The spikes in the line are the weekends. I am thus providing running 7-day average in dark blue to indicate a clearer trend.

It’s also interesting to note that following the Golden Globes on January 11 the movie’s gross per the theater reflected a marked rise. I expect this to continue in the following weeks and perhaps even increase after the Oscars.

In terms of its total gross, the film is currently standing at close to $45 million.

On the day of its wide release on December 19 the movie had grossed around $9 million. In the 33 days since then, it has grossed over $35 million. Given that there are another 32 days until the Oscars, I expect the movie to pass the $100 million mark before the end of its U.S. run. Moreover, as a Latin American, and given the movie’s strong reception in Britain, I strongly believe that Slumdog Millionaire will be well received by various foreign audiences and achieve comparable success overseas.

Finally, although the movie may be labeled as an underdog in the coming weeks by many commentators, I hesitate to use the phrase in its case because Fox knew from the beginning the pedigree of movie Slumdog Millionaire was, and thus executed a proper distribution and marketing plan to realize its full potential.