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While still early in the season, the ratings war between television networks is shaping up to be an interesting one for the fourth quarter.
ABC has surprised some in the industry by holding onto No. 1 in adults 18-49 without the help it used to get from Monday Night Football, which has moved to ESPN. And NBC, which has finished fourth in the last two seasons, is up 18 percent over last year in the same demo, tying with CBS for second place, writes Media Life. NBC is, in fact, the only network showing gains in the demo.
NBC is also up 19 percent in adults 18-34, and 15 percent in adults 25-54. The reason for the increases, according to the article, is that the network is finally taking more chances with new shows, after several seasons of no risk-taking.
For example, NBC paid a huge amount for the rights to Sunday Night Football, which airs on a night that has strong competition from ABC, CBS and Fox. The gamble so far seems to have paid off, with the football broadcast doubling the network’s Sunday night average from last year, from a 2.8 to a 5.6.
One of the network’s new dramas, Heroes, has found a broad audience on Monday night, beating last year’s time slot average by 43 percent, averaging a 5.7.
And Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, though it has lost nearly a third of its 18-49 audience since its debut, is still more than a point higher than several of the shows the network aired in 2005, such as Surface, E-Ring and Inconceivable (all of which were canceled).
NBC still has three new shows joining the schedule, including Friday Night Lights (which premiered last night) and 30 Rock (next week), both of which have received good buzz.
If those shows do well in ratings, NBC could finish the fourth quarter in second place behind ABC, bearing out the promise by NBC Entertainment president Kevin Reilly - at the semi-annual Television Critics Association meeting in July - that NBC would not finish in fourth place again, and that this season’s ratings would “definitely be better.”
Hyper-conservative Rush Limbaugh - heard weekly by nearly 20 million listeners on about 600 radio stations nationwide - renewed his contract with Premiere Radio Networks and Clear Channel Radio, continuing syndication of The Rush Limbaugh Show.
The deal also includes…
WSJ.com’s traffic soared an impressive 94 percent in June compared to the same month last year, according to the company’s internal traffic numbers.
Total page views ballooned 45 percent, to 150 million, compared to the same month last year, writes Mediaweek.…
Kozy Shack, maker of rice and chocolate pudding, is sponsoring the New York Mets, with tubs of the pudding being sold individually at Shea Stadium as well as being included in children’s meals. And the snacks are selling so well…
Though U.K. advertiser investment committed for 2008 is staying put, discretionary spending is becoming shorter-term, at or slightly short of budget; still, WPP’s GroupM forecasts 4 percent growth in 2008 and 3 percent in 2009 for the U.K., thanks to internet…
Email is the most popular form of direct response marketing, with 35 percent of companies using it - compared to 25 percent that use traditional direct mail - according to a new survey conducted by Direct Partners (via Adweek).
The survey…
Without spam protection, the average web user can expect to get 70 spam messages each day, according to a survey by McAfee, the BBC reports (via MarketingVOX).
For the McAfee spam test, 50 people worldwide were asked to web-surf without a spam…
