Re: The CW -- Expected Average Viewership vs. The WB and UPN?

On 17 Jul 2006 12:39:57 -0700, "WQ" <wq@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:


KalElFan wrote:
Thread title question addressed to those who follow this kind
of thing. Most have assumed -- I think correctly -- that merger
of the two networks is inevitably going to result in at least some
increase in average viewership over what either The WB or
UPN were getting. I'll go further and suggest that since the top-
rated shows are the ones being carried over, The CW should
do better in most if not all time slots, than the most-viewed of
the two network's shows in that timeslot last year. In specific
markets that may not be true, and if a show collapses for one
reason or another it may not be true. But for most timeslots
I'd expect an improvement over last season's winning show
among the two networks.

So in Smallville's case for example, it got 5.9 million viewers
last season for its premiere. UPN's Everybody Hates Chris
was in the first half of Smallville's timeslot for much of the year,
but The WB won that hour over UPN. So I'm expecting that the
bar is raised for Smallville, and just as a working assumption a
while back I suggested it would be raised by 1 million viewers.
If that assumption is right (and it's just a wild guess), then The
CW and analysts would look at 6.9 million this season and say
"Okay, that's about on pace with what we'd expected, after the
adjustment, based on Smallville's numbers last season".

Is anyone aware of any data or articles that have suggested how
much better, on average, The CW's numbers are expected to be?
Note this isn't a "reach" question in the sense of national coverage.
To really get a good estimate you'd have to look at the strength of
the individual affiliates versus the old affiliates, in all the major
markets. You'd have to address the issue of show strength in
each timeslot, i.e., not use averages that include all the weaker
shows that were cancelled. So I suspect it's a very complex
analysis to come up with what the expected effect will be. I'm
sure it's something The CW must have done, but they'd probably
low-ball it in any press to be able to say they did better than they
expected. So the best number might come from those ubiquitous
"industry analyst" types. Some of you at least play one of those
on Usenet, right? :-)

Anyway I'm on record with my +1 million guess for the bar raising
on Smallville, which is 16.9%.

--- I already talked about something like this some weeks ago, but in
terms of season averages which is the only way you can look at it to
determine if CW will be a success or not. Taking everything into
consideration, I doubt if CW will pull in more than a 3.0 season
average. It certainly won't double UPN or WB's numbers which at the
end of this current season in May was 2.1 for each. For any show or
any network to add an extra million households to itself is a Herculean
feat, made even more so by the average age of all of its series.
There's no way that Smallville will automatically see a 16.9% increase
for a show that's going into its sixth year just because there'll be
"one network less". It's erroneous thinking, because the alternative
to Smallville is whatever will be on any of the umpteen cable networks
or computer time or family time or socializing time, anything else but
Smallville. If it does see any kind of an increase, it'll more likely
be a blip of a few percentage points or maybe an extra .03 rating,
tops, to its current season average rating. If people didn't watch the
UPN and WB shows that are returning in the fall in any great numbers
before, they magically won't start watching them then either. More
than anything else, what'll give CW its season average "surge" over
UPN/WB, if you will, will be in what kind of affiliates it's snagged
for itself and ultimately what their reaches are going to be. CW still
has yet to reach 100% coverage, being still at 90% or so, if I'm
correct. But even with 100% coverage, to make a real splash as a
credible alternative, it still needs more new and better programming
than what it has now, which is largely stale stuff.

If you want to, google a thread WQ started here titled "6-Net
Season-to-Date Averages".

My own take on what the CW is likely to do is based on the carry-over shows
not mystically losing the audiences they had this year, and actually
marginally increasing them (I think the low-end carry-overs, VM and OTH are
likely to increase their viewership more than the high end ones like 7th,
GG, Smallville, and so forth).

My best guesstimate is that the CW as a whole will show at a minimum a
13-15% increase over what the WB and UPN individually (not collectively)
got this year. The biggest factor in that increase is that all but two of
the shows below the network average this year will be gone, thus raising
the overall average for the CW just by the carry-over shows getting the
same ratings they did this year.


UPN and the WB this year each averaged around 3 million viewers, and a 2.1
Household rating. The 11 carry-over shows (not including the 2 that start
mid-season) collectively averaged about 4 million viewers and around a 3
Household rating.


--
"Oh Buffy, you really do need to have
every square inch of your ass kicked."
- Willow Rosenberg
.

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